VVER Reactor

The VVER, or water-water energetic reactor, is a series of pressurized water reactor designs developed in the Soviet Union and Russia by the design bureau OKB Gidropress, its name referring to its use of water as both coolant and neutron moderator. The idea was proposed at the Kurchatov Institute by Savely Feinberg, and the first prototype, the VVER-210, was built at the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant before the 1970s as one of two initial Soviet reactor designs, the other being the RBMK. Several subsequent generations of VVER design followed, so the name spans substantially different reactors from the original Generation I through modern Generation III+ designs, with electrical output ranging from 70 to 1,300 megawatts and designs of up to 1,700 megawatts in development. VVER power stations have been installed in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, India and Iran, with Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam planning to introduce them, while Germany shut down its older-generation VVER reactors in 1989 and 1990 and cancelled those still under construction.