The following is a blog piece written by Bellona’s regular contributor, co-chairman of the Moscow environmental organisation Ecodefense, Vladimir Slivyak. This is a first part of Slivyak’s overview of a recent report by the Russian federal industry supervision agency Rostekhnadzor on safety violations in the Russian nuclear energy industry in 2007. A second part is expected in the near future. Certain editing has been performed by the translator to provide adequate background for Bellona’s English-speaking readers.

Last fall, the Russian Federal Service for Ecological, Technological, and Atomic Supervision, or Rostekhnadzor, published a yearly summary of its activities, which included a certain amount of information on the state of nuclear safety in the country. It should be noted that this and previous reports by the agency still remain the only state-sanctioned documents to shed any light on the troubling issues of the atomic industry. True, it is censored left and right, which is why the significance of many events or incidents described in it is likely to be downplayed. It is still, however, to be understood that if Rostekhnadzor’s yearly report does mention problems, then what we are dealing with is quite a serious matter indeed. 

Judging by the utter absence of any interest that mass media might have shown to the 2008 report, I deem the following analysis to be of certain use to all those who are interested to know about the real state of affairs in the sphere of nuclear safety in Russia. Here, I do not mean the employees of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom: If anyone has the full picture at their disposal, it is them (it’s just that the public is unlikely to ever see it). It has to be noted that the report is a summary of the situation that existed in the atomic energy industry in 2007. Namely, the period when Russia was under no impact of any economic crisis and no one even anticipated that it would ever come.

Taking into account that this economic slump has now been deepening, an analysis of shortcomings found in the atomic industry acquires a fundamental meaning since it is during crisis times that an additional risk appears that the problems that have been piling up will show themselves in most egregious ways. In the atomic field, what we are talking about is first and foremost the danger of new safety violations and accidents. It is by now not only environmentalists that are warning of potential accidents: Far from it, the wake-up call is coming from a state-run supervisory authority, which only goes to show how grave the situation at hand is.  

Let me begin with what Rostekhnadzor writes in its report in terms of its general conclusions on the current state of affairs. “Alarming” does not even come close to describing many of Rostekhnadzor’s assessments. And considering that the report is for obvious reasons no more than a sum of the most disturbing problems and deficiencies of the atomic industry, it seems to make sense to wonder what is really going on there if the state – the same state that has by now built an impenetrable wall of total censorship on any kind of public information – has allowed the publication of materials such as Rostekhnadzor’s. 

Among those “shortcomings and issues of concern” that Rostekhnadzor lays its judgement on, the agency points out the “apparent lapse in working discipline and qualification levels of the personnel [of the enterprises of the nuclear fuel cycle]. The human factor is to blame as the source of a considerable part of the violations that have been exposed and incidents that have been registered.” One would do well to keep in mind here that the people in question are not, say, a couple of meat department girls wrapping up salami slices in a supermarket, but atomic industry employees, those who are essentially responsible for the safety of their fellow citizens. If an industry that, up till now, has known no grief to bother itself with and has for a very long time seen no trouble paying salaries to its workers, is now revealing a “lapse in the personnel’s qualification levels,” the reasonable question to ask is: Why? Rostekhnadzor is not offering any answers, though it does, later on, bring to light something quite telling in its other assessments, such as the one following here.

“Sites of the [nuclear fuel cycle] show an active ongoing process of wear and tear of the main equipment; bringing it up to date is held back on account of poor financing,” writes the agency.  Which is to say that in all probability – apart from the decline in employees’ competence, which is already manifesting in violations and incidents resulting from the human factor – what we should also expect in the near future is such “incidents” that are rooted in the aging of the operational equipment. And all the while, one of the richest state corporations, Rosatom, is finding itself unable to provide adequate funding to these sites, but is laying out plans for new nuclear power plants (NPPs). Shouldn’t Sergei Kiriyenko, Rosatom’s chief, give at least a thought to the idea that it might be sensible to fix the old ones before building new ones? A simple logic would dictate that under circumstances such as these, one ought to ensure first that the existing sites are well in order, employ well-qualified personnel, and have upgraded outdated equipment, before moving on to the construction of new NPPs. Yet, it is not the first time that Rosatom would be revealing it is operating on an exclusive logic of its own, something the rest of the world simply cannot comprehend. With the result that normal people start having one question after another, then followed by growing doubts as to the real levels of safety in the Russian atomic industry. As it turns out, such people are even found in Rostekhnadzor.

