The sixth tier of the inner containment dome of the reactor building has been installed at Power Unit-1 of the under-construction Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP).

The metal structure of 44m diameter and 185t weight has been installed in its regular place on the cylindrical part of the reactor building containment at elevation +44.100, according to Rosatom, the Russian constructor.

The operation was carried out by specialists of the Trest RosSEM branch using a Liebherr heavy crawler crane of 1350t lifting capacity. A day before lifting, a special mounting beam of 15 steel cables had been installed, it added.

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"The first of the three tiers of the inner containment dome part has been assembled. The next stage of the work will be to mount the subsequent two tiers pre-assembled into one unit of the reactor dome containment, at the design level. As soon as both structures are welded together, we will start concreting the dome," JSC ASE Vice-President and also the Director for the RNPP Construction Project, Alexey Deriy, said.

Preparations for this operation took several months. The metal structures of three tiers of the reactor building dome were pre-assembled into 2,185t and 191t reinforced metal units on special slipways located in the immediate proximity of the power unit.

The Rooppur NPP site is located in Pabna. The facility is designed and constructed by the engineering division of Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation of Russia.

Read: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant unit 2 hydraulic tests completed

The nuclear power plant will consist of two VVER-1200 reactor power units; their life cycle is expected to be 60 years, with the possible extension of service life of another 20 years.

The Russian design with VVER-1200 reactors, successfully implemented at Novovoronezh NPP-2, was selected for the first NPP in Bangladesh.