The frame of the turbine hall at unit 1 of the Kursk-II NPP in Russia has been completed. The builders have installed the last roofing section in the design position and the height of the entire structure has reached 49 metres. Visiting the site, the Governor of the Kursk Region, Roman Starovoit said it was not just about construction of a replacement NPP but about development of the city of Kurchatov. “We have examined the progress of construction, it is proceeding according to the schedule, and there are no significant problems.”
Workers began constructing the frame of the turbine building in September 2019. Installation of the 29 turbine hall columns required more than 2,000 tons of metal. The roof weighs 1,084 tons. The building is equipped with tracks for three overhead cranes with lifting capacities of 15, 30 and 290 tons.
Vyacheslav Fedyukin, Director of the Kursk NPP said the next stage would be assembly of process equipment. He confirmed that work at the construction site was on schedule. To date, out of 15 key tasks set for the year, seven have been completed,” he noted.
Meanwhile, the support truss of the reactor has been installed at unit 2 of the plant. The support truss is one of the elements of the reactor shaft in the form of a welded metal structure, which is designed to securely fasten the reactor pressure vessel in the concrete shaft. Its purpose is to protect the reactor from weight and seismic loads.
“The 83 tonne support truss was erected using a Terex Demag CC8800 crane. This is a complex type of installation, given large dimensions of the structure, and the fact that the tolerances of alignment relative to the reactor shaft are only 2 mm,” said Alexey Buldygin, head of the Kursk NPP-2 Capital Construction Department. “Learning from the experience of similar work at the first unit, specialists from Electrospetsmontazh, who assembled the support truss, were able to cut the installation time by half,” he added.
