News
Publish date: December 15, 1998
Written by: Thomas Nilsen
News
The refuelling of the two reactors onboard Rossiya is scheduled to take a week. The fuel assemblies will be transferred from the reactors to storage casks onboard the service ship Imandra at the nuclear powered icebreaker fleet’s service base Atomflot, just north of Murmansk. Each of the two reactor cores consists of 241 fuel assemblies. Imandra has six storage sections. Each section contains 50 storage containers, each of which has room for five fuel assemblies.
Refuelling takes place some every third or fourth year. In November 1988, a serious incident happened during refuelling of Rossiya. The incident involved one of the two reactors, and according to the Russian Magazine Vodny Transport, a reactor meltdown was narrowly avoided. The exact cause of the incident is not clear. The nuclear-powered icebreaker Rossiya has been in normal operation since.
An accident aboard numerous Volgoneft oil tankers in the Kerch in mid December clearly show what can happen to aged ships when they are operated in bad weather—and when economic and military objectives are prioritized over the lives of crews and environmental safety.
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.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.