Russian nuclear fuel cycle
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Belona Archive |
The Russian nuclear fuel cycle incorporates all of those element in the industry aimed at producing nuclear fuel. There are two types of fuel cycles used in the world today―open and closed. The open cycle, which, for instance, has been used in the United States since the administration of President Jimmy Carter in the mid-1970s. buries spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in special storage depots without trying to recycle it for usable fuel materials. This is considered safer from an environmental and non-proliferation stand-point. The closed fuel cycle, which Russian uses, recycles SNF for fuel usable material such as uranium and plutonium. It also yields other highly active liquid and solid by-products. Russia reprocesses fuel from VVER-440 type reactors and maritime reactors, but is incapable of dealing with fuel from its other reactor types. Fuel that can be recycled is reprocessed at the Mayak Chemical Combine in the southern Urals, widely considered the most radioactively contaminated spot in Russia.
Russian nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko, who presides over one of the biggest players on the world atomic market, forecast that spot uranium prices would increase slowly in 2009, Reuters reported.
ST. PETERSBURG - Russia’s Federal Service for Environment, Technology and Nuclear Oversight (Rostekhnadzor) chief Nikolai Kutin confirmed a series of planned inspections to check observance of regulations governing spent nuclear fuel shipping at the Kola Peninsula Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), and the physical safety of nuclear material at the Smolenk NPP and the Mayak Chemical, the service’s press service said.
The Sevmash construction plant has signed a contract for production of 20 containers for storage of spent nuclear fuel, the Barents Observer reported,