OREANDA-NEWS. March 14, 2012. Members of the Board of Directors of Vattenfall Nuclear Fuel AB (Sweden) visited a fuel fabrication facility of the Fuel Company of ROSATOM TVEL – Mashinostroitelny Zavod (MSZ) in Elektrostal, Moscow Region.

During the visit, the representatives of the Board of Directors of the Swedish company toured to process shops and were presented on activities of ROSATOM, Fuel Company of ROSATOM TVEL, MSZ, Atomenergomash and Rusatom Overseas. 
                      
The visit of the Swedish nuclear experts was preceded by signing by the Fuel Company of ROSATOM TVEL and Vattenfall Nuclear Fuel АВ of a contract concerning supply of a pilot batch of TVS-K fuel for Ringhals-3. Newly developed by leading scientific and design organizations of ROSATOM, the nuclear fuel will be loaded into a Western-design PWR for licensing. The contract provides for qualification of the fuel fabrication process at the producer and, directly, supply of 4 or 8 pilot fuel assemblies made by FC TVEL to the Swedish operator.

At a press conference Director General of Vattenfall Nuclear Fuel AB Per-Olof Nestenborg said: The contract provides for supply of first pilot fuel assemblies for one PWR reactor in 2014. At this point it has not been decided yet whether they are four or eight assemblies. The purpose is the fuel qualification. Since TVS-K does not have operation experience, the qualification will be until full burnup of the fuel.

Assessing the visit to the facility process shops, P-O. Nestenborg noted that the product quality fully met expectations. That is why we ordered fuel, he said. We are not testing, we verify assemblies’ performance and trust in TVEL’s experience in fuel fabrication, he added.

Success of this project is expected to allow the Russian producer to enter a new market of Western-design reactors and expand Russia’s presence in the world nuclear fuel market.