OREANDA-NEWS. The committee summed up the results of the Rosenergoatom-AREVA cooperation in the past six months and their activities under the TACIS nuclear safety program and existing commercial contracts: supplying liquid radioactive waste treatment systems to Kursk NPP, optimizing the maintenance of WIS components for Volgodonsk NPP, equipping the 1st and 3rd units of Kalinin NPP with hydrogen catalytic after-burning systems, reported the press-centre of  Rosenergoatom.  Concerning the TACIS program, the sides discussed methods of safety analysis for  the transient states of the WWER-1000 reactor, including the spatial variations of the properties of the coolant and liquid radioactive waste treatment for Kolsk NPP. Presently, the companies are preparing 4 more contracts. The sides confirmed their commitment to further cooperate in the sphere of NPP services and considered the possibility of setting up a relevant JV.

The foreign partners showed special interest in the reports of the Rosenergoatom vice directors general Vladimir Asmolov (about the key directions of the concern’s activities in the framework of the future Atomenergoprom) and Oleg Sarayev (about the need for a new technological platform of nuclear energy development). The next meeting of the Coordinating Committee is to take place at Leningrad NPP in Sept 2008. AREVA NP is the world leader in the design and construction of nuclear power plants, and the supply of fuel, maintenance and modernization services. Officially, Rosenergoatom’s cooperation with French-German AREVA NP was started in Sept 2001, when the latter was set up, however, with its constituent companies, Framatome ANP and Siemens AG, the concern has been cooperating since the early 1990s.

In a memorandum on mutual understanding signed in 2006 Rosenergoatom and AREVA NP set the following cooperation priorities:
• modernizing and enhancing the safety of NPPs
• enhancing the quality of maintenance and operating availability of existing NPPs
• managing the life services of existing NPPs
• exchanging information concerning normative and scientific-technical documentation
• studying the possibilities of applying the projects financed by the European Commission (for example, TACIS) at other NPPs
• dismantling and decommissioning NPPs
• exchanging information on promising reactor technologies and NPP equipment.