Research and development
Expertise and cooperation
Since the 1990s, TVO has been investing more than EUR 10 million in research and development every year. In 2006, TVO R&D expenditure exceeded EUR 20 million. Permanent focus areas in R&D include nuclear waste management, reactor safety, new nuclear power plants and technical progress in the power plant units.
The largest portion of R&D expenditure goes into nuclear waste research. The research concerning the spent fuel final repository has been entrusted to Posiva Oy. TVO is responsible for research related to the management of operating waste and to the decommissioning of the power plant units.
A lot of research on new nuclear power plants was conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s as TVO prepared to begin constructing a new nuclear power plant unit. This research has been reduced now construction of Olkiluoto 3 has started. In the OL3 project, TVO´s R&D costs amount to the reports commissioned by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) as support material for the decision-making on the OL3 project, which are billed to TVO. TVO is contributing a small amount of funding to the planning of the Finnish research programme on fourth-generation nuclear power plants and has also participated in an advisory capacity in the EU-funded development project on the supercritical light water reactor (HPLWR).
TVO participates in numerous international fuel research projects, most importantly the French CABRI project, which studies the behaviour of high-burnup fuel in accident situations.