page_title: Generation III reactor
section_title: Generation III+ reactors
hierarchical_section_title: Generation III reactor / Generation III+ reactors
caption_attribution_description: Português: Usina Nuclear Geração III em Novovoronezh
context_page_description: A Generation III reactor is a development of Generation II nuclear reactor designs incorporating evolutionary improvements in design developed during the lifetime of the Generation II reactor designs. These include improved fuel technology, superior thermal efficiency, significantly enhanced safety systems, and standardized designs for reduced maintenance and capital costs. The first Generation III reactor to begin operation was Kashiwazaki 6 in 1996.
  Due to the prolonged period of stagnation in the construction of new reactors and the continued popularity of Generation II/II+ designs in new construction, relatively few third generation reactors have been built. Generation IV designs are still in development as of 2020.
context_section_description: Gen III+ reactor designs are an evolutionary development of Gen III reactors, offering improvements in safety over Gen III reactor designs.Manufacturers began development of Gen III+ systems in the 1990s by building on the operating experience of the American, Japanese, and Western European LWR.
  The nuclear industry began to promote a nuclear renaissance suggesting that Gen III+ designs should solve three key problems: safety, cost and buildability.
  Construction costs of US$1,000/kW were forecast, a level that would make nuclear competitive with gas, and construction times of four years or less were expected. However, these estimates proved over-optimistic.
  A notable improvement of Gen III+ systems over second-generation designs is the incorporation in some designs of passive safety features that do not require active controls or operator intervention but instead rely on gravity or natural convection to mitigate the
  impact of abnormal events.
  Generation III+ reactors incorporate extra safety features to avoid the kind of disaster suffered at Fukushima in 2011. Generation III+ designs, passive safety, also known as passive cooling, requires no sustained operator action or electronic feedback to shut down the plant safely in the event of an emergency. Many of the Generation III+ nuclear reactor have a core catcher. If the fuel cladding and reactor vessel systems and associated piping become molten, corium will fall into a core catcher which holds the molten material and has the ability to cool it. This, in turn protects the final barrier, the containment building. As an example, Rosatom installed a 200-tonne core catcher in VVER reactor as the first large piece of equipment in the reactor building of Rooppur 1, describing it as "a unique protection system". In 2017, Rosatom has started commercial operations of the NVNPP-2 Unit 1 VVER-1200 reactor in central Russia, marking the world's first full start-up of a generation III+ reactor.
caption: Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant II with the first Generation III+ nuclear reactor in the world
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