Rosenergoatom, the nuclear power plant operator subsidiary of the Russian State-run nuclear corporation Rosatom, has shut down the Novovoronezh-3 nuclear power reactor on 25 December 2016. The 385 MW VVER-440 reactor fed first power to the grid in December 1971 with a 30-year long operation licence that was extended by 15 years against upgrade work between 1999 and 2002.
The Novovoronezh nuclear power plant consists of VVER-210 unit 1, VVER-365 unit 2, VVER-440 units 3 and 4, VVER-1000 unit 5 and VVER-1200 unit 6. Units 1 and 2 were shut down in 1984 and 1990. The operating licence of unit 4, commissioned in 1972, expires at the end of 2017, but it is expected to be granted an extension to 60 years, i.e. until 2032. Rosenergoatom will use the equipment from unit 3 to upgrade unit 4.
The VVER-440 reactor has been used for six units in Russia, two at Novovoronezh and four at Kola, and for 29 units overseas, including facilities in Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine. Rosenergoatom estimates that the market for decommissioning VVER-400 units abroad could be worth up to US$29bn and plans to used Novovoronezh-3 decommissioning as a test case for such work.
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