Russia’s Chepetsky Mechanical Plant (ChMZ – Chepetskii Mekhanicheskii Zavod) based in Glazov (Udmurt Republic) has begun serial production of fuel storage racks NPPs. The first products have been delivered to the El Dabaa NPP under construction in Egypt.
More than RUB260m ($3.2m) was invested in modernising production. This included RUB180m provided by the Federal Industrial Development Fund in the form of a concessional loan and RUB20m provided by the Udmurt Entrepreneurship Development Fund.
Compacted fuel storage racks (SUKhT – Stellazhi Uplotnennovo Khraneniya Topliva) are used to store fresh and used fuel at nuclear reactors. They are also intended for use in storage facilities at reprocessing plants.
“Our company over the past 10 years has been a Russian manufacturer of SUKhTs. Thanks to a loan from the Industrial Development Fund and the Udmurt Entrepreneurship Development Fund, we have acquired new technological equipment. This made it possible to automate production processes, to move from the piece production of storage racks to serial and to reduce the manufacturing cycle fourfold,” said ChMZ General Director Tamara Remeshevskaya.
Dry storage units come in two types: racks for fuel assemblies and racks for holding pools. The former are required for vertical placement and storage of fresh fuel elements for nuclear reactors. The latter are designed for the placement and long-term storage of used and defective fuel cells, as well as for short-term storage of fresh fuel assemblies before loading them into the reactor core.
The company supplies SuKhTs for the Akkuyu NPP under construction in Türkiye as well as for El-Dabaa, and production for Paks-II NPP in Hungary has begun. In addition, the company plans to participate in tenders for the supply of equipment for other NPPs that Rosatom is building abroad. In Russia, the company plans to provide equipment to new NPPs under construction including Kursk-II, Leningrad-II and Smolensk-II.
