“The first of these four Steam Generators was built 8 months ahead of the initial schedule. The timing of key production operations in the manufacture of the set was halved. This was facilitated by the powerful and intensive development of the company that is now taking place. We have significantly strengthened the production base, introduced digital technologies, continue to improve efficiency and develop personnel. As a result, today we are starting to ship the set for the second unit of the first nuclear power plant in Turkey. In this event, the key fact for us is that this is the "next" shipment. We can state that the manufacture of equipment for nuclear power at the plant has reached the level of a stable “production rhythm” with the maximum utilization of production capacities,” said Igor Kotov, Director General of JSC "AEM-technology".
Steam Generators are the most important equipment in the primary circuit of the reactor. The NPP project includes four power units with Russian 3+ generation VVER reactors. The capacity of each power unit will be 1200 MW. Akkuyu NPP is the first project in the global nuclear industry, implemented according to the Build-Own-Operate model - “Build-Own-Operate”.
The Steam Generator refers to the products of the first safety class. The Steam Generator Vessel is a horizontal cylindrical Vessel with two elliptical bottoms. In the middle part there are collectors for supplying and removing the coolant. In the upper part of the Vessel there is a steam space, and in the lower part there is a heat exchange surface, which consists of 11,000 stainless tubes. If all tubes of one Steam Generator are folded in length, its total length will be 148.5 km. The diameter of the tubes is 16 mm; the length is from 11 to 17 meters. The ends of the tubes are fixed in two collectors. The length of the apparatus is about 15 meters, the diameter is more than 4 m. The weight of the item is 355 tons.
The delivery of items from Atommash to the Customer is carried out in a combined way. First, the items will be delivered to the berth of the Tsimlyansk reservoir by road. Next, the Steam Generators will be loaded onto a barge using a 650-ton gantry crane and shipped to Turkey by water. The vessel of the "river-sea" type, from Volgodonsk along the Don River will pass by the cities of Konstantinovsk, Semikarakorsk, Rostov-on-Don, Azov. Then the barge will pass through the Sea of Azov, through the Kerch Strait it will enter the Black Sea, then it will cross the Bosphorus Strait, through the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles Strait it will enter the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas to the Akkuyu NPP construction site. The length of the sea route will be about 3,000 km.
