Kola reactor 3 runs on overtime
The reactor was commissioned on March 24th 1981 with a license of 30 years. Triggers safety concerns in Murmansk as there are no plans to close it down.
Environmentalists in Murmansk were protesting in central Murmansk on Friday, holding huge banners reminding the pubic that reactor 3 at Kola nuclear power plant has its last day of operation within the original lifetime-design.
The ecologists from the organization Priroda i Molodez (Nature and Youth) were dressed in chemical defense suits and gas-masks. The banners read “Kola nuclear power plant should be closed!” and “Chernobyl, Fukushima, Kola NPP?” and “Active better than radioactive”.
The environmental organization Priroda i Molodez has followed the situation with the safety at Kola NPP for two decades and they are not relaxed with the assurances from the authorities that every possible safety measures are taken with the reactors.
- Prolongation of old reactor tanks is dangerous and illegal, says Vitaliy Servetnik to BarentsObserver.
Servetnik is council member of the organization and claims that the reactors at Kola NPP must be closed as soon as possible for safety reasons.
Rosatom, Russia’s State Nuclear Energy Coportation, has however no plans to close down the 30-year old reactor No. 3. Like with the two older reactors at Kola NPP, No. 3 will also get expanded life-time license. Reactor No. 1 and No. 2 were started in 1973 and 1974 and also had an estimated design life of 30 years. But the life time is prolonged with 15 years, counting from 2003 and 2004.
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Kola NPP operates four press-water cooled reactors. With reactor No. 3 now passing its operational life time, it is only reactor No. 4 that is less than 30 years old. The last reactor was commissioned in 1984.
Most security concerns are related to the two oldest reactors of the VVER-440/230 type. Experts have pointed to the fact that the reactors lack sufficient safety containment surrounding the core and have limited capacity of the cooling system.
Read also: Reactor shut-down at Kola NPP
Similar reactors as the oldest at Kola NPP were in operation at the Greifswald nuclear power plant in DDR, but were shut-down for security reasons shortly after the reunion of Germany.
Norwegian Foreign Ministry has claimed the two oldest reactors at the Kola nuclear Power Plant should be closed for safety reasons.
According to an opinion poll in 2009, 85 percent of the population in Murmansk County are negative to a prolongation of the life-time for the oldest reactors at Kola nuclear power plant.
