МИНИСТЕРСТВО ЭНЕРГЕТИКИ И ЭЛЕКТРИФИКАЦИИ СССР
MINISTRY OF ENERGY AND ELECTRIFICATION OF THE USSR
ОФИЦИАЛЬНОЕ ЗАЯВЛЕНИЕ / OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Registration No.: MEiE-2018-OZ-0112-EN
Date: 14 October 2018
English-language authorised translation. Original filed in Russian. Released for international distribution: 14 October 2018, 10:00 MSK
NATIONAL THORIUM PROGRAMME — PHASE THREE COMMISSIONING ANNOUNCEMENT
FIFTEEN STATIONS OPERATIONAL; NATIONAL GRID CONTRIBUTION REACHES 31 PERCENT
I. STATEMENT OF THE MINISTER
The Ministry of Energy and Electrification of the USSR announces today the operational commissioning of the fourteenth and fifteenth thorium molten salt reactor stations in the national programme, bringing total installed thorium generating capacity to 18,400 megawatts electric and thorium-source contribution to the Soviet national grid to 31.4 percent of total generation as of the third quarter of 2018.
This figure represents the crossing of a threshold. The programme target set in the Phase Three planning documents — 40 percent national grid contribution by 2025 — was described at the time of its adoption as ambitious. On current trajectory, that target will be reached by 2021. The Ministry intends to recommend to the Council of Ministers that the target be revised upward.
The Ministry notes, for the record and for history, that the intellectual foundation of this programme was laid in a memorandum submitted to General Secretary Gorbachev on 14 February 1990 by Minister Pyotr Stepanovich Neporozhny, who proposed what he called, with characteristic directness, “a dependency on a domestic resource we do.” Minister Neporozhny did not live to see this day. The Ministry records his name here because it belongs here.
The Ministry also records the name of Academician Grigory Vladimirovich Serov, Programme Director from 1990 until his retirement in 2011, under whose scientific leadership the theoretical programme became the engineering programme that became the national infrastructure now described in this document. Academician Serov, now eighty-one years old and in retirement in Obninsk, was informed of today’s announcement this morning. His response, relayed by his assistant, was: “It took long enough.”
The Ministry agrees. It also notes that it took exactly as long as it needed to, and no longer.
II. STATIONS NOW OPERATIONAL
The following thorium molten salt reactor stations are currently operational and contributing to the national grid as of 14 October 2018:
European Russia
1. Kalinin Thorium Station (KTS-1/2) — Tver Oblast Capacity: 2,400 MWe (two units, 1,200 MWe each) Commissioned: Unit 1, March 2016; Unit 2, November 2017 | Grid: Central
2. Volga Thorium Station (VTS-1) — Saratov Oblast Capacity: 1,200 MWe | Commissioned: January 2017 | Grid: Volga
3. Kola Thorium Station (KolTS-1/2) — Murmansk Oblast Capacity: 2,400 MWe (two units) Commissioned: Unit 1, August 2016; Unit 2, April 2018 | Grid: Northwestern; export capacity to Scandinavian grid interconnect Sited in proximity to domestic thorium deposits, Kola Peninsula, consistent with Ministry of Geology reserve assessments of 1990.
4. Novovoronezh Thorium Station (NVTS-1) — Voronezh Oblast Capacity: 1,200 MWe | Commissioned: June 2017 | Grid: Central-Southern
5. Leningrad Thorium Station (LTS-1) — Leningrad Oblast Capacity: 1,200 MWe | Commissioned: February 2018 | Grid: Northwestern
Ural Region
6. Ural Thorium Station (UTS-1/2) — Chelyabinsk Oblast Capacity: 2,400 MWe (two units) Commissioned: Unit 1, May 2016; Unit 2, September 2017 | Grid: Ural; Central Asia interconnect Station construction accelerated following confirmation of Ural thorium deposit yields exceeding 1990 geological survey projections by 23 percent.
7. Belojarsk Thorium Station (BelTS-1) — Sverdlovsk Oblast Capacity: 800 MWe | Commissioned: December 2017 | Grid: Ural
Central Asia
8. Kazakh Thorium Station (KazTS-1) — Karaganda Oblast, Kazakh SSR Capacity: 1,200 MWe | Commissioned: March 2018 | Grid: Central Asia unified grid First thorium station commissioned outside the Russian SFSR. Construction and operational staffing shared between Ministry personnel and Kazakh SSR energy authority under joint programme agreement of 2014.
9. Uzbek Thorium Station (UzTS-1) — Navoi Oblast, Uzbek SSR Capacity: 800 MWe | Commissioned: August 2018 | Grid: Central Asia unified grid; preliminary interconnect discussions with Iranian national grid underway
Siberia
10. West Siberian Thorium Station (WSTS-1/2) — Tomsk Oblast Capacity: 2,400 MWe (two units) Commissioned: Unit 1, October 2016; Unit 2, July 2018 | Grid: West Siberian
11. Krasnoyarsk Thorium Station (KrasTS-1) — Krasnoyarsk Krai Capacity: 1,200 MWe | Commissioned: January 2018 | Grid: East Siberian
12. Irkutsk Thorium Station (IrkTS-1) — Irkutsk Oblast Capacity: 800 MWe | Commissioned: May 2018 | Grid: East Siberian; Baikal industrial region
Far East
13. Vladivostok Thorium Station (VladTS-1) — Primorsky Krai Capacity: 1,200 MWe | Commissioned: September 2018 | Grid: Far Eastern; preliminary export discussions with Japanese grid operators underway Completes the national programme’s geographic mandate. The Soviet grid, from Leningrad to Vladivostok, now has thorium generating capacity in every major regional zone.
