Russia's Kola NPP Completes 2026 Maintenance Program

Unit 2 of Russia's Kola Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to the grid at 15:58 Moscow time on August 31, 2026, following the completion of scheduled preventive maintenance and partial modernization. This marked the conclusion of the plant's 2026 maintenance program. It was also the first time since the plant's commissioning that the annual maintenance plan was completed during the summer season.

The maintenance of Unit 2 lasted 29.5 days. During this period, plant personnel and contractors performed medium repairs and related maintenance on key equipment, covering multiple areas including the reactor building, turbine hall, and electrical systems.

In the reactor building, the scope of work included major repairs of some steam generators, main circulation pumps, and primary circuit piping, as well as nuclear fuel reloading, reactor assembly disassembly, and in-vessel component maintenance. In the turbine hall, workers completed repairs of the turbine-generator unit, circulation pumps, low-pressure heaters, and moisture separator reheaters. The electrical scope included repairs of transformers and diesel generators.

The maintenance also included simultaneous equipment modernization, such as the installation of insulation monitoring devices in the unit and plant-wide DC distribution panels, as well as the upgrade of the automatic chemical monitoring system for the primary coolant.

Vladimir Matveev, Chief Engineer of Kola NPP, stated that the maintenance work was completed on schedule thanks to the professional coordination of plant and contractor personnel. Currently, all systems of Unit 2 are operating normally, with safety indicators meeting design parameters.

Kola NPP is located near Polyarnye Zori in Murmansk Oblast, Russia, on the shore of Lake Imandra, approximately 200 km south of the city of Murmansk. It is the primary source of electricity for Murmansk Oblast. The plant comprises four VVER-440 units with a unit capacity of 440 MW, accounting for about 60% of the region's electricity balance.

Currently, all four units of Kola NPP are in operation. The background radiation level in the plant area is 0.07 μSv/h, which is within the natural background range for the region.