02 September 2024
In November 2022, Finnish utility Fortum signed an agreement with Westinghouse for the design, approval and delivery of a new type of fuel to the Loviisa plant. The agreement built on the successful collaboration supplying fuel to Loviisa from 2001 to 2007, during which Westinghouse delivered nearly 750 VVER-440 fuel assemblies.
During the annual maintenance in 2023, one experimental element manufactured by Westinghouse, which did not contain actual uranium pellets, was loaded into Loviisa unit 2. During this year’s annual maintenance, it was found that the test element worked as expected and fuel assemblies of the new design were subsequently loaded into the unit’s core.