Nuclear Power plant of Russia

One Russian blogger has paid a visit to the modern Russian nuclear plant. Normally it is forbidden to take photos there, but they have made an exception for him. So now we have a rare chance to see what’s inside of the Russian most modern power plant.

This power plant is situated near Smolensk city. Its power generation potential is 3 Megawatt and it was build for 8 years, from 1982 to 1990. There were planned to be four nuclear reactors, but because of the panic after the Chernobyl accident the forth block has not been completed, so there are three of them for now.

Let’s go inside.

In Russia there are now 10 active power plants. This one produces 1/7 of the overral electricity outcome of Russian nuclear powerplants, so it is a big one.

Because this powerplant was completed after the Chernobyl, they paid a special attention to secure it from alike accidents. There is even a saying that “The sci-fi writers are on the second place by richness of imagination, the first place is occupied by the nuclear plant security engineers”, meaning that they need to make it safe just for some unimaginable events that not very likely to happen, but still the security system should be ready for them.

The outside structure that secures reactors themselves can stand the blast that exceeds ten times the power of atomic bomb blast, just imagine.

There is a 30km (18 miles) security zone around the plant itself. It’s literary filled with all sorts of sensors and monitoring devices that measure the condition of the environment and should report any smallest deviation from normal radiation doses. There is also a water pound, the normal thing on such an object, that stores strategic reserve of water, which is said to be very clean and is fishing there is the big dream for every local – it doesn’t freezes in winter and has plenty of different fish species.

The entrance to the station has a few protection levels, including palm scan, checking weight (it shouldn’t) differ from the number on profile.

Everyone should be dressed into uniform.

Everyone gets personal radiation checker.

The turbines.

The main reactor hall, the reactor itself is in the concrete reactor cavity

The nuclear fuel used is Uranium255

It is placed in those green tubes.

One can see the blue glow at 2.5 meteres (8 feet) deep. It is because of Cerenkov effect “electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through an insulator at a speed greater than the speed of light in that medium”.

The main control point.

That’s it!

photo credit: Ilya Varlamov