Moving on: “In order to provide radiation safety for the personnel of the [nuclear fuel cycle enterprises] and the population, targeted budget financing is required to solve problems related to the reprocessing and interment of tremendous amounts of radioactive waste accumulated during the years of these enterprises’ operation. First of all, this concerns creating facilities for vitrification of radioactive waste, creating complexes for cementation of liquid radioactive waste, as well as creating facilities for the reprocessing of waste of mid- and low-level radioactivity. Many [nuclear fuel cycle enterprises] lack facilities for conditioning solid radioactive waste. Packaging of solid [radioactive waste] intended for retrieval and storage frequently fails to meet safety criteria established in normative regulations. No adequately supported timeframes are established for storage of solid [radioactive waste]. It is necessary to create facilities for reprocessing solid radioactive waste. Solutions to problems related to the management of [radioactive waste], predominantly that which has been accumulated in the course of prior operation, must be implemented as part of federal target programmes. The pressing issue also remains of providing safety during long-term storage of depleted uranium hexafluoride at open storage facilities of [nuclear fuel cycle enterprises]. This problem continues to be of outmost urgency at the industry’s enterprises since storing uranium hexafluoride in open storage spaces is a distinct environmental and radiation risk due to the significant amounts of the material stored and its high chemical activity.”

As it turns out, environmentalists are not alone in their concern over such a problem as the accumulation of huge stockpiles of radioactive waste in our country. And this concern has been around for many a year – in fact, many a decade. Over 60 years have passed since the atomic industry was born. And all of this time the nuclear establishment has been giving us promises to solve the problem of radioactive waste. Yet, they’re pretty far from “walking the talk.” No one – including Rosatom – knows if this problem even has a solution, one that would mean the isolation of the dangerous by-products for many thousands of years in the future and in ways that would be safe for both the natural environment and the population. And here we are, yet again back to the issue of whether further generation of radioactive waste can be justified to begin with if it cannot be safely stored or interred. Using, again, simple logic, we should stop piling up waste that we for now find impossible to safely dispose of: It is, after all, a gigantic burden to be placed on the shoulders of future generations. For whose sake, for which purposes are we so adamantly creating a load that comes with an enormous price tag we will have to pay for thousands of years ahead? For the sake of that 16 percent of national energy consumption that nuclear power constitutes?

The persisting problem of safe storage of so-called “uranium tails” – that depleted uranium hexafluoride – has been talked and talked over times and again. The substance is not simply radioactive, it is extremely toxic. Storage facilities with this stuff are operating not so far from quite sizable Russian cities such as Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Tomsk, and Krasnoyarsk. And there is no hope that this problem will be solved in the near future. Mostly, because even top executives of the nuclear industry prefer to turn a blind eye to the dilemma. Last month, I had the occasion to visit Yekaterinburg to participate in a round-table discussion centred on the issue of the import of uranium tails into Russia and their subsequent storage. At the event, the deputy director of the Novouralsk-based Ural Electrical Chemical Combine, one of Russia’s largest nuclear enterprises, was desperately – chest-beating and all – trying to convince the other participants that uranium hexafluoride is not dangerous in any sense of the word and that its storage is completely safe and there are no grounds at all for worry. An interesting point to make here is that this combine operates what must be the largest open-air uranium tails storage facility in the country. A curious situation is shaping up: A state-run supervision agency that hasn’t shied away from maintaining quite a friendly relationship with the nuclear industry has grievances to express on the issue – while the top official of a nuclear enterprise that is charged with handling the issue in question is absolutely clueless that there are safety problems at his site. There are special terms traditionally reserved for this – namely, “professional inaptitude” and “incompetence.” These usually warrant a pink slip. Apparently, the acceptable practice in the nuclear industry of our country is to ignore such “trivialities.”

