Kalinin NPP hosted a visit of Dr. Yukiya Amano, IAEA Director General

During this visit Dr. Yukiya Amano was accompanied by Vladimir Voronkov, Permanent Representative of Russia to international organizations in Vienna, Nikolay Spasskiy, Deputy Director General of the State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM, a representative of JSC Concern Rosenergoatom – Director of Department for International Cooperation and Foreign Trade Affairs, Anatoliy Kirichenko.

The technical tour to Kalinin NPP was started with survey of a set of equipment purchased by the NPP in the framework of “Post-Fukushima” activities. During the survey Mikhail Kanyshev, Director of Kalinin NPP, told IAEA Director General on priority areas of the NPP safety enhancement in general and on the decisions made with respect to safety ensuring of Kalinin NPP unit 4 by implementation of additional portable emergency response equipment. The employees of Kalinin NPP demonstrated in practice that the entire set of the portable equipment is in operable conditions.

Dr. Amano highly estimated the safety of Kalinin NPP and professionalism of the specialists employed in the industry, he noted: «I’m very lucky to have an opportunity to cisit Kalinin NPP, especially brand new unit 4. It is a really new unit and it is already equipped with significant number of safety systems. An additional feature ensuring and enhancing its safety is the availability of portable diesel-generators and pumps. We do not only saw the equipment but also we saw how it works. It startd up as easily, smoothly and kindly as my car. Further I saw at the first stage units a lot of activities aimed at safety enhancement. For instance, we visited the control room and saw how some analogue systems are replaced with digital ones. I saw that operators employed at the NPP continuously improve their proficiency to enhance the NPP safety. It is highly welcomed».

After the tour to the NPP Dr. Amano visited the cooling lake Pesvo, where the local fishermen dined the head of IAEA with traditional Russian dish – “ukha” (fish soup) made of such kinds of local fish as silver carp, catfish, grass carp. «I liked the “ukha” very much, - said Mr. Yukiya Amano. – But most of all I like the people, who live in this town, work at Kalinin NPP. We feel real pleasure of meeting and communicating with each other».

In addition, the program of visit to Kalinin NPP included acquaintance with operation of Training Center and full-scope simulator for the unit №4. The capabilities of full-scope simulator application in the system of the NPP operating personnel training and continuous training as well as simulation of the full scope of the NPP operational modes, prescribed buy the utility reglations, were demonstrated to Dr. Yu. Amano.

The final point of the visit was Public Relations Center, where Dr. Amano get acquainted with permanent exhibition of Kalinin NPP, and then answered the questions of the journalists. Among the issues discussed during the press-conference were the problem of Iran, list of the countries entering into the «nuclear club» of NPP operators in the near future, as well as the renewable energy sources and perspectives of world nuclear power industry development.