To many people, Russian nuclear reactors are linked to the 1986 Chernobyl accident: something sinister, dangerous and about to explode. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The review after Chernobyl to refine the designs was so thorough that many design features that Western nations required only after the 2011 Fukushima accident were included in the VVER several years before.
Rosatom, the Russian state atomic energy corporation, is the only company that has all technologies of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to the back end of nuclear facilities lifecycles.
The company ranks first globally in terms of the size of its order portfolio for construction of nuclear power plants (NPPs) (39 power units, inter alia six small modular reactors (SMRs), in 10 countries).
It also supplies 16,3% of the world’s nuclear fuel, 36% of the world’s enriched uranium, and, presently, all the world’s high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), essential for making SMRs .
Truly a global player, it incorporates about 550 enterprises employing a total of nearly 420,000 people1. Few people know that the centrifuge, today used worldwide to enrich uranium, was a Russian invention5.
However, this article is not about Rosatom but one of its achievements, the VVER-1200 reactor.
VVER is Russian for Vodo-Vodyanoi Energetichesky Reaktor and translates to Water-Cooled Water-Moderated Energy Reactor.
The VVER gaining popularity
This reactor has been widely used in NPP projects around the world, with four plants having been built and launched in the Russian Federation and Belarus and 14 currently undergoing construction in Hungary (Paks II), China (Xudapu), Bangladesh (Rooppur), Turkey (Akkuyu) and Egypt (El Dabaa). The history of the VVER and how it developed from the first… [Please fill in the form to continue reading.]
