Kola Nuclear Power Plant (Kola NPP) has received license to start testing reactor No. 4 at 107 percent capacity from Rostekhnadzor, the federal authority for environmental, engineering and nuclear supervision, the power plant’s Director Vasily Omelchuk says to RIA Novosti.
Reactor number four has gone through comprehensive reconstruction and modernization in course of the last four years. Operator of Russian nuclear power plants Rosenergoatom plans to use RUB 20 billion (app € 497 mill) on modernization of all reactors at Russian nuclear power plants in the coming five years.
The increase in output from reactor number four is part of Russia’s energy strategy for the period to 2020, which calls for maximizing energy production at all existing nuclear power plants.
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According to specialists on the field, increasing capacity on the reactor will be completely safe for people and for the environment.
- Kola NPP was originally projected to increase capacity with 10 percent, and we are only raising it with 7 percent. We could easily go up another three percent, says Igor Loshchakov at the Department for Nuclear and Thermal Energy Power Plants at the Polytechnical University of St. Petersburg.
Recently 500 people attended public hearings about the modernization of the power plant and the coming increase in production in Polyarnye Zori, the nearest town to Kola NPP.
Reactor No. 4 was put in service in 1984 and is the newest of the four reactors at Kola NPP.
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