Rosatom groups engineering expertise
Atomenergoproekt (AEP) has been placed under the executive control of another Rosatom subsidiary in order to consolidate Russia's nuclear power engineering expertise into a single division.
Rosatom director general Sergey Kirienko announced the change at a meeting with AEP management, the state nuclear corporation said today.
NIAEP-JSC ASE - the company formed in 2012 from the merger of the Nizhny Novgorod design institute and Atomstroyexport (ASE) - will now be AEP's parent company. ASE is Rosatom's general contractor for overseas nuclear power plants
The new arrangement is not "a judgement based on a comparison of the entities by the quality of their design processes," Kirienko said. The decision reflects the importance to Rosatom of the "end product" of any given nuclear power plant project.
The nuclear power industry faces two challenges: the cost and the construction period of new-build projects, he said. To address those challenges, Rosatom needs to create "an efficient engineering division." Competition in the global marketplace has intensified, with Chinese and South Korean companies "playing an ever more active role."
"Nothing is more important for us now than to be competitive in engineering," he said.
Kirienko called for the "speedy integration" of the companies to avoid "internal competition" between Rosatom's engineering subsidiaries. "This will now be one professional team."
"Today we need to direct all our strengths at ensuring the sustainable development of the division to meet the challenges of reducing the cost and shortening the period of time needed to construct nuclear power plants," he said.
Valery Limarenko, president of NIAEP-ASE, said he was confident the engineering division's work would be productive and would be beneficial to the nuclear power sector as a whole.
Long history
Russian nuclear power plant design and engineering work is carried out by three architect-engineer institutes known as Atomenergoproekt - in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhniy Novgorod. They originate from the same design bureau, Teploelektroproekt, which was founded in Moscow in 1924 and which was appointed general architect-engineer of Russian nuclear plants by government decree in 1958. In 1982, Teploelektroproekt was reorganized as the Atomteploelektroproekt institute, which was later split into three Atomenergoproekt institutes, the predecessors of the present-day engineering companies.
The activities of the Atomenergoproekt companies cover planning and survey work for construction and back-fitting of nuclear power plants, including site selection, preparation of engineering documentation and drawings, field supervision of power plant construction and technical support; organization of equipment installation activities, supply of equipment and materials, startup trials and commissioning.
Atomenergoprom - the holding company that controls Rosatom's civilian nuclear assets - owns all the shares of each Atomenergoproekt.
Atomstroyexport is responsible for constructing Russian-design nuclear power plants in other countries. It was set up in 1998 on the basis of two large foreign trade corporations - Atomenergoexport and Zarubezhatomenergostroy which had a long history of nuclear construction outside Russia.
In 2011, Rosatom created Rusatom Overseas to promote Russian nuclear technologies in the international market.
Rosatom started merging ASE with Nizhny Novgorod Engineering Company Atomenergoproekt, also known as NIAEP, in December 2012, in a bid to bolster ASE's engineering capability. The consolidation of ASE and NIAEP aimed to produce a synergetic effect and enhance the competitive capacities of both companies, Limarenko said at the time.
Researched and written by
World Nuclear News
