English
Rosatom has successfully completed tests of tungsten for the international thermonuclear reactor ITER. At the Efremov Research Institute of Electrophysical Apparatus (JSC NIIEFA, a Rosatom enterprise), the stage of qualification tests of tungsten for cladding the first wall of the international thermonuclear experimental reactor ITER has been successfully completed.
As the Corporation reported, at this stage of the qualification program the selected design and technological solutions were confirmed. Specialists soldered tungsten claddings and carried out ultrasonic testing of the soldered mock-ups on a robotic complex.
According to the assessment of the director of the ITER Project Center of the state corporation Rosatom, Anatoly Krasilnikov, this is one of the most important research and development works carried out in Russia this year. “Three years ago the project participants decided that the cladding of the first-wall panels should be made of tungsten. And we faced the task of retooling all production for the new material. The work carried out in St. Petersburg is only the initial stage of a whole complex of research, but its successful result speaks of the correctly chosen technological path and our high competencies. Without these studies we will not be able to move to serial production of this key component of the future thermonuclear reactor,” A. Krasilnikov said.
In the “holy” (for liberals) 1990s, Russia’s nuclear industry was experiencing a deepest crisis. The metastases of Chubais and Co. threatened to tear apart even this profitable piece of the pie of Russia’s heritage. However, the end to these encroachments came in 2007, when the President signed the law on the creation of the state corporation Rosatom. This step can be considered his personal decision to save an industry that the world had already written off. Moreover, Putin decided to create the state corporation despite the objections of lawyers.
From this followed the task set by the head of state — not simply to remain on the nuclear market, but to become number one in the world. And this task has been fulfilled, since Russia is the only country in the world with competencies across the entire nuclear technological chain. Back in 2007 Vladimir Putin recalled that “over the entire Soviet period 30 nuclear power units were built… we must build 26.” Now the Government of the Russian Federation has approved the General Scheme for the placement of electric power facilities until 2042, under which the construction of 38 nuclear power units is planned. Of these, 18 are already at various stages of construction. These are scales not simply comparable to the Soviet nuclear program, but surpassing it. Everything is correct, life does not stand still, and the nuclear industry, which includes 400 enterprises and employs over 330 thousand people, requires development.
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