Feb 24, 2015: INTERFAX – ATOMPROEKT JSC (an integrated company of VNIPIET and SPbAEP design institutes) will make an engineering and economic comparison of natural draft and ventilation cooling towers; in the future, this will help to select an optimum option for building power units at the Ruppur nuclear power plant (NPP) in Bangladesh.

A cooling tower is an important part of NPP infrastructure. It is a hydrotechnical construction for cooling water in NPP water circulation systems. Modern projects of natural draft cooling towers are up to 180 meters high and are able to cool up to 170 thousand cubic meters of water per hour.

Ventilation cooling towers are an alternative to natural draft wet cooling towers which are traditional for NPPs. This type of cooling towers has not been used earlier in NPP turbine condenser cooling systems, as more cooling towers with ventilation had to be installed; therefore, more money had to be spent on providing energy for fan motors. However, given the conditions in Bangladesh, i.e. high temperature and humidity, the use of this type of cooling towers may be justified.

Besides, Atomproekt designers and engineers are designing ventilation cooling towers for the emergency raw cooling water system of the Ruppur NPP. Using these ventilation cooling towers allows a considerable reduction in the area covered by cooling equipment and an increase in water cooling efficiency. Such project has been developed in Russia for the first time; earlier, spray ponds were traditionally used in the emergency raw cooling water system.

As has been reported earlier, in autumn 2013 Rosatom laid the cornerstone for the Ruppur NPP construction. Russia is expected to design, construct and put into operation two power units with VVER type reactors with the capacity of 1,000 MW each on the Ruppur site (160 km away from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh standing on the east bank of the Ganges), as well as to construct the infrastructure.

ATOMPROEKT has designed more than 100 cooling towers for power plants in Russia and abroad. At the moment, their designs are used in constructing cooling towers at Leningrad NPP-2 and in Astravets NPP in Belarus.

Link to original press-release atomproekt.com

For more information please contact:
Dinara Shikhametova
Russian State Nuclear Agency Rosatom