MINSK, 3 November (BelTA) – The Russian company OKB Gidropress has started testing the control rod drives that will be shipped later to the Belarusian nuclear power plant, BelTA learned from the company's website.
The Russian company is running acceptance tests on the reactor control and safety system drives made for the first power-generating unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant. OKB Gidropress will test 60 drives by the end of the year. The Belarusian nuclear power plant will get a total of 124 control rod drives.
The Gidropress control rod drives are designed to start the operation, tune the output, and shut down nuclear reactors by inserting or pulling out control rods out of the active zones.
The Russian R&D company OKB Gidropress is part of Atomenergomash, which is the mechanical engineering division of the Russian state corporation Rosatom. Gidropress has developed all the modifications of the control rod drives of this type for nuclear power plants with water-moderated power reactors.
The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a project to build a VVER-1200 type nuclear power plant 18km away from Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast. The BelNPP will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW).
