Tour of the Kola nuclear power plant

• Tour of the Kola nuclear power station

Kola NPP - the northernmost nuclear power plant in Europe - is located 200 kilometers south of Murmansk on the shore of Lake Imandra. Now run all of its 4 power, giving more than 12 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. A rarity for the nuclear industry is the fact that in 1973 Kola NPP launched a woman - Galina Pyatkevich.

Russian nuclear security services believe that the pictures outside the station greatly weaken its protection. Therefore, I will not show such photos, but in general, can be understood as looks station on the layout.

The assembly of the 126 fuel elements.

Fuel element (FE), - the main structural member of a heterogeneous core of a nuclear reactor containing nuclear fuel (small black uranium dioxide tablets). The fuel element is the division of heavy nuclei 235U, 239Pu or 233U, accompanied by the release of thermal energy which is then transferred to the heat carrier. That is, between the tubes and is heated by flowing water of the first circuit. This water is used for steam generation in the second circuit, and the steam drives the turbine generator.

One such assembly of the released energy equivalent to 80 tanks with fuel oil or 160 wagons with coal.

Below this cover is located the reactor vessel -. A metallic cylindrical vessel 12 m tall reactor core is composed of the cassettes 349 with fuel elements. In short, by this cover is about 40 tons of nuclear fuel heats the water of the first circuit.

This GTSEN-stator 310, plate for TK-6, jig plate BZT Model PG collector radiation control BDMG-41, and of the reactor lid with the refueling machine Mn 2 in the background ... you wonder what it all is and how it works? I have to read a couple of books on the device of nuclear reactors.

Alexander Dimov (reactor shop shift supervisor). He knows the purpose of all glands, but go and explain it to bloggers.

Oddly enough, the station radioactivity less than on the street. Order of 10 mc / h. But it is in the areas designed for permanent stay of people. Inside the reactor and hundreds germodverey situation is different, but the people there are very rare, with a clear objective, limited time, in riot gear ... And so it is particularly strange it looks:

Lifebuoy on the reactor lid ... That does it make sense to throw a lifeline to man, fallen into the reactor? ... It turns out there. From water surface to the bars - 5 meters. Nor is water, and boric acid (neutron absorber).

So that the radiation on the surface is almost there. And to get a person is still necessary.

At the outlet of the reactor zone have all passed through the monitor, and because the reactor from us, no one fell, contamination was not found

In the second circuit, heated water enters the turbine hall, where the steam turns the turbine, and the turbine rotates the generator.

In the vast hall 8 installed turbines.

The steam turbine Ka-230-44

There is a turbine assembled back in 1970, the Order of Lenin Kharkov Turbine Plant named after Kirov. Rotate it for 40 years of 250-degree steam from the secondary circuit.

The people in the engine room almost none. All it debugged, set up and operates itself.

Control of power parameters and process control is carried out with the control room - the main control room.

MCR unit number 3

For this remote control third power monitor all 3 people ... But how much of all they need to know ... Did you see somewhere more buttons and lights falling on one person?

As a lifeline above the reactor, quite unusual among monitors and toggle switches look here such uncomplicated stool. But really, why complicate what is working and so a thousand years.

Nuclear power plant - it's just a commercial entity that has its own characteristics and complexity. He is not dangerous chemical enterprises (Do you know what a man-made disaster is considered to be the largest?), Is not dangerous and oilfield (You may remember the story of the well with BP?). But nuclear power plant gives us electricity at a cost of 60 kopecks per 1 kW / h, and the radiation in the atmosphere of it gets much less than that from coal-fired plants.