Akkuyu NPP Unit 3 Construction Starts
A ceremony in Buyukeceli, Turkey on March 10 commemorated the construction start of Unit 3 construction at the site of the first Turkish nuclear power plant Akkuyu.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended via videoconference, while Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez, ROSATOM Director General Alexey Likhachev, and Akkuyu Nuclear JSC CEO Anastasia Zoteeva attended the event in person.
The leaders of the two countries gave permission to start construction work by pouring the first concrete into the foundation of Unit 3. At the ceremony, Alexey Likhachev’s remarks noted that construction work was progressing rapidly at the ambitious project. “Just three years after the Akkuyu NPP construction began, we are starting full-scale construction work on the third power unit,” he said.
U.S. Lab Develops Off-Gas Monitoring Tools
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories announced this week the development of a real-time off-gas monitoring system designed for nuclear plant operators that can inform them faster about when to task items like treating or scrubbing such by-products as iodine gas.
Sensing it is time for a faster monitoring system, given the push for next-generation nuclear technology, PNNL researchers said the process “combines remote, real-time testing and continuous monitoring of off-gas by-products … coupled with a software package geared towards plant operators.”
The new tool can speed up development of reactors, given the time current off-gas sample collections and lab analysis can take.
Fuel Rod Designed For BREST-OD-300 Reactor
Russian nuclear fuel company TVEL FUEL (a subsidiary of Rosatom) said Tuesday that its Bochvar Institute research facility had developed fuel rod design based on nitride uranium-plutonium fuel (MNUP-fuel) for the BREST-OD-300 fast neutron reactor.
TVEL said the fuel rod project will be applied for commercial manufacturing of nitride fuel, which will be launched as part of the Pilot Demonstration Energy Complex, which is under construction in Seversk, Tomsk region in south-central Russia.
Concurrently, ROSATOM’s Nuclear Fuel Division continues development of the second-generation fuel rods for the BREST-OD-300 with a higher burnout level, which will be used when MNUP fabrication will shift to the re-fabrication stage (meaning that irradiated fuel of the first load after irradiation and reprocessing will be used for fresh fuel fabrication).