By the way, from the point of view of Rostekhnadzor, storage of containers with depleted uranium hexafluoride in open-air storage facilities at such Russian enterprises as the Siberian Chemical Combine in Tomsk, the Angarsk Electrolysis Chemical Combine, the Zelenogorsk-based Electrochemical Plant near Krasnoyarsk, and the Ural Electrical Chemical Combine is performed “in the conditions of insufficient normative basis and a significant degree of risk of containers losing impermeability.” What else can be said here? It’s all quite clear-cut. No more comments are needed; the only thing one needs, really, is information about which predominant direction winds take when blowing over these containers – that is, which populated area will bear the brunt of whatever fallout ensues. In point of fact, small towns and villages are a dime a dozen in Novouralsk’s environs. What remains utterly incomprehensible, though, is why journalists in Sverdlovsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Krasnoyarsk – the cities closest to the above-named sites – have shown no reaction to Rostekhnadzor’s report except total silence. Is this silence caused by fear or by simple disbelief that the country’s authorities can still provide the Russian public, including mass media, with any credible information about the real state of affairs? It does look like the former, since environmentalists have taken the trouble to spread the report’s findings around. Anyway, congratulations are in order for the atomic industry: It has finally brought the country’s citizens to complete subjugation. The nation’s acquiescence now looks as follows: We are told “Be prepared for radioactive and toxic contamination” and we say “Yessiree, indeed, we will be.”

The assertions by Rostekhnadzor that the atomic industry is regularly in violation of the law and that no one is there to fight these transgressions do not even come as a surprise anymore. Here we go again, another example: “A number of [nuclear fuel cycle enterprises] under the agency’s purview that operate sites of application of atomic energy do not have state environmental impact assessments [licensing] them to perform the types of activities they are carrying out.” Hello, prosecutors? Anyone? If any of you ever have the itch to enforce compliance with environmental law in Russia – here’s where you turn to, Rostekhnadzor. True, just a few years ago one such diligent crusader, from the Murmansk Prosecutor’s office, did try to engage in a dialogue with the regulatory agency over the legality of the latter’s earlier authorisation to extend the operational lifespans of the old reactors in service at the Kola NPP – and he was told to keep his nose out of matters that are beyond his understanding. Mysterious are the ways in which our “power vertical” works.

Apart from everything else, Rostekhnadzor has found out that “[nuclear fuel cycle enterprises] under the agency’s purview that operate sites of application of atomic energy do not have documentation that would confirm the availability of sources of financing for works associated with the decommissioning of sites of application of atomic energy, including the specially designated fund to finance expenditures incurred by the decommissioning of said sites, as well as sources of financing for research and development related to the feasibility of such sites and enhancing their safety.” So, basically, it’s as follows: No one is going to take any sites out of operation because there was no money to do that even before the financial crisis hit. And as for the aged reactors, be they as old as to have outlived their design-based usefulness three times over, they will still be producing electricity.

Another potential case for prosecutors to drool over: The illegal “discharges of liquid radioactive substances into open industrial reservoirs” – pools on the territories of the Siberian Chemical Combine, the Mining Chemical Combine in Zheleznogorsk, and the reprocessing plant Mayak in Ozersk in the Urals – still take place. On second thought… my bad, it’s not illegal. It’s illegal for everybody else, that is! The nuclear guys shouldn’t be having any problem with that, now should they. 

The following finding in Rostekhnadzor’s report is truly none other than the climax point of the whole story: Officials overseeing the sites of atomic industry they are in charge of, the report says, show “a lack of attention […] toward improving safety culture among the personnel and toward enforcing safety assurance.” The notion of safety culture, as first formulated by the IAEA in 1986, during a study of the circumstances of the Chernobyl catastrophe, basically means the discipline that personnel of an NPP are required to comply with to ensure safe operation of the plant. Translating from the bureaucratese, as far as officials at Russian nuclear sites go, they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. 

