Handling of spent fuel assemblies

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In accordance with the "closed cycle" which was the policy of the former Soviet Union, the expectation is that all spent nuclear fuel should be reprocessed and used again. Behind this policy lay the expectation of a uranium shortage in the future. In reprocessing procedures, the spent nuclear fuel assembly is dissolved in an acid solution, and uranium and plutonium is separated from the other elements. This uranium can then be used in the production of new fuel assemblies. To that end, a resolution was passed in the middle of the 1960s to build a production facility at the Mayak Chemical Combine for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. This was the beginning of the RT-1 reprocessing facility.[527]

Footnotes

[527] Bøhmer, N., and Nilsen, T., Reprocessing Plants in Siberia, Bellona Working Paper No. 4-1995. Return

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