China’s Tianwan-II prepares for commissioning

27 June 2016


Unit 3 at China's Tianwan NPP is scheduled for commissioning in February 2018. Russia's ASE Group of Companies (the engineering division of state nuclear corporation Rosatom), which is building the plant, said: "According to the schedule the fuel for unit 3 will be loaded at the end of August 2017". Unit 4, also being built by Rosatom, is expected to begin operation in December 2018.

On 21 June, a full-scale simulator (FSS) was commissioned for the two units, also known as Tianwan NPP Phase Two (Tianwan-II). Tianwan II is based on the Russian design, VVER-1000 (V-428) reactors developed by Atomproekt.
The FSS will be used to train Chinese operating personnel for the main control room. China's regulators require that training of Tianwan II's operating personnel "needs to be started long before availability of the real power unit", ASE explained. ASE noted that at Tianwan 3 and 4 "for the first time a Russian reactor will be used in combination with a Chinese low-speed turbine". The FSS "fully simulates control over this power unit".

Russia also construction units 1 and 2 at Tianwan (Tianwan-I), which began operating in 2007. Units 5 and 6 (Tianwan-III) will be Chinese-design units.

Meanwhile Russia's OKB Gidropress has completed tests of three dummies of advanced fuel assemblies (UTVS) intended for Tianwan-II. The tested UTVS dummies will be used as part of the dummy reactor core used during start-up and adjustment at units 3 and 4.

The Russian government plans to allow China to prepay the loan for the construction of NPPs. A draft agreement has been drawn up with the Chinese government, which provides for the possibility of early repayment of the loan issued by Russia in 1992. The relevant decree was published on the official web portal of legal information. It said the principal balance of $667,140,000 may be repaid early, as well as the interest for 2015 of $29m and interest accrued from 1 January 2016 until repayment date.



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