Which is why, apparently, already in 2007, these same officials moved to “cut back on the personnel […] responsible for the control over, and enforcement of, safety at [sites of the nuclear fuel cycle].” That, mind you, at a time when the industry’s pockets were brimming with money and not even a hint at any financial crisis whatsoever was on the horizon. Sure, the top manager is always right, unlike his or her employees, and has the right, if need be, to tell his or her employees to go get lost – including somewhere permanently outside the site’s perimeters. Here’s a simple question. Any moment now, those laid off earlier are likely to be joined by the neat marching rows of those who’ve received their walking papers on account of the raging crisis. So are we about to see a repeat performance of the 1990s, when nuclear specialists were ready to work for anyone as long as they got paid and nuclear materials were roaming freely around the country, not completely without a leg-up from those unemployed specialists? Or is it now simply a cunning ploy to trick America into giving us money for a new employment programme for the dismissed nuclear industry workers lest they go sell their services on a black nuclear materials market or take up offers to look for a retreat in Iran, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia?
 
Another matter of no small consequence is what Rostekhnadzor has to say about certain – it does not specify which – storage facilities failing to meet safety requirements: “At the sites of the nuclear fuel cycle, [nuclear waste] continues to accumulate in temporary storage facilities, many of which, especially those built at the initial stages of development of the atomic industry, do not meet today’s safety requirements with regard to long-term storage facilities (repositories).” The report also says that wear and tear of the equipment used at these facilities may become “an initiating event for an emergency situation.”

Rostekhnadzor isn’t shy about bringing its own problems into the open, either. The agency freely admits in its report that it lacks a centralised personnel training system and that there are not enough inspectors on account of poor pay.

Now, from conclusions to the situation at hand: Operational reality at Russian NPPs, and violations registered at the sites.
 
Beloyarsk NPP
Last year alone, the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant – a 1964-built site located in the town of Beloyarsk in Sverdlovsk Region, 50 kilometres east of the large Ural city of Yekaterinburg, and operating a 600-megawatt fast-breeder BN-600 reactor – discharged into the surrounding atmosphere 10 megabecquerels of the radioactive isotope caesium-137, as well as certain amounts of other radioactive isotopes such as iodine-131, cobalt-60, and caesium-134. In a number of cases throughout the report, Rostekhnadzor, unfortunately, is not giving precise data on certain isotope discharges. Additionally, the plant was responsible for discharging 74,572 cubic metres of waste waters used for cooling purposes and containing radioactive substances – something that set the record among all 10 of Russian NPPs in operation in 2007.

The atomic industry likes to proclaim itself as an environmentally friendly one. Documents such as this, however, prove that there are in fact radioactive discharges: It’s just that these are legally sanctioned discharges, so even while spreading radiation around, nuclear power plants do not violate any laws. In the end result, the radioactive contaminants disposed of by the plants find their way into the human body – the general population who live nearby – where they can do a great deal of harm. But that causes no worry with Rosatom, which is on a never-ending mission to continue building more nuclear power plants.

Storage facilities at the Beloyarsk NPP, as of the beginning of year 2008, were filled 71.5% to capacity with liquid radioactive waste (LRW) and 66.6% with solid radioactive waste (SRW). As another in a row of untended issues, Rostekhnadzor points out to the absence of a dry storage facility that would need to house the site’s spent nuclear fuel (SNF) for long-term storage.

Of particular concern is the information related to the ongoing project envisioning the construction of a new BN-800-type reactor at the site. According to Rostekhnadzor, in the course of 2007 alone, inspections undertaken in organisations charged with engineering and producing reactor equipment, as well as those conducting quality evaluation studies, revealed “1,029 violations of requirements set by norms, regulations, and terms of compliance set forth in licenses authorising the engineering and manufacturing of [reactor] equipment. The main cause of violations is the insufficient knowledge on the part of personnel of the requirements set by federal norms and regulations, the terms of compliance set forth in licenses, of design documentation, and the technological process of equipment manufacturing.” It turns out, in other words, that designers and manufacturers of equipment intended to be used in future reactors, including BN-800s, operate with disregard to a host of violations, which may have its consequences in terms of the quality of the reactors built.

