14.02.2008 // Press service of Atomenergoproekt FSUE

Atomenergoproekt (Moscow) has started the next stage of the construction of Novovoronezh NPP-2

Atomenergoproekt engineering company (Moscow) has started the next stage of the construction of Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant-2: the removal of earth from the foundation pit of the reactor compartment of the 1st unit.

This stage will last till Apr 2008. Almost 700,000 cubic meter of earth is supposed to be removed from the pit.

Today, the constructors continue planning the area. 4,000,000 cubic meters of earth has been removed from the area so far: almost 50,000 c m a day. The plan is 6,500,000 c m. Over 800 people and 300 vehicles (excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks) are involved in the project at present.

Since the beginning of the project Atomenergoproekt has allocated 3,124,000,000 RUR: 2,513,000,000 RUR has already been spent.

The director general of the company Vladimir Generalov says that the next stage is concreting of the foundations of the reactor compartment. It will mark the end of the preparatory stage.

Note

Atomenergoproekt (Moscow) is one of the key engineering companies of Rosatom. AEP has designed most nuclear power plants in Russia, Eastern Europe and the CIS, particularly, Bushehr NPP in Iran and Kudankulam NPP in India. It is the general designer of Belene NPP in Bulgaria.

On May 29 2007 Atomenergoproekt was proclaimed the general contractor of Novovoronezh NPP-2 project. In June 2007 the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy and Atomenergoproekt signed a sate contract for the construction of the 1st and 2nd units of the plant. The 1st unit is to be launched in 2012, the 2nd one — in 2013. The total financing is 130bln RUR.

Thus, Atomenergoproekt is the first Rosatom engineering company to have won the right to build an NPP in Russia in the framework of the federal target program for the development of the nuclear power industry of Russia in 2007–2010 and -2015.

NovNPP-2 is being built on the basis of AEP’s NPP-2006 project – an NPP with WWER-1200 reactors. This is an evolutionary project based on the best solutions of the NPP-92 project. The NPP will be very safe and will meet all the EU standards. The NPP-92 project has been certified by EUR.