12 Oct (NucNet): Problems related to the Soviet-era nuclear legacy in Russia are being resolved under a federal programme that has already seen more than 28,000 used fuel assemblies placed in long-term storage or reprocessed, and solutions are being found for the rehabilitation of more than 2.7 million square metres of contaminated land, Oleg Kryukov, director of state nuclear corporation Rosatom’s radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel and decommissioning policy department, said.
In an interview with news agency RIA Novosti published in Russian on Rosatom’s website, Mr Kryukov said the progress is the result of a federal programme for nuclear and radiation safety that ran from 2008 until 2015.
As part of the programme, 28,500 spent fuel assemblies from different reactor types, both commercial and research, have been placed in long-term storage or reprocessed, Mr Kryukov said. Around 800 spent fuel assemblies from nuclear submarines have been removed and the Far East of Russia is now “completely free” from nuclear submarine spent fuel, he said.
Mr Kryukov said the implementation of the programme involved more than 400 organisations, including experts and scientists from Rosatom and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He said the activities covered the entire country.
About 50 unique technologies related to spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste were developed, he said.
Mr Kryukov said with regard to the decommissioning of nuclear and radioactive facilities, Russia has for the first time decommissioned an industrial-size light-water cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor (LWGR), the El-2 reactor, which was put into service as Russia’s first industrial nuclear power station in Siberia’s Tomsk-7 restricted zone in 1958 .
Mr Kryukov said Rosatom is ready to begin the next federal programme for nuclear and radiation safety, which will mark the beginning of “a systematic solution” for accumulated problems.
He gave no details of the systematic solution, but said Russia still needs to dispose of 83,000 spent fuel assemblies, reprocess 3,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, and rehabilitate of 4.3 million square metres of land. The plan includes the decommissioning of 82 nuclear and radioactive facilities, including the conservation of seven industrial-scale uranium-graphite reactors.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia faced the enormous task of controlling, accounting for, and securing the Soviet nuclear legacy. According to the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Russia inherited a massive nuclear weapons production complex and large stocks of weapons-grade fissile material after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia faced the challenge of ensuring the safety and security of weapons and weapons-related materials located at dozens of sites throughout the country, the NTI said.
Mr Kryukov said a complex infrastructure for a unified state system for radioactive waste management should be created because without it the goal of ensuring the efficient and safe management of radioactive waste cannot be achieved.
He said Russia’s stockpile of radioactive waste has been registered and the results have been submitted to the government, which will approve the audit and begin work on plans for disposal.
Mr Kryukov said centralised disposal points for newly generated nuclear waste are being built.
Asked how many such disposal facilities are planned, he said a deep geologic repository will be needed for high-level radioactive waste, and several facilities are planned for low-level and intermediate-level waste. He said the first of these facilities has been built at the site of the Ural Electrochemical Combine in Novouralsk, a closed town near Yekaterinburg in central Russia.
According to the NTI, decision on final high-level radioactive waste repository is expected by 2025.
Russia has 34 civilian nuclear reactors in commercial operation and nine under construction. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a federal programme envisages a 25-30 percent nuclear share in electricity supply by 2030, up from around 18 percent today. The share will be 45-50 percent in 2050 and 70-80 percent by the end of century.
