Nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants of Ukraine. Nuclear power plants in Russia

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Modern energy needs of mankind are growing at a gigantic pace. Its consumption for lighting cities, for industrial and other needs of the national economy is increasing. Accordingly, more and more soot from burning coal and fuel oil is emitted into the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect increases. In addition, there has been more and more talk in recent years about the introduction of electric vehicles, which will also contribute to the increase in electricity consumption.

Unfortunately, environmentally friendly HPPs are not able to cover such gigantic needs, and a further increase in the number of thermal power plants and thermal power plants is simply not advisable. What to do in this case? And there is not much to choose from: nuclear power plants, if properly operated, are an excellent way out of the energy impasse.

Despite what happened in Chernobyl, evenMindful of the recent failures of the Japanese, scientists around the world recognize that the peaceful atom is the only solution to the approaching energy crisis today. Widely advertised alternative energy sources do not provide even a hundredth of the amount of electricity that the world needs every day.

Besides, even the explosion of a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl did not cause even a hundredth of the damage to the environment, which is noted even with one disaster on an oil platform. The incident with BP is a vivid confirmation of this.

The principle of operation of a nuclear reactor

The source of heat is fuel elements - TVEL. In fact, these are tubes made of zirconium alloy, which is slightly subject to degeneration even in the zone of active fission of atoms. Inside are placed tablets of uranium dioxide or grains of an alloy of uranium and molybdenum. Inside the reactor, these tubes are assembled into assemblies, each of which contains 18 fuel elements.

In total, there can be almost two thousand assemblies, and they are placed in channels inside the graphite masonry. The released heat is collected by means of a coolant, and in modern nuclear power plants there are two circulation circuits. In the second of them, water does not interact with the reactor core in any way, which significantly increases the safety of the structure as a whole. The reactor itself is located in a shaft, and a special capsule is created for graphite masonry from the same zirconium alloy (30 mm thick).

The whole structure rests on an extremely massive base of high-strength concrete, under which the pool is located. It serves to cool the nuclearfuel in the event of an accident.

The principle of operation is simple: fuel elements are heated, the heat from them is transferred to the primary coolant (liquid sodium, deuterium), after which the energy is transferred to the secondary circuit, inside which water circulates under enormous pressure. It immediately boils, and the steam spins the turbines of the generators. After that, the steam enters the condensing devices, again turns into a liquid state, after which it is again sent to the secondary circuit.

History of Creation

In the second half of the 1940s, every effort was made in the USSR to create projects involving the peaceful use of atomic energy. The famous academician Kurchatov, speaking at a regular meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, put forward a proposal to use atomic energy to generate electricity, which the country, recovering from a terrible war, was in dire need of.

In 1950, the construction of a nuclear power plant began (the first in the world, by the way), which was laid in the village of Obninskoye, in the Kaluga region. Four years later, this station, which had a capacity of 5 MW, was successfully launched. The uniqueness of the event also lies in the fact that our country became the first state in the world that managed to effectively use the atom exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Continue work

Already in 1958, work began on the design of the Siberian NPP. The design capacity increased immediately by 20 times, amounting to 100 MW. But the uniqueness of the situation is not even in this. When the station was handed over, its return was 600 MW. Scientists in just a coupleyears have managed to improve the project so much, and quite recently such performance seemed completely impossible.

However, nuclear power plants in the expanses of the Union then grew no worse than mushrooms. So, a couple of years after the Siberian nuclear power plant, the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant was launched. Soon a station was built in Voronezh. In 1976, the Kursk nuclear power plant was put into operation, the reactors of which were seriously modernized in 2004.

In general, nuclear power plants were built in a planned manner throughout the entire post-war period. Only the Chernobyl disaster could slow down this process.

How things were abroad

It should not be assumed that such developments were carried out exclusively in our country. The British were well aware of how important nuclear power plants could be, and therefore actively worked in this direction. So, already in 1952 they launched their own project to develop and build nuclear power plants. Four years later, the town of Calder Hall became the first English nuclear city with its own 46 MW power plant. In 1955, a nuclear power plant was solemnly put into operation in the American city of Shippingport. Its power was equal to 60 MW. Since then, nuclear power plants have begun their triumphal march around the world.

Threats to peaceful atom

The first euphoria from taming the atom was soon replaced by anxiety and fear. Of course, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was the most serious disaster, but there was the Mayak plant, accidents with nuclear reactors in nuclear submarines, as well as other incidents, many of which we will probably never know about. The consequences of these accidentsforced people to think about raising the level of culture in the use of atomic energy. In addition, humanity once again realized that they were unable to resist the elemental forces of nature.

Many luminaries of world science have been discussing for a long time how to make nuclear power plants safer. In Moscow in 1989, a world assembly was convened, based on the results of the meeting, conclusions were drawn about the need to radically tighten control over nuclear energy.

Today, global communities are closely monitoring how all these agreements are observed. However, no amount of observation and control can save from natural disasters or banal stupidity. This was once again confirmed by the accident at Fukushima-1, as a result of which hundreds of millions of tons of radioactive water have spilled into the Pacific Ocean. In general, Japan, in which the nuclear power plant is the only means of providing the gigantic needs of industry and the population with electricity, has not abandoned the nuclear power plant construction program.

Classification

All nuclear power plants can be classified according to the type of energy produced, as well as according to the model of their reactor. The degree of safety, the type of construction, as well as other important parameters are also taken into account.