Kalinin NPP
In the course of 2007, the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant – a site with three 1,000-megawatt VVER-1000 reactors which operates in the Tver Region, approximately midway between the country’s two largest metropolises, Moscow and St. Petersburg – discharged into the surrounding atmosphere 539 megabecquerels of the dangerous radioactive isotope iodine-131 and unspecified amounts of cobalt-60, caesium-134, and caesium-137. Apart from the said gaseous discharges, the Kalinin NPP spilled 41,587 cubic metres of waste waters containing radioactive substances.

There is, however, one problem that did not find its way into Rostekhnadzor’s study: The tritium contamination of water reservoirs located in the plant’s vicinity. In 1999, the State Committee of the Russian Federation for the Protection of the Environment  discovered that the lakes of Udomlya and Pesvo, near which the plant is built, contained 15 to 20 times the amount of tritium that would be acceptable as a so-called maximum allowable concentration level. Since then, no nuclear official at any given level has ever said anything about what the industry has been doing to stop the tritium spillage or remedy the contamination issue. There are suspicions that the underlying reason is quite simple: There must simply be no economically feasible technologies allowing filtering of the NPP’s discharges, which is why it is impossible to do anything. Meanwhile, the lakes continue to be used by the local population, which means that radioactive isotopes continue to end up in the residents’ food and water. But, as we see, even Rostekhnadzor continues to pretend that the problem simply does not exist.

According to Rostekhnadzor’s data, three operational incidents were registered at the Kalinin NPP in 2007: One response from the emergency shutdown system and two errors on the part of the personnel, which the oversight agency says were caused by the “low level of safety culture” at the site.

In one case, personnel’s erroneous actions – straying from the adopted Operations Programme and Operation Manual – when shutting down the valves of the control oil pressure gauge in the turbine generator’s electrohydraulic control system led to the activation of the emergency shutdown system at Reactor Block 1.

In 2007, as part of the Federal Target Programme “The Development of Russia’s Atomic Energy Complex for the Period of 2007 through 2010 and with Prospects to 2015,” ratified by the October 6, 2006 decree of the Government of the Russian Federation and currently under implementation, the Kalinin NPP received a license to start construction of Reactor Block 4. At the same time, as was previously pointed out, inspections carried out in organisations charged with engineering and producing reactor equipment, as well as those conducting quality evaluation studies, revealed “1,029 violations of requirements set by norms, regulations, and terms of compliance set forth in licenses authorising the engineering and manufacturing of [reactor] equipment. The main cause of violations is the insufficient knowledge on the part of personnel of the requirements set by federal norms and regulations, the terms of compliance set forth in licenses, of design documentation, and the technological process of equipment manufacturing.” So – and it would certainly not hurt to reiterate this – if designers and manufacturers of NPP equipment show neglect in their work, the quality of future reactors becomes an issue of considerable worry. In the end, just like in the case of the Beloyarsk NPP, by getting new reactor capacity at the Kalinin NPP we risk exposing ourselves to a new nuclear accident as well.
 
Kursk NPP
The Kursk NPP is a site near the Central Russian city of Kursk. Besides building new reactors, it has four 1000-megawatt units of the type RBMK-1000, the same type of reactors that were operated at Chernobyl. In 2007, as many as eight violations were registered at the plant – something of a record among all Russian NPPs that have RBMK-1000s in service. Altogether, reactors of this type accounted for 19 violations across Russia that year.

In 2007 alone, the Kursk NPP discharged into the surrounding atmosphere 2,153 megabecquerels of the radioactive isotope iodine-131, as well as unspecified amounts of cobalt-60, caesium-134, and caesium-137. It is also responsible for 25,930 cubic metres’ worth of wastewaters with radioactive substances disposed of that year.

Renovation works that also took place in 2007 at the plant revealed damage in the site’s equipment and pipelines classified under Group C by “The Rules of Installation and Safe Operation of Equipment and Pipelines of Atomic Power Systems,” or PN AE G-7-008-89, a regulatory and standards document that sets appropriate guidelines for the operation of such equipment at Russian NPPs . Additionally, three incidents involving an emergency shutdown system response were registered at the plant in 2007, as well as one safety system equipment failure.

