The second tier of the internal containment shell of the reactor building of power unit No. 3 has been installed at the construction site of the Leningrad NPP — one of the key operations of the year, Rosatom reports on March 11, 2026.
The installation was carried out in the presence of the Director General of the Rosatom State Corporation, Alexey Likhachev, and the Governor of the Leningrad Region, Alexander Drozdenko. The structure weighs 260 tons. Currently, the reactor building reaches 22 meters out of the planned 70. The double containment shell will be fully completed in 2028. About 1,500 specialists from the general contractor, TITAN-2 holding, are working on the site.
Likhachev pointed out the importance of the facility for the entire North-Western region. According to him, the operating Leningrad and Kola NPPs with a total capacity of more than 6000 MW provide over 35% of generation in the region, but both have been operating for more than 50 years. The new units should replace the RBMK-1000 units being decommissioned and last at least 60 years. Drozdenko stated that the timing and volume of construction and installation works are under the control of the customer, contractor and state inspection services, and expressed confidence in compliance with the schedule.
Power unit No. 3 is being built according to the VVER-1200 project — a generation 3+ reactor. Its distinctive feature is a double containment shell: the inner one ensures the tightness of the building under all operating modes, the outer one protects against extreme external influences. Together, they form one of the station's localizing safety systems — an architectural solution that was not present in the Soviet RBMK.
The Leningrad NPP is one of the three sites where Rosatom is simultaneously building new type units. Similar construction is underway at the Kursk and Smolensk NPPs — two power units at each. Four VVER-S units with a capacity of 600 MW each are planned at the Kola site. In general, the state corporation faces the task of building 38 power units with a total capacity of 29.3 GW in the next 16 years.
The installation of the second tier of the containment shell is a point of no return in the construction schedule: it is the pace of construction of the containment shells that determines when the builders will be able to proceed with the installation of the internal reactor systems.
