The first batch of fuel assemblies from the American Westinghouse was loaded at the Loviisa nuclear power plant in Finland. Previously, the station received Russian fuel. Experts believe that Fortum's refusal to cooperate with Rosatom will not be a big loss for the state corporation. She has ahead of her a giant project to build new facilities in Russia itself and many ongoing projects abroad.
"The first batch of Westinghouse Electric Company nuclear fuel was loaded into the Fortum Loviisa nuclear power plant during its annual downtime in August. The loading of the new fuel is an important milestone that guarantees a reliable Western alternative for the supply of fuel to the Loviisa power plant," Fortum reports.
The company explained that in November 2022 Fortum signed an agreement with Westinghouse for the design, licensing and supply of a new type of fuel for the Loviisa NPP.
"During the annual downtime in 2023, one test element manufactured by Westinghouse, which did not contain uranium tablets proper, was loaded into the reactor of the Loviisa-2 power plant. With the help of the test element, mechanical experiments of the operation of a new type of fuel were obtained. During the annual outages this year, it was found that the test element was working properly," the report said.
Loviisa NPP consists of two units with a total capacity of 1 GW. Previously, Rosatom acted as a supplier. After the start of SMO, Finland began to curtail projects with the state corporation. Thus, the Hanhikivi NPP was the first to be hit. In May 2022, Fennovoima announced that it was terminating its contract with RAOS Project (Rosatom Corporation) worth 7-7.5 billion euros. It was planned that the station would consist of one VVER-1200 reactor with a capacity of 1.2 GW and it would be put into operation in 2029.
Both sides have filed billions of claims in arbitration. The London court found that Finland stopped the construction of a nuclear power plant with Rosatom unreasonably and for political reasons, said the head of the state corporation Alexei Likhachev.
Fortum reports that Westinghouse will supply fuel until a tender is announced for the purchase as part of the extension of the operation of the Loviisa NPP — until 2050. Earlier, the American company became an alternative supplier to Rosatom on Ukraine, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
Alexander Uvarov, Director of AtomInfo-Center, notes that the Finnish Loviisa continues to use Russian fuel.
"Only part of the core is overloaded at a time. Plus there are two blocks, not one. So Russian fuel assemblies will work there for several more years," the expert says.
In his opinion, the transfer of the Finnish power plant to American fuel will not have a significant impact on the activities of Rosatom.
"I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Rosatom faces a very serious task of building in Russia. According to the published draft of the general scheme, until 2042 in Russia will have 34 new nuclear power units of different capacities. All these units will need fuel, which Rosatom should produce," says the director of the AtomInfo Center. He believes that, one way or another, Rosatom will still have to pay more attention to the development of nuclear energy in the near future. Russia, and questions about fuel for the Finnish NPP will automatically fade into the background.
In addition, Alexander Uvarov added, numerous current foreign orders carried out by Rosatom in Turkey, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, China and Hungary.