A large wastewater spill also took place that year, which Rostekhnadzor points out was again caused by the “low level of safety culture” among the NPP’s personnel. Uncoordinated actions on the part of the employees, a poorly designed programme for the organisation and implementation of repairs on the stop cock valve of the essential service water system led to a leak in the stop cock valve with a significant amount of cooling water – up to 900 cubic metres – then leaking into the facility housing the pumps of the reactor control and protection system of Reactor Block 1, and subsequently, resulted in the reactor’s shutdown.

Besides the above-mentioned operational violations registered at the plant in 2007, the following most significant defects in the NPP’s operation occurred that year that were related to the discovery of damaged equipment: Cavitation in certain areas of the parent metal of the throttle control valve around the welding seam connecting the valve with the connection pipe of the discharge valves of the main circulation pumps. The corrosion was revealed during a planned control check-up of the metal in accordance with the schedule established for extending the operational lifespan of the fittings of Reactor Block 2.

Rostekhnadzor is also concerned with the high degree to which storing capacities are filled at the plant’s solid radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel storage facilities: As of early 2008, the SRW load was 82.8%, and the SNF storage facilities were filled 90% to capacity.
 
Kola NPP
The Kola NPP is located on the Kola Peninsula, 200 kilometres south of Murmansk, and operates four VVER-440-type 440-megawatt units. In 2007, the plant discharged into the surrounding atmosphere 76 megabecquerels of the radioactive isotope cobalt-40, 8 megabecquerels of caesium-137, as well as unspecified amounts of iodine-131 and caesium-134. Additionally, the plant discharged 6,378 cubic metres of cooling water containing radioactive substances.

Rostekhnadzor registered four operational violations at the plant in 2007. Moreover, during 2007 repair works, damage was revealed in equipment and pipelines classified under Group C by the PN AE G-7-008-89, “The Rules of Installation and Safe Operation of Equipment and Pipelines of Atomic Power Systems.” Additionally, one incident involving an activation of the emergency shutdown system also occurred at the site.

Besides these operational violations, Rostekhnadzor also points out the following most significant defects in the NPP’s operation that took place in 2007 and were related to the discovery of damaged equipment: A defect in the welding seam connecting the hot leg collector of the coolant loop and the Du1100 connecting pipe of Steam Generator 4 at Reactor Block 2.

Novovoronezh NPP
One of the oldest Russian NPPs, the Novovoronezh site – located on the River Don around 500 kilometres from Moscow and operating five VVER-type reactors – led the industry in terms of violations registered in 2007. It is responsible for altogether 12 operational violations that year, or nearly a quarter of all operational breaches (47) logged at all ten of Russian nuclear power plants in 2007. Reactor Blocks 3 and 4 of the plant have already exhausted their design-basis lifespans, but extensions on their service lifetimes have been granted. Each of these two reactors is now expected to continue operation for at least 15 more years. But judging from the list of violations registered at the site, one can already conclude that it leaves much to be desired where its operational condition is concerned.

As much as 3,400 megabecquerels of the radioactive isotope iodine-131, 570 megabecquerels of cobalt-60, 73 megabecquerels of caesium-134, and 110 megabecquerels of caesium-137 were discharged by the plant in one year 2007 alone. In terms of these discharges, the site scored, by far, the highest among all Russian nuclear power plants. The iodine-131 factor attracts particular attention: Even though regulatory norms in Russia are such that they allow nuclear power plants to dump very large amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment, the quantities mentioned are still too significant for a site’s operation to be normal. By comparison, one of the oldest and most contaminating nuclear power plants in the US, the Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey Township, New Jersey, yearly discharges nine times as little iodine-131 – which is an extremely dangerous radioactive isotope – as what the Novovoronezh site dumped in 2007. Additionally, that year, the Novovoronezh NPP discharged 41,000 cubic metres of wastewaters containing radioactive substances.