This is how they are classified according to the type of energy produced:

• Nuclear power plants. The only energy they generate is electricity.
• Nuclear thermal power plants. In addition to electricity, these facilities also generate heat, which makes them especially valuable for deployment in northern cities. There, the operation of a nuclear power plantallows to sharply reduce the dependence of the region on fuel supplies from other regions.

Fuel used and other characteristics

The most common are nuclear reactors that use enriched uranium as fuel. The coolant is light water. Such reactors are called light water reactors, and there are two types of them. In the first case, the steam that is used to rotate the turbines is formed in the reactor core.

For the formation of steam in the second case, a heat sink system is used, due to which water does not enter the core. By the way, the development of this system began already in the 50s of the last century, and the American military developments served as the basis for it. Around the same time, the USSR developed a reactor of the first type, but with a moderating system, in the role of which graphite rods were used.

This is how the gas-cooled reactor appeared, which is used by many nuclear power plants in Russia. The rapid acceleration of the construction of stations of this particular model was due to the fact that the reactors produced weapons-grade plutonium as a by-product. In addition, even ordinary natural uranium, whose deposits in our country are very large, is suitable as fuel for this variety.

Another type of reactor that is fairly widespread around the world is the heavy water model with natural uranium as fuel. At first, such models were created by almost all countries that had access to nuclear reactors, buttoday, only Canada is among their exploiters, in the bowels of which there are the richest deposits of natural uranium.

How have reactors been improved?

First, ordinary steel was used for the manufacture of fuel rod claddings and circulation channels. At that time, it was not yet known about zirconium alloys, which are much better suited for such purposes. The reactor was cooled with water supplied under pressure of 10 atmospheres.

The steam released at the same time had a temperature of 280 degrees. All the channels in which the fuel rods were located were made removable, since they had to be replaced relatively often. The fact is that in the zone of activity of nuclear fuel, materials are rather quickly subjected to deformation and destruction. In fact, the structural elements in the core are designed for 30 years, but in such cases, optimism is unacceptable.

Fuel rods

In this case, the scientists decided to use a variant with one-sided tubular cooling. This design dramatically reduces the chances of fission products getting into the heat exchange circuit even in the event of damage to the fuel element. The very same nuclear fuel is an alloy of uranium and molybdenum. This solution made it possible to create relatively inexpensive and reliable equipment that can operate stably even at significantly elevated temperatures.

Chernobyl

Strange as it may seem, but the infamous Chernobyl, whose nuclear power plant became a symbol of man-made disasters of the last century, was a real triumph of science. At that time, the most advanced technologies were used in its construction and design. The power of the reactor alone reached 3200 MW. The fuel was also new: enriched natural uranium dioxide was used for the first time at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One ton of such fuel contains only 20 kilograms of uranium-235. In total, 180 tons of uranium dioxide were loaded into the reactor. It is still not known exactly who and for what purpose decided to conduct an experiment at the station that contradicted all conceivable safety rules.

Nuclear power plants in Russia

If it were not for the Chernobyl disaster, in our country (most likely) the program for the widest and most widespread construction of nuclear power plants would still continue. In any case, this was the approach planned in the USSR.

In general, immediately after Chernobyl, many programs began to be massively curtailed, which immediately led to an increase in prices for many "environmentally friendly" grades of heat carriers. In many areas, they were forced to return to the construction of thermal power plants, which (including) even work on coal, continuing to pollute the atmosphere of large cities monstrously.

In the mid-2000s, the government nevertheless realized the need to develop the nuclear program, since without it it would be simply impossible to provide many regions of our country with the required amount of energy.

How many nuclear power plants do we have in our country today? Only ten. Yes, these are all Russian nuclear power plants. But even this number generates more than 16% of the energy that is consumedour citizens. The capacity of all 33 power units that operate as part of these nuclear power plants is 25.2 GW. Almost 37% of the electricity needs of our northern regions are covered by nuclear power plants.

One of the most famous is the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, built back in 1973. At present, intensive construction of the second stage is underway, which will allow to increase the output capacity (4 thousand MW) at least twice.

Ukrainian NPPs

The Soviet Union did a lot, including for the development of energy in the union republics. Thus, Lithuania at one time received not only an excellent infrastructure and a lot of industrial enterprises, but also the Ignalina NPP, which until 2005 was a real “Pockmarked Chicken”, providing almost the entire B altic region with cheap (and its own!) Energy.

But the main gift was made to Ukraine, which received four power plants at once. Zaporozhye NPP is generally the most powerful in Europe, delivering 6 GW of energy at once. In general, Ukraine's nuclear power plants give it the opportunity to independently provide itself with electricity, which Lithuania can no longer boast of.

Now all the same four stations are working: Zaporozhye, Rivne, South-Ukrainian and Khmelnitsky. Contrary to popular belief, the third unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant continued to operate until 2000, regularly supplying the region with electricity. At the moment, 46% of all Ukrainian electricity is produced by Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Strange political ambitions of the authorities in the country led to the fact that in 2011 it wasa decision was made to replace Russian fuel elements with American ones. The experiment failed completely, and almost $200 million in damage was caused to Ukrainian industry.

Prospects

Today, the benefits of the peaceful atom are again remembered all over the world. An entire city can be supplied with energy from a small and primitive nuclear power plant, which consumes about 2 tons of fuel per year. How much gas or coal will have to be burned during the same period? So the prospects for the technology are huge: traditional types of energy are constantly growing in price, and their number is decreasing.