This project has been proposed by VNIIEF-Volgogaz, a Sarov firm with 178 employees. It involves establishing an assembly and test facility for vibration monitoring system products that will be sold to Russian Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). Vibration monitoring is used as a means of detecting wear and failures in the moving parts of large rotating machines, such as steam turbo-generators in NPPs and thermal power plants. The project is very similar to the Measuring Technologies (MT) project 'Expansion of production of automatic control, monitoring and diagnostics system IT14' already being supported by CNCP in Sarov. The Sarov authorities have considered both proposals and would like CNCP to support both.

At the ten Russian NPPs, there are 29 operating power reactors, each with at least one turbo-generator and many ancillary systems such as pumps and ventilation devices. This creates a need for 244 vibration monitoring systems. So far only three of these turbo-generators have been equipped with vibration monitoring systems - one from the German company Bruel & Kjar and two from MT. The market for NPP control and monitoring systems is set to expand with Russian government plans to build 12-15 new NPPs by 2012. Each NPP could provide orders worth £ 1-2M. In addition there are many operating Russian NPP turbo-generators that do not yet have such monitoring systems, for which tightening safety rules are encouraging retrofitting. This market appears to be more than big enough to accommodate two Sarov companies.