Waste Management

‘Crucial Milestone’ Reached As First SNF Shipment Leaves Russia’s Andreeva Bay

By David Dalton
27 June 2017

27 Jun (NucNet): The first shipment of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) has left the Andreeva Bay storage facility in northwest Russia, marking a crucial milestone in overcoming the legacy of the former Soviet Northern Fleet and its nuclear-powered submarines, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said on 27 June 2017. Under an international initiative financed by the Nuclear Window of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP) over 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, which are currently stored at Andreeva Bay, which is close to Russia’s border with Norway, will be retrieved, packaged and removed from the site. The process is being carried out by SevRAO, part of Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, Rosatom. The Nuclear Window is part of the NDEP’s Support Fund which was set up in July 2002 by the EBRD to pool contributions from donors for the improvement of the environment in northwest Russia. The spent nuclear fuel comes from over 100 reactors from more than 50 nuclear submarines and has been stored at Andreeva Bay for the past 35 years. The radioactive material is currently held in dry storage units, some of which are damaged and leaking. The base was closed in 1992 and poses a serious environmental risk. From Andreeva Bay the casks will be shipped to Murmansk. Here the cargo will be moved to purpose-built railway wagons and transported to its final destination, the nuclear reprocessing plant Mayak in Chelyabinsk near the Ural Mountains. The EBRD said Mayak has the necessary infrastructure and skilled resources for the final handling of the spent nuclear fuel. Andreeva Bay is a former technical support base for the Northern Fleet and one of Europe’s largest radioactive waste storage facilities, housing more than 20,000 SNF assemblies, more than 10,000 tonnes of solid radioactive waste and approximately 600 cubic metres of liquid radioactive waste. In the early 1980s, a pond storage facility began to leak. As the lost water could not be replenished effectively, radiation dose rates and contamination levels in the building rose to high levels. Eventually, all the SNF was removed from the pond to three newly created dry storage units at the site. Over the years, the condition of the dry storage units deteriorated and two filled with groundwater. The dose rates above one tank became so high that concrete slabs were laid over the top to provide more shielding from the radiation. Meanwhile, bitumen that had been poured over the slabs to prevent rain ingress proved to be ineffective.

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