Now, to the details of more serious violations at the Novovoronezh NPP, according to Rostekhnadzor:

While conducting repair works at the NPP, damage was revealed in equipment and pipelines classified under Group C by the PN AE G-7-008-89, “The Rules of Installation and Safe Operation of Equipment and Pipelines of Atomic Power Systems” – altogether, five violations. In addition, in one year 2007 alone, the site logged three responses from the emergency reactor protection system and two other violations caused by erroneous actions on the part of the personnel. Furthermore, three equipment failures were registered in the reactor safety systems.
 
Besides the above-mentioned violations of 2007, Rostekhnadzor describes the following most significant defects in the site’s operation that were related to the discovery of equipment damage:
-    defects in the welding in the protective bushings of the Du500 pipelines of the reactor vessel at Reactor Block 4;
-    cracks in the welding seams connecting hot-leg collectors to the shells of steam generators 2 and 4 at Reactor Block 5;
-    cracks in the welds connecting Du1100 pipelines of the hot- and cold-leg collectors and the steam generator of Reactor Block 3;
-    cracks in welding along the Du300 pipelines from the reactor to the reservoirs of the emergency core cooling system at Reactor Block 5.

Novovoronezh NPP-2
In 2007, two licenses were issued to build new nuclear reactor blocks in Russia – at the prospective expanded sites of the Leningrad NPP-2 and Novovoronezh NPP-2 – as part of implementing the Federal Target Programme “The Development of Russia’s Atomic Energy Complex for the Period of 2007 through 2010 and with Prospects to 2015,” ratified by the October 6, 2006 decree of the Government of the Russian Federation.

At the same time, as should again be reiterated here, inspections carried out in 2007 alone in organisations charged with engineering and producing reactor equipment, as well as those conducting quality evaluation studies, revealed “1,029 violations of requirements set by norms, regulations, and terms of compliance set forth in licenses authorising the engineering and manufacturing of [reactor] equipment. The main cause of violations is the insufficient knowledge on the part of personnel of the requirements set by federal norms and regulations, the terms of compliance set forth in licenses, of design documentation, and the technological process of equipment manufacturing.” So, again, let it be repeated here that when it turns out that designers and manufacturers of NPP equipment carry out their duties with violations, the quality of future reactors is at risk. In the end, just like in the case of the Beloyarsk and Kalinin NPPs, this could lead to further breaches in operation or even new nuclear accidents.
 
Volgodonsk (Rostov) NPP
The site, located near the southern city of Rostov, operates 1,000-megawatt reactors of the VVER-1000 type and supplies energy to Russia’s central regions and Northern Caucasus. In 2007, the plant discharged into the surrounding atmosphere 50 megabecquerels of the radioactive isotope iodine-131, as well as unspecified amounts of cobalt-60, caesium-134, and caesium-137. It also spilled 10,358 cubic metres of wastewaters containing radioactive substances.

Reporting on the Volgodonsk NPP’s performance in 2007, Rostekhnadzor also describes an event that it says was caused by the “low level of safety culture” among the site’s personnel: “Non-compliance with instructions contained in the “Operational commutations in electrical installations of the Volgodonsk NPP” on the part of the engineer on duty at the electrical shop of Reactor Block 1 of the Rostov NPP, while bringing into operation the 500-kilowatt air circuit breaker (omitting a number of operations needed to implement switchovers on the relay panel as determined by commutation standard forms), caused a trip-out of the circuit breaker and a subsequent disconnection of Reactor Block 1 from the main.” 

The Rostov site is in the process of building a second reactor block, so – just like in the cases of the Beloyarsk, Kalinin, Novovoronezh, and Leningrad NPPs – there are significant concerns over the quality of the reactor equipment delivered to the plant. Not to mention the site’s radioactive discharges, which are likely to double when the new reactor is launched.

