The first plans to build a second nuclear power plant on the Kola Peninsula were made more than 30 years ago, but the green light has now been planned.
It was the director of the Kola Nuclear Power Plant (Kola KKW), Vasily Omelchuk, who announced the launch date during an online press conference on June 18.
Maintenance work on reactor No. 1 of the Kola nuclear power plant. Photo: Thomas Nilsen
“The life of the first generation reactors at Kola NPP will end in 2033 and 2034,” recalled Omelchuk, saying construction will begin in 2028 so that the first new reactor will be operational by 2034.
In the 1990s, a location for the Kola 2 nuclear power plant was selected, a few kilometers south of the existing nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Imandra near the town of Polyarny Zori, a few hours’ drive south of Murmansk.
The two new reactors will be of the water-cooled VVER-600 two-loop design, a medium-sized reactor type that has not been built anywhere else. The design is based on the VVER-1200, a type of reactor of which two are already in operation at the Leningrad NPP.
Entrance to the Kola nuclear power plant. Photo: Thomas Nilsen
In today’s Kola nuclear power plant, four reactors are in operation, of which the two oldest VVER 440/230 types are criticized by international experts for lack of adequate emergency call systems.
State Secretary Audun Halvorsen at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo welcomed the plans for new reactors at the annual meeting of the Norwegian-Russian Commission on Nuclear Safety last week on the grounds that the two oldest existing ones were not safe enough.
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The Kola nuclear power plant produces about 60% of all electricity in the Murmansk region, but only half of the output is consumed by regional companies and cities, while the other half is exported. Mainly to Karelia, but also to a lesser extent to neighboring Finland and Norway.
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