Background

The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant (LNPP) in Russia consists of 4 RBMK-1000 boiling water graphite moderated reactors located in two separate buildings, each containing two reactors. Each reactor drives two 500 MW turbines. The two buildings are approximately one kilometre apart. The plant is situated some 80 km west of St Petersburg close to the town of Sosnovy Bor.

The plant was constructed over a period of several years with the first reactor coming into operation at the end of 1973 and the fourth in 1981. By 1983 LNPP had achieved a load factor of 84%, delivering an annual output of over 29 TWh into the grid, i.e. one half of the power consumption in the St. Petersburg region.

RBMK reactors were designed by the Research and Development Institute for Power Engineering (RDIPE) in Moscow. The Institute has general responsibility for any modifications to the design and provides specialist technical and engineering support over and above that available at the plant.

In 1989 LNPP embarked on a programme of refurbishment of all its reactors. The first refurbishment was completed that year and included, inter alia, substitution of all 1693 fuel channels, upgrade of the process control system and pump replacement. Similar work on the other reactors followed.

LNPP had no centralised document centre by which all essential categories of documents would be routed. All masters of the controlled documents were kept in the archive of the Design Department and Production & Technical Department. The existing documentation handling system had allowed the safe operation of the plant for the past 25 years, but the plant managers recognised the weaknesses of the system and the need to improve the document management systems, especially as state regulators were demanding higher QA requirements to be applied at the NPPs.

It was therefore decided to introduce a state of the art Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) and to improve document management procedures to the level of the best international practice. The European Commission agreed to finance the purchase of the EDMS equipment through the TACIS 1995 Nuclear Safety Programme.

Objective

The objective of the project was to establish an engineering Document Centre using an EDMS. This EDMS was intended to provide full functionality but, due to TACIS budget limitations, would be a limited system, used on a pre-defined sub set of documents and limited to a defined number of users from Production and Technology Department, Design Department, Reactor shop and operating management. The system should provide the required expandability to allow full future implementation under the LNPP's responsibility.

The scope of work/supplies included the design, manufacture, delivery, installation, testing, commissioning and maintenance of an EDMS comprising hardware, software and services, as follows:

Hardware:

• 1 Server
• 3 Workstations for text documents
• 2 Workstations for Computer Aided Design (CAD) documents
• 2 Printers for text documents
• 2 Scanners for text documents
• 2 Plotters for CAD documents
• 1 Scanner for CAD documents
• 1 Mass storage device
• Cables, connectors, network and auxiliary items
• Spare parts and accessories
• Documentation

Software:

• Database
• Operating System
• Network software
• Office software for text workstations
• CAD and raster software for the CAD workstations
• EDMS core software modules
• Specific EDMS applications
• System administration and monitoring software

Services:

• Installation of hardware / software and system set up.
• System Testing
• Training of LNPP staff in system operation

Results

The Call for Tender was launched in July 2001 and tenders were evaluated in September 2001. Following a protracted contracting/negotiation stage, the contract was signed with Fortum Engineering on 24 May 2002. The equipment was delivered and installed and the Provisional Acceptance Certificate was issued on 21 September 2003. The Final Acceptance Certificate was issued on 26 July 2005.