One of the first Russian design bureaus marks its 60th birthday

21.03.2007 // ITAR-TASS

The head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko will take part in the solemn assembly held today on the occasion of the 60th birthday of one of the leading enterprises of Russia’s nuclear power industry – Nizhniy Novgorod I.I. Afrikantov Experimental Design Bureau (OKBM)

He will grant government awards to best OKBM specialists.

OKBM — one of the first design bureaus in Russia — is 60 years old. Set up in 1947 on the basis of the design bureau of Gorky Machine Building Plant as «Special Bureau for the Design of Equipment for the Nuclear Power Industry,» the Bureau got actively involved in the design of the first industrial nuclear reactors and starting from 1954 in the development of reactors for the navy and the civil fleet.

During the past 60 years OKBM specialists have taken part in the design of almost 500 nuclear reactors and steam generators for military ships and ice-breakers as well as of fast-breeder reactors. They have operated for a total of 8,000 reactor-years, which is equivalent to the operation time of all world reactors.

Since 1953 OKBM has designed and launched several generations of nuclear power units for 8 ice-breakers. The ice-breaker of the last generation — with OKBM reactor  — «50 Years of the Victory» was launched in late 2006. In the 1970s OKBM designed the first ever reactor for the AST-500 heat supply station. It was the first inherent safety reactor. Since then, the principle of inherent safety has been widely applied in the design of new generation reactors.
 
Since 1995 OKBM has been the key Russian participant in the international project for designing the modular gas-cooled high-temperature GT-MGR reactor. This project is carried out jointly with US, Japanese and French companies and national laboratories and meets all the key innovation and safety standards formulated in the initiative of the Russian President at the UN Millennium Summit in the autumn 2000.

Presently, OKBM is one of the leading design bureaus of Russia, a big multi-service research and production center of the nuclear plant building industry. It employs over 3,600 people — of them 1,600 are highly-qualified specialists with great experience, unique technologies, original ideas and solutions. Among them is the research manager of the Bureau, academic Fedor Mitenkov. In 2004 Miteknov was awarded Global Energy prize for outstanding contribution to the design of fast-breeder reactors.