Project and operations updatePower and heat generation
First MBIR steam generator delivered to Dimitrovgrad construction site
Rosatom said the first of two steam generators for the MBIR research reactor arrived at the site of the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors on 22 October.
- Event
- First published on EPC Feed
- Sources
- 2 listed below
- Reading time
- 2 min
The first of two steam generators for the MBIR research reactor arrived at the construction site of the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad on 22 October, Rosatom said. ZiO-Podolsk manufactured the component. It is assembled from three parallel modules, each weighing nine tonnes and measuring more than nine metres long. The equipment heats and evaporates feedwater and superheats the steam before it is sent to the turbine. The announcement reports delivery, not installation or commissioning.
Rosatom says the generator’s construction is similar to the steam generator used on the BOR-60 research reactor, which has operated at the same institute since 1969. In that design, sodium coolant flows through heat-exchange tubes while feedwater enters and superheated steam leaves through the space around the tubes. The institute said the operating experience with BOR-60 informed the choice of a similar arrangement for MBIR. The release does not claim that the plants have identical operating conditions.
The shipment is one part of a wider equipment programme. The company listed deliveries during 2026 including two heat exchangers, an intermediate-circuit vessel, equipment for washing spent fuel assemblies to remove sodium, four condensate pumps and three low-pressure heaters. It expected the steam turbine, another steam generator and further turbine-block vessels later in the year under the construction schedule. The notice does not verify whether those future deliveries subsequently occurred.
AtomEnergoProm’s 2024 annual report sets out why a dedicated fast-neutron research facility is being built. It says the MBIR project is part of experimental infrastructure for developing a two-component nuclear-power system and a closed fuel cycle. The report describes equipment deliveries to Dimitrovgrad that year and says the planned research capability is intended for work on innovative materials and reactor technologies. MBIR is therefore a research installation, rather than a commercial electricity-generating unit.
The same report records that the project was being linked to an international research centre and advisory structure. That gives the 22 October delivery a wider context: equipment for the facility’s turbine side contributes to an experimental platform expected to support research beyond routine electricity production. The source does not establish a date when the research centre will begin work, nor which specific experiments will use this steam system. Those remain separate commissioning and research-programme questions.
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