Anisul Islam Noor :The government of Bangladesh and the Russian authorities have decided to use VVER-1200 reactor for electricity generation from the country’s first nuclear power plant with 2,400 MW capacity to be set up at Rooppur in Pabna. Yaroslav I. Shtrombakh, Deputy Director of Kurchatov Instiute of Atomic Energy, a Russian National Research Centre, last Friday said that Russia was going to install its latest and proven technology, VVER- 1200 reactor, in Bangladesh and Belarus for electricity generation. He informed to Bangladesh delegation during a visit to Russia recently. The Russian nuclear reactor -Vodyanoi Energetichesky Reaktor (Water-Water Energetic Reactor) was developed in 2006 and the gross generation capacity of such a unit of power plant is 1,200 MW. Russia’s state nuclear authority Rosatom upgraded the major features of a previous version of nuclear reactor, including safety and security aspects, electricity generation capacity, operational costs and reactor cooling system. The institute decided to install two units of VVER- 1200 reactors for the power plant with a combined generation capacity of 2,400 MW, officials said.On November 3 in 2011, Bangladesh and Russia signed an agreement for the installation of the nuclear power plant with a capacity of at least 2,000 MW and in the following three years they signed three more contracts for site development, engineering design of the plant and human resources development.Initially, Russia offered to set up VVER-1000 reactor at Rooppur, but later two other options, VVER-1200 and VVER-TOI, were put on the table, officials said. But since the VVER-TOI is yet to receive construction license, VVER- 1200 became the lone choice for Bangladesh to satisfy its requirements for modern technology with the compliance of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s guidelines, they said. Minister for Science and Technology, Yeafesh Osman, said that the authorities concerned needed to consider the guidelines set by the IAEA for the beginners. Mohammad Shawkat Akbar, Managing Director of Nuclear Power Plant Bangladesh Company Limited, said that Rosatom had obtained licenses from the Russia’s regulatory authority for VVER-1200. Apart from Bangladesh and Belarus, Russia is also working with Turkey, Czech Republic, Finland and some other countries to set up nuclear power plants there using VVER-1200 reactors, officials said. While explaining the advanced features of VVER-1200 reactor, Semchenko Yuriy said, additional measures were taken in designing reactors which had reduced immediate impact area of radiation after accident to three kilometres, while the technology used in Fukushima power plant in Japan had the radiation impact area up to 30 kilometers. The accident at Fukkushima nuclear power plant which took place on March 11, 2011 injured 37 people of whom two were burnt in radiation. The US company, General Electric, designed the nuclear power plant at Fukushima and Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company maintained it. The accident drew severe criticism for the use of nuclear technology even for electricity generation.
