Ensuring water-chemical regimes of nuclear power plants

The Department of Technology and Control of Water-Chemical Regimes of NPPs has significant responsibilites. This is one of the recognized leading scientific centers of the country in the field of solving these problems. The main areas of its work today are the creation of an expert system for providing early diagnosis of chemical technology violations: reducing the impact on personnel by means of the water-chemical regime (WCR), reducing the corrosion rate of structural materials at nuclear power plants. The department includes a unit in charge of conducting water chemistry condition trials and a testing laboratory, which in 2018 passed a verification of the state of measurements in organizations of the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation.

The department accumulates data on the state of water-chemical regimes at all NPPs, and we distribute this information across all NPPs. The work is routine, but in fact it is now very topical, especially in connection with the increased attention of the public to the operation of cooling towers at new power blocks. Our experts are at the forefront of the problem, they give very useful recommendations on this topic; in the future, we will have several research projects devoted to it. We hope, in particular, to pick up a new reagent for water treatment. It is quite difficult to “pass” it through the Ministry of Natural Resources, proving that this product is harmless to the environment, so it will take some time to introduce it at nuclear power plants.