Balakovo nuclear power plant

Balakovo nuclear power plant is a nuclear power station in Russia with 4 operating units totalling 4,000 MW gross. The site has 6 units on record in total.

Operating1circle area ∝ site capacity Coastlines, borders and lakes: Natural Earth (1:10 million, public domain), which is generalised, so a coastal plant can sit a couple of kilometres off its true shoreline. Site positions: Global Nuclear Power Tracker.

Units on record

Operating

Operating capacity

4,000MW

Country

Russia

Units

Unit	Status	Type	Model	Gross MW	Online
Unit 1	Operating	PWR	VVER V-320	1,000	1986
Unit 2	Operating	PWR	VVER V-320	1,000	1988
Unit 3	Operating	PWR	VVER V-320	1,000	1989
Unit 4	Operating	PWR	VVER V-320	1,000	1993
Unit 5	Cancelled (inferred)	PWR	VVER V-1000	950	-
Unit 6	Cancelled (inferred)	PWR	VVER V-1000	950	-

Unit by unit

Each unit's rating, type and milestone dates as recorded by the Global Nuclear Power Tracker, with any correction we made to it. A dash or "not disclosed" means the source does not give the value.

Balakovo nuclear power plant 1 Operating

Reactor type	Pressurised water reactor (PWR)
Model	VVER V-320
Size class	Large
Gross capacity	1,000MW
Net capacity	950MW
Thermal output	3,000MWt
Enrichment	3–5% U-235
NSSS vendor	Rosatom
Owner	Rosatom100%
Operator	Rosenergoatom

Construction start	1 Dec 1980
First criticality	12 Dec 1985
Grid connection	28 Dec 1985
Commercial operation	23 May 1986

Balakovo nuclear power plant 2 Operating

Reactor type	Pressurised water reactor (PWR)
Model	VVER V-320
Size class	Large
Gross capacity	1,000MW
Net capacity	950MW
Thermal output	3,000MWt
Enrichment	3–5% U-235
NSSS vendor	Rosatom
Owner	Rosatom100%
Operator	Rosenergoatom

Construction start	1 Aug 1981
First criticality	2 Oct 1987
Grid connection	8 Oct 1987
Commercial operation	18 Jan 1988

Balakovo nuclear power plant 3 Operating

Reactor type	Pressurised water reactor (PWR)
Model	VVER V-320
Size class	Large
Gross capacity	1,000MW
Net capacity	950MW
Thermal output	3,000MWt
Enrichment	3–5% U-235
NSSS vendor	Rosatom
Owner	Rosatom100%
Operator	Rosenergoatom

Construction start	1 Nov 1982
First criticality	16 Dec 1988
Grid connection	25 Dec 1988
Commercial operation	8 Apr 1989

Balakovo nuclear power plant 4 Operating

Reactor type	Pressurised water reactor (PWR)
Model	VVER V-320
Size class	Large
Gross capacity	1,000MW
Net capacity	950MW
Thermal output	3,200MWt
Enrichment	3–5% U-235
NSSS vendor	Rosatom
Owner	Rosatom100%
Operator	Rosenergoatom

Construction start	1 Apr 1984
First criticality	24 Mar 1993
Grid connection	11 Apr 1993
Commercial operation	22 Dec 1993

Balakovo nuclear power plant 5 Cancelled (inferred)

Reactor type	Pressurised water reactor (PWR)
Model	VVER V-1000
Size class	Large
Gross capacity	950MW
Net capacity	not disclosed
Thermal output	not disclosed
Enrichment	3–5% U-235
NSSS vendor	Rosatom
Cancelled	1999
Owner	Rosatom100%
Operator	Rosenergoatom

Construction start	1 Jan 1987

Balakovo nuclear power plant 6 Cancelled (inferred)

Reactor type	Pressurised water reactor (PWR)
Model	VVER V-1000
Size class	Large
Gross capacity	950MW
Net capacity	not disclosed
Thermal output	not disclosed
Enrichment	3–5% U-235
NSSS vendor	Rosatom
Cancelled	1999
Owner	Rosatom100%
Operator	Rosenergoatom

Construction start	1 Jan 1988

Balakovo nuclear power plant in context

By gross operating capacity Balakovo nuclear power plant is the 3rd largest of 10 operating nuclear sites in Russia, holding 13% of the country's operating capacity, and ranks 22nd of 172 worldwide.

Its operating units started up between 1986 and 1993; the median unit is 37.5 years old, the same as the median in Russia.

The 4 units with both construction and grid dates on record took 5.1 to 9.0 years (median 6.2) from construction start to grid connection; the median across all reactors connected in the 1980s is 7.3 years.

No other nuclear site with an exact position in this dataset lies within 300 km.

Build time by unit

Unit	Construction start	Grid connection	Years	Fleet median, same decade
Unit 1	1980	1985	5.1	7.3 (1980s)
Unit 2	1981	1987	6.2	7.3 (1980s)
Unit 3	1982	1988	6.1	7.3 (1980s)
Unit 4	1984	1993	9.0	8.0 (1990s)

How these are worked out: ranks use gross operating capacity; ages count from the start-up year on record, as on the age page; build times run from construction start to grid connection, as on the build-times page; ratings are the tracker's net and design net capacity, as on the uprates page. Distances are straight-line between exact positions, so a site with only an approximate position gets none. A unit missing a date or a rating is left out of the figure that needs it.

Earthquakes nearby

Loading the latest USGS check…

Magnitude 4.0 and above within 200 km of Balakovo nuclear power plant's listed coordinates, past 30 days. This is distance, not shaking: it says nothing about damage or any change in operation. Every plant.

Site detail

Location	Saratov, Russia
Coordinates	52.0928, 47.9539
Elevation	about 50 mabove sea level
Setting	On the shore of a large lake, 0.9 km from the water
Region	Eastern Europe
Units by status	Operating: 4 Cancelled: 2

Elevation is read at the listed coordinates from a 30 m terrain model (SRTM 30 m). Two independent models differ by a median of 6 m across our plants and by up to about 40 m on steep or coastal ground, and a point on a shoreline can read as sea level. Distance to the water is measured to a generalised 1:10 million coastline, so a few kilometres or less is not resolved. This is context, not a design-basis or flood-risk figure.

Owners & operators

Owners	Rosatom
Operators	Rosenergoatom

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Sources

Global Nuclear Power Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, August 2026 release , CC BY 4.0 · retrieved 2026-09-06
GEM.wiki entry (further reading) , CC BY-SA 4.0, linked, not quoted

How these sources are used, including the corrections applied on top of them and what is deliberately left blank · download the underlying data