POWER October 2016 - 12

Russia Accelerates Efforts
to Build Advanced Nuclear
Reactors
Under a government decree published in
early August, Russia will build up to 11
new nuclear reactors by 2030, including
two BN-1200 sodium-cooled fast-neutron
reactors.
Russia already has 36 operating reactors
with a capacity of 27 GW, a fleet
characterized by an assortment of reactor
designs. According to the World Nuclear
Association, four early VVER-440/230s
are due to be decommissioned by 2020.
The nation also has two later VVER-440
models, 12 VVER-1000 reactors, and a Gen
III+ VVER-1200, which was put online on
August 5 (Figure 1). Along with its VVERs,
Russia has 12 RBMK light-water graphitemoderated
reactors (the same design used
at Chernobyl), four small graphite-moderated
boiling-water reactors (due to be
decommissioned in 2022), and two fast
breeder reactors, the BN-600 and BN-800
(the latter of which came online last December).
Approved
by the Ministry of Energy,
the August 1 decree calls for the construction
of 11 new reactors, not including
those that are already under
construction at Kaliningrad, Leningrad,
Novovoronezh, and Rostov, or Russia's
floating reactor Academician Lomonosov.
Many of the planned projects are
first-of-their-kind models.
The decree calls
BN-1200 fast breeder reactors at the Beloyarsk
and South Urals nuclear plants,
based on experience from Russia's 789-MW
Beloyarsk 4, which piloted the BN-800 de1.
Atomic heavyweight. Russia's
state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom put Unit
6 at the Novovoronezh II nuclear power plant
online August 5. The third-generation VVER1200
pressurized-water reactor is the first of
two units planned for the plant. Courtesy: Rosatom
sign.
It also approves construction of an
experimental VVER-600 unit for the Kola
plant, and seven VVER-TOI units-based
on a design introduced in 2010 by Atomenergoproekt-at
Kola II, Smolensk II,
Nizhny Novgorod, Kostroma, and Tatar.
Additionally, it approves the start of construction
of the BREST-OD-300 fast-neutron
reactor by 2025, as well as a facility
to produce high-density mixed uraniumplutonium
nitride fuel for the advanced
reactor that will feature a closed nuclear
fuel cycle.
First Scottish Tidal Energy
Array Is Connected to the
Grid
One of the world's first offshore tidal energy
arrays was connected to Scotland's grid
this August. On its heels is the grid connection
of a second array that is owned by
a different company.
Nova Innovation, a Scottish tidal energy
company founded in 2010, on Au2.
Time and tide. Nova Innovation's first
M100 turbine was grid-connected in March
2016 in Scotland's Bluemull Sound. " The device
has been generating up to full power and
across all tidal conditions, " the company said.
Nova Innovation deployed a second turbine
this August, making the project one of the
first grid-connected tidal arrays in the world.
Courtesy: Nova Innovation
for construction of
gust 28 grid-connected the second of
three 100-kW Nova M100 turbines that
are planned for deployment in Bluemull
Sound. The sound sits between the islands
of Unst and Yell in the north of Shetland,
where the North Sea meets the Atlantic.
The M100 tidal turbine (Figure 2) developed
by the Shetland Tidal Array-a joint
enterprise between Nova Innovation and
Belgian renewables firm ELSA-builds on
the successful design, manufacture, and
deployment of a community-funded 30-kW
device. " Although the device is three times
more powerful than the Nova 30 it is only
twice the cost, " Nova Innovation says on
its website.
In the race to grid connect the world's
first fully operational array of tidal turbines,
Nova Innovation surged ahead of
OpenHydro, a company owned by French
industrial group DCNS. That company deployed
a second turbine at French utility
EDF's Paimpol-Bréhat tidal project in
North Brittany in May (Figure 3), indicating
that the array would be connected to a
submarine converter developed by General
Electric to export 1 MW to the French grid
this past summer (see " First Turbine Deployed
at French Tidal Power Farm " in the
April 2016 issue).
OpenHydro is now looking ahead at setting
up a 14-MW array for EDF Energies
Nouvelles' Normandie Hydro project by
2018, announcing in May that it will build
a turbine facility in Cherbourg to act as an
industrial hub for that project. The facility
has yet to be finalized by the French
government, however.
3. Going with the flow. DCNS subsidiary
OpenHydro successfully deployed its
second turbine at EDF's Paimpol-Bréhat tidal
array, saying it will complete grid-connection
this summer. Courtesy: DCNS
Brazil's Environmental
Agency Halts 8-GW
Amazon Hydropower
Project
Brazil's environmental protection agency,
IBAMA, in early August canceled development
permits for an 8-GW hydroelectric
project on concerns about its social and
ecological impacts.
If built as proposed by a consortium
of multinational companies-including
Brazilian parastatal Eletrobras and private
sector partners GDF Suez/Engie, EDF,
Camargo Correa, Neoenergia, COPEL, and
Endesa Brasil-the São Luiz do Tapajós
dam straddling the five-mile-wide Tapajós
River would have been the sixth-largest in
the world.
12
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