Izvestiya vuzov. Yadernaya Energetika

The peer-reviewed scientific and technology journal. ISSN: 0204-3327

Full Life Cycle of AMB Uranium-Graphite Reactors

9/10/2025 2025 - #03 Nuclear power plants

Sidorov I.I. Nosov Yu.V. Mokshin S.A. Shcheklein S.E.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26583/npe.2025.3.07

UDC: 621.039

The technical design of the Beloyarsk NPP, developed by the Leningrad Branch of the Teploelectroproekt Institute and approved by the Board of the USSR Ministry of Power Plants by a decision dated July 15, 1957, is described.

The BAES project differed from the plants created in these years by the original design of the uranium graphite channel reactor, which had two types of technological channels (for generating saturated steam and for its subsequent overheating). There were no such installations with nuclear steam overheating in any country in the world then or later. The presence of such an installation made it possible to increase the efficiency of the BAES by almost 10% compared with the British and American nuclear power plants created at that time and brought Russia to the place of a leader in the development of nuclear energy technologies. A detailed description of the physical and technological features of the project was reported in Geneva at the ‘Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy’ in 1958.

Data on the volume of electricity production and technical characteristics of power units for the entire period of operation are given. It is shown that during 60 years of operation, the polluting values of the Beloyarsk NPP in terms of general and radiation parameters are at the level of hundredths and thousandths of a percent of the gross volume of the Sverdlovsk region; the cost of electricity produced by the AMB-100 and AMB-200 power units for the entire period of operation was lower than the cost of electricity at the Ural plants with organic fuel of the same capacity.

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channel reactor nuclear steam overheating efficiency competitiveness efficiency

Link for citing the article: Sidorov I.I., Nosov Yu.V., Mokshin S.A., Shcheklein S.E. Full Life Cycle of AMB Uranium-Graphite Reactors. Izvestiya vuzov. Yadernaya Energetika. 2025, no. 3, pp. 98-111; DOI: https://doi.org/10.26583/npe.2025.3.07 (in Russian).

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