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TVEL supplies fuel to Belarusian nuclear plant

Wednesday, 18 January 2023

TVEL delivered nuclear fuel produced by Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant to the Belarusian nuclear power plant at Ostrovets in accordance with a bilateral contract agreed in 2017 - deliveries of nuclear fuel for the initial loading and the first refueling for each unit were included in the general construction contract.

TVEL supplies fuel to Belarusian nuclear plant — Belarus's first nuclear power plant, in Ostrovets, has been built by ASE (Image: ASE)

TVEL, part of Rosatom, said that the VVER-1200 reactors have a four-year fuel cycle with one refueling every 12 months during scheduled maintenance.

The company said that the long-term contract allows for future innovations to be offered to the Belarusian plant, with Rosatom specialists "already working on the transfer of all Russian VVER-1200 reactors to an extended 18-month fuel cycle with other work being done to create innovative types of fuel for VVER reactors based on new materials and solutions are being worked out in the field of a closed and balanced nuclear fuel cycle".

The Ostrovets plant consists of two VVER-1200 reactors with a total capacity of 2400 MWe. Rosatom describes the VVER-1200 design, of which the Ostrovets unit is the first to be built outside Russia, as "the backbone" of its export portfolio that comprises 36 units across 12 markets. Unit 1 was connected to the grid in November 2020 and the second unit is targeting start-up in the first quarter of this year.