The scheduled preventive repair of unit 3 at Russia’s Balakovo NPP was completed seven days ahead of schedule, the plant said on August 8. The repair work was carried out over 61 days including routine maintenance as well as upgrades. “The most significant task was the replacement of racks in the used fuel pool,” the plant noted. The turbine condensers copper-containing tubes were replaced with new titanium tubes “which are more robust” at all four units. Also during the outage three experimental fuel assemblies with REMIX-fuel were loaded into the unit 3 reactor. Balakovo-3 with a VVER-1000 reactor was commissioned in 1988. Since 2010 it has operated at 104% of the rated value. The 30-year design service life of the unit expires in 2018
