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Bellona nuclear digest. May 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
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Publish date: February 6, 2003
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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 for RBMK type reactors for nuclear power plants. 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.
The first technological system for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel both from VVER type pressurised water reactors (nuclear power plants) and from naval reactors (nuclear icebreakers and submarines) was started in 1976. Spent fuel assemblies were removed from the reactors and forwarded to the RT-1 reprocessing facility on special railroad cars. In 1973, the first specially modified train from the Northern Fleet consisting of nine cars, ran from Murmansk to Mayak.
Because the storage facilities for spent fuel assemblies located at Andreeva Bay and at Gremikha are not connected to the railway, there were two steps in the process of forwarding spent fuel assemblies from the submarine reactors to the reprocessing facility at Mayak:
Four locations were considered as possible transfer loading points. The location that was finally selected is situated at Sevmorput shipyard not far from Base 92, and is known today as Atomflot.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
But it’s unlikely to impact emissions from shipping along the Northern Sea Route.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.
The following op-ed, written by Bellona’s Charles Digges, originally appeared in The Moscow Times. In recent months, the Russian nuclear in...