Moscow building two VVER-1200 nuclear power plants at site near St Petersburg
The core catcher for the Leningrad 2-4 nuclear power plant in Russia has been delivered to a pier at Sosnovy Bor, about 100 km west of St Petersburg, after a 2,000 km journey by boat.
Rosenergoatom, Russia’s state-owned power station operations company, said the journey from the production facility in Syzran, southwest Russia, took 16 days, with the vessel carrying the core catcher along the River Volga, onto Lake Beloye, Lake Onega, and Lake Ladoga, the River Neva and eventually to the Gulf of Finland.
The core catcher has now arrived at the pier and is being prepared for the short journey to the Leningrad 2 nuclear power station construction site, less than 5 km south of Sosnovy Bor, before its installation in the reactor shaft.
The core catcher – also known as a core melt localisation device or core trap – is designed to catch the molten core material, or corium, of a nuclear reactor in the event of a nuclear meltdown and to prevent it from escaping the containment.
Leningrad 2-4 will be a VVER-1200 pressurised water reactor with a net capacity of 1,150 MW. Construction began in March 2025. Construction of an identical unit, Leningrad 2-3, began in March. 2024.
The Leningrad site has four units in operation and two that are permanently shut down. The operational units are Leningrad-3 and Leningrad-4, and the newer Leningrad 2-1 and Leningrad 2-2, both 1,101 VVER units.
Leningrad-1 and Leningrad-2 are Soviet-era RBMK-1000 light-water graphite units that were permanently shut down in 2018 and 2020 respectively. Leningrad-3 and Leningrad-4, also of the RBMK-1000 design, are scheduled for retirement.
The Leningrad nuclear power station is one of the largest in Russia, with an installed capacity of about 4,400 MW. It provides more than 55% of the electricity demand of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region, or 30% of all the electricity in northwest Russia.