14–15. Amur Thorium Station (AmurTS-1/2) — Amur Oblast Capacity: 2,400 MWe (two units) Commissioned: Unit 1, August 2018; Unit 2, October 2018 | Grid: Far Eastern
Total installed capacity: 18,400 MWe National grid contribution, Q3 2018: 31.4%
III. COAL AND OIL GENERATION: DECOMMISSIONING SCHEDULE
The Ministry confirms that the following decommissioning actions have been taken or are scheduled in consequence of thorium capacity coming online:
- 47 coal-fired generating stations in cold standby or formal decommissioning: combined retired capacity 11,200 MWe
- 19 oil-fired generating stations decommissioned or in active decommissioning: 4,800 MWe
- 11 older RBMK nuclear units at four stations taken offline under the Ministry’s parallel legacy nuclear phase-down programme: 8,800 MWe of RBMK capacity
The decommissioning of RBMK units — the reactor design involved in the Chernobyl accident of 1986 — is proceeding ahead of the schedule originally projected. The accelerated pace reflects both the availability of thorium replacement capacity and the Ministry’s assessment that continued operation of RBMK units beyond their design service lives is inconsistent with the safety principles that motivated the thorium programme in the first place.
Coal consumption in the Soviet power sector has declined by 44% from the 2015 peak. Oil consumption in the power sector has declined by 61% from the 2015 peak.
The Ministry records these figures not as abstractions but as quantities of fuel that is no longer being burned, no longer being purchased at world market prices, no longer creating the export dependency that Minister Neporozhny identified in 1990 as a structural threat to Soviet strategic independence.
IV. SURPLUS GENERATION AND EXPORT
The national thorium programme is generating surplus electricity.
As thorium stations have come online and coal and oil generation has been retired, the net effect on the Soviet grid has been an increase in total generating capacity relative to current domestic demand. The surplus, currently estimated at between 2,100 and 2,800 MWe depending on seasonal demand variation, represents a new category of Soviet export product.
Surplus electricity export agreements currently in effect or under negotiation:
- Finnish national grid (Northwestern interconnect via Kola station): agreement in effect since January 2018; 400 MWe average export
- Mongolian national grid (West Siberian interconnect): agreement in effect since June 2018; 200 MWe average export
- Kazakh SSR industrial zones (beyond domestic grid allocation): internal Soviet transfer pricing, 300 MWe
- Iranian national grid (Central Asia interconnect via Uzbek station): preliminary technical discussions underway; no agreement concluded
The Ministry anticipates that grid export will become a material contributor to Soviet foreign exchange earnings within five years, partially replacing hydrocarbon export revenues as the latter decline. Energy independence does not mean energy isolation. It means selling from surplus rather than selling from dependency.
V. A NOTE ON PROGRAMME RESILIENCE
The original Phase Three deployment schedule projected fourteen stations operational by end of 2015. The actual figure, as of today, is fifteen stations operational by October 2018 — a delay of approximately three years from the original projection.
The delay is attributable to two factors in roughly equal measure: supply chain pressure consequent on the war effort, which created competing demands on certain categories of specialist steel, precision components, and engineering personnel; and a decision taken by the Ministry in 2015 to extend quality assurance procedures at the Ural and West Siberian stations following identification of minor fabrication variances in fuel assembly components, variances that posed no safety risk but that the Ministry elected to resolve before commissioning rather than after.
The Ministry notes that the programme continued through three years of active conflict, budget pressure, and the full weight of a wartime economy, and delivered fifteen operational stations producing 18,400 megawatts of clean, domestically fuelled electricity.
It continued because of the Energy Independence Fund.
Minister Neporozhny’s proposal for a protected budget line — a fund that could not be raided for other purposes without Council of Ministers authorisation — was adopted in 1990 and has been maintained through every budget cycle since, including the difficult cycles of the past four years. The Ministry is aware that there were proposals, during the most acute phases of the conflict, to redirect Fund allocations toward more immediate military requirements. Those proposals did not succeed. The Ministry does not comment on internal budget deliberations. It notes the outcome: the Fund held, the programme continued, the stations are operational.
The Neporozhny Fund, as it has come to be called informally within the Ministry, did what he designed it to do.
VI. PROGRAMME OUTLOOK
On current commissioning trajectory, with seven additional stations in advanced construction and four in early construction, the Ministry projects:
- 22,600 MWe total installed capacity by end of 2020
- 40% national grid contribution reached by 2021 — four years ahead of original 2025 target
- Revised target of 55% national grid contribution by 2025 to be recommended to Council of Ministers
- Full coal power sector retirement by 2028 on current trajectory
- Net hydrocarbon power consumption: zero by 2030 — complete realisation of Minister Neporozhny’s 1990 strategic objective
The Ministry submits this announcement to the public record, to the Council of Ministers, and to history.
In February 1990, a minister who had spent thirty-one years building the Soviet energy system wrote a memorandum about what kind of sovereignty the Soviet Union intended to have in the century ahead. He did not live to see the answer. The answer, as of 14 October 2018, is: this kind.
Issued by authority of: Alexander Ivanovich Novak Minister of Energy and Electrification of the USSR 14 October 2018
Related sources: Ministerial Memo — Neporozhny, February 1990 | TASS: BN-T1 First Criticality (1998) | Reuters: Cuba’s Soviet-Built Thorium Plant (2013) | KAN News: Baram Interview on the Soviet-Iranian Thorium Deal (2015) | NPC: Downstream Integration Programme — Phase One Declaration (2016) | Soviet Union | Academician Serov | Iran