Smolensk NPP
The Smolensk NPP, located on the Dnieper River 360 kilometres west-southwest of Moscow, operates three RBMK-1000s. In 2007, the site dumped into the surrounding environment 57 megabecquerels of the radioactive isotope-131, 98 megabecquerels of cobalt-60, and unspecified amounts of caesium-134 and caesium-137. In addition to these gaseous discharges, the NPP spilled 50,576 cubic metres of used wastewaters, taking second place in coolant water discharges after the Beloyarsk NPP, Russia’s so far most contaminating site, in that regard.

In one year 2007 alone, the Smolensk site logged seven violations. While performing repair works at the plant, damage was revealed in equipment and pipelines classified under Group C by the PN AE G-7-008-89, “The Rules of Installation and Safe Operation of Equipment and Pipelines of Atomic Power Systems.” In addition, the emergency reactor protection system responded twice in that year and three failures were registered in the safety systems equipment.

According to Rostekhnadzor data, again, “mistakes made by the personnel were caused by the low level of safety culture” at the plant. As one example, the supervisory agency describes the following violation: “poorly performed repairs on the flange coupling of the oil cooling system of a block transformer at Reactor Block 3 of the Smolensk NPP, by the personnel of a subcontractor organisation, led to a leak of 5 cubic metres of oil from the transformer’s oil cooling system, a subsequent failure of the transformer, and a shutdown of Reactor Block 3.”

Apart from the above-mentioned violations, the following most significant operational defects were revealed at the plant in 2007 that were related to the discovery of damaged equipment: Damage in the welding seams of Du300 pipelines of the multiple forced circulation circuit (downcomer, pressure, and water equaliser pipelines), blowdown and cooldown pipelines, and pipelines of the emergency core cooling system at Reactor Block 1.  

Rostekhnadzor is also concerned with LRW and SRW storage facilities filled almost to capacity: 82.2% in the case of liquid radioactive waste, and 84.4% in the case of solid radioactive waste.
 
Leningrad NPP
The Leningrad NPP, a site located close to Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg and operating four RBML-1000 reactors, discharged in 2007: 1,700 megabecquerels of iodine-131, 125 megabecquerels of cobalt-60, 15 megabecquerels of caesium-134, and 153 megabecquerels of caesium-137. Additionally, around 10,000 cubic metres of radioactive water was discharged by the plant (and handled by the cooling towers of St. Petersburg-based Radon, an enterprise specialising in containing and managing radioactive materials).

The site registered one response from the emergency shutdown system in 2007.

The incident, as described by Rostekhnadzor, was caused by the following: “An activation of the closing actuator of the 2PEN5 feeding pump discharge valve occurred due to a metallic item (screw) falling onto its contacts while performing works by the operating crew of Reactor Block 2 of the Leningrad NPP. This led to a shutdown of the reactor block.” Rostekhnadzor says, yet again, that “the cause of the mistakes made by the personnel [was] the low level of safety culture” at the plant.

The plant’s LRW storage facility is filled 97.3% to capacity (13,448 cubic metres). According to Rostekhnadzor, the large amounts of liquid radioactive waste at the Leningrad NPP are explained by the shutdown of the bituminisation system due to the absence of free space at the bituminous compound storage facility. In 2008, the Leningrad NPP planned to put into operation a new LRW reprocessing complex.

The solid radioactive waste storage facility is filled 81.8% to capacity (38,636 cubic metres of solid radioactive waste).

According to Rostekhnadzor, “among the untended issues related to the storage of spent nuclear fuel, the following issues remain: At the Kursk and Leningrad NPPs, a high degree of use of capacities at SNF storage facilities and cooling ponds.”
 
Leningrad NPP-2
There is probably no need in repeating once again that taking into account the immense number of violations revealed in the work of organisations charged with designing and manufacturing NPP equipment, concerns certainly arise over the quality of equipment that will go into the new reactor block, already licensed for construction by Rostekhnadzor.

Maria Kaminskaya translated this blog.

¹
Translator’s note: Here, as well as in all other less common references containing letter or letter-digit designations, the original Russian letters were rendered into English using common transliteration rules. 

² Translator’s note: Here, as well as in all other less common references containing letter or letter-digit designations, the original Russian letters were rendered into English using common transliteration rules.