Electricity Generation Division

Rosatom has the longest history of nuclear power plant operation among world utilities because the world’s first nuclear power plant was put in operation in Russia, in 1954 in Obninsk. The 31 nuclear power units with the overall capacity of 23,242 MW are operated at 10 sites by Rosenergoatom Concern – one of the largest utilities in the country, second to Rusgidro in terms of installed capacity. At present, nuclear accounts for about 16% of domestic electricity generation. The share of nuclear generation in the European part of Russia reaches 30%, in the North-West part of the country – 37%.

Rosenergoatom Concern (former known as Energoatom) was established in 1992 to pool all Russian nuclear power plants into a single company for the purpose of providing centralized management of the plants. In 2008, the federal state-owned unitary enterprise Rosenergoatom was reorganized into an open joint-stock company. The 100% of its stock belong to Atomenergoprom.

The Concern carefully looks after the safe operation of the nuclear power plants and ranks among the best-performing world utilities in this area. There have been no safety-significant incidents higher than Level 0 (the lowest) according to INES scale since 2004. The number of unscheduled plant disconnections from the grid and unplanned reactor shutdowns is going down, hence making the Russian nuclear utility second in the world after Japan, to leave the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany and France behind. The Concern makes prominent contribution to abating the global warming; owing to the operation of its plants, 210 t of carbon dioxide are not released in the atmosphere each year (the global nuclear power helps to reduce СО2 emissions by 3.4 bln. t: ~ 900 mln. t in the USA, 1.2 bln. t in Europe, 440 mln. t in Japan, 90 mln. t in China).

The main goals of Rosenergoatom Concern are to increase the capacity factor of the operating plants and implement programs of large-scale deployment of nuclear generators. To fulfill this objective, Rosenergoatom Concern has elaborated a program for increasing capacity factor in the period until 2015. The implementation of this program will give the company the benefit equal to commissioning four nuclear units with the installed capacity 4.5 GW. The company achieved considerable growth of electricity generation in 2006 - 2008 owing to a capacity factor increase from 76% to 80.9%.

Rosenergoatom Concern plays a very important role of the customer for new NPPs. At present, it looks after construction of new power units on five sites: Rostov-2; Kalinin-4; unique Beloyarsk-4 with innovative fast neutron reactor BN-800; Unit 1 of Novovoronezh NPP-2 and Unit 1 of Leningrad NPP-2. The latter two are a milestone opening a new stage in development of Russian nuclear power. For the first time in the recent history of Russia, ROSATOM is building new plants from ground breaking rather than completing the projects started at the time of the USSR. Following the federal target program on the Development Nuclear Power and Industry Complex of Russia in 2007-2010 and until 2015 and the general plan of generating capacity deployment, ROSATOM has undertaken to construct 26 nuclear power units before 2020. This is more than was constructed in the Soviet period. However, commissioning of new NPPs may be put off considering the revised governmental forecasts on the growth of national electricity demand.

In addition to traditional NPPs, a floating nuclear power plant Academik Lomonosov will be constructed for the first time in the world. The plant will use the reactor of the KLT-40S type (naval). Plants of this type are called “floating”, though in fact they are meant to operate as moored, which requires appropriate coastal infrastructure. A floating nuclear power unit will be taken to the site by water. The first floating NPP is being constructed by Baltiiskiy Zavod (Baltic shipyard) in St. Petersburg and is expected to launch in 2010. Most likely, it will be located somewhere in the north of Yakutia; the regional government and ROSATOM signed an agreement on constructing four power units of this type for this region.

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