Rosatom commissions electroslag remelting facility at AEM Spetsstal plant in St. Petersburg
ST. PETERSBURG. July 18 (Interfax) - Rosatom's engineering division, the AEM Spetsstal plant, has commissioned an electroslag remelting production facility, an Interfax correspondent present at the launch ceremony reported.
"This furnace was built in the space of a year and will effectively begin scheduled special steel production work today," Rosatom's deputy CEO for engineering and industrial solutions Andrei Nikipelov told journalists after the ceremony.
The technology involves remelting metal in a bath of electrically conductive slag which has been warmed up by an electric current. This method produces metals and alloys with a low percentage of impurities and gases, an enhanced structure and greater mechanical properties. It is widely used in the engineering and energy sectors.
Now the new capacities have been commissioned, the volume of special steel ingots produced through electroslag remelting can be raised 3.5-fold to 25,000 tonnes per year.
The facility is 15 meters in width and 20 meters in height. The special steels will be moulded into ingots of almost 2 meters in diameter and up to 80 tonnes in weight. These will then be used to produce various types of large machinery.
Rosatom said in a press release that increasing special steel production would make a "significant contribution towards the completion of the company's 'roadmap' for building new power units at nuclear power plants in Russia and overseas".
The company has plans to build 38 new reactor units of large, medium and small capacity in Russia by 2042. It also has contracts with foreign companies to build 39 NPP units, including six low-capacity units, in 10 countries.
AEM Spetsstal is the only plant in Russia which makes large wrought semi-finished products from special steels for use in the nuclear engineering sector. It produces over 300 steel grades, which are used in oil and gas, thermal and hydroelectric energy, shipbuilding, metallurgy as well as nuclear energy.
