Our December Nuclear Digest, reported by Bellona’s Environmental Transparency Center, is out now. Here’s a quick taste of three nuclear issues arising in Russia, France and worldwide that our analysts have been discussing. Stay tuned below for the entire digest and a lot more nuclear news.

Surprising non-surprises among nuclear wrecks in the Arctic

After a 20-year search, Russian scientists have established the precise location of two sunken vessels laden with solid radioactive waste off the coast of Novaya Zemlya—an event cited widely in Russian media, but largely unsurprising to Bellona’s experts, they write in Bellona’s newest Nuclear Digest.

The discovery came during an expedition of the Akademik Ioffe, a research vessel that regularly conducts surveys of sunken radiation hazards in the Kara and Barents seas in cooperation with the Kurchatov Institute. The mission also unveiled a previously uncharted radioactive waste dump near Techeniye Bay on Novaya Zemlya’s northeast coast.

According to archival data, that site hosts 146 containers of solid radioactive waste from Soviet nuclear subs and nuclear icebreakers that were dumped there in the 1980s. Also scuttled at the location was barge loaded with the reactor compartments of the K-22 Soviet nuclear submarine. Previous expeditions had failed to locate these finds at the coordinates appearing in the Soviet archives.

While Russian media greeted reports of these finds with fanfare, Bellona’s Alexander Nikitin writes that these wrecks and containers have already been documented by numerous Bellona reports—particularly our 1996 report on the Russian Northern Fleet. But because the dumping locations were often recorded by Soviet officials in only an approximate manner, contemporary expeditions, like the one carried out by the Akademik Ioffe, continue to unveil discrepancies between the recorded coordinates the actual locations of the submerged radiation-hazardous finds, Nikitin writes.

Despite the scale of Soviet-era dumping, the Akademik Ioffe expedition noted that the water column surrounding the submerged items it inspected—which also included the sunken K-27 Soviet nuclear submarine—was free of contamination by cesium 137. This, too, says Nikitin, came as no surprise.

“This is hardly a new finding, let alone a sensational one,” Nikitin writes. “Solid radioactive waste submerged at great depths fifty years or more ago is unlikely to be a source of radioactive contamination in the Arctic Ocean’s water column today.”

Rosatom sending out for Chinese turbines

Reactor turbines traditionally produced by Russia’s Power Machines might get upstaged by turbines made in China at two new reactors under construction at the Leningrad nuclear power plant, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.

If true, the report could indicate that Rosatom is having a hard time independently supplying its own projects with domestic equipment, Bellona’s Dmitry Gorchakov writes. In general, Rosatom much prefers to use its own equipment—or, prior to the war, that produced in Ukraine.

But recent mishaps arising from Power Machines produced turbines—particularly at the Leningrad and Novovoronezh plants—are making them a little less desirable. In those instances, turbines operating in Rosatom’s flagship VVER-1200 reactors broke down, leading to tedious repairs and persistent delays in bringing the affected reactors online.

It’s already proven that Chinese turbines interface with the Russian VVER-1200. They’ll be used to outfit the reactors at the Tianwan nuclear plant, which Russia and China are jointly building on the VVER-1200 design, Gorchakov writes. So, from a technical standpoint, there’s no special reason not to use Chinese turbines at the Leningrad plant.

Gorchakov also observed, however, that discussions of using Chinese turbines may merely be a bargaining chip mean to spur more domestic production at Power Machines.

A French twist for Soviet reactors in Europe

Framatome, the French nuclear services company, has announced plans to manufacture, under Russian license, fuel assemblies that can be used in Soviet-built VVER reactors operating in European countries, possibly providing an off-ramp from Russian fuel dependence for some 18 power units in the EU.

The company applied for a permit to produce the hexagonal fuel assemblies used in VVER-1000 models at its site in Lingen, Germany in 2023, but German authorities have thus far been reluctant to license the project given Russia’s involvement in the arrangement. A decision on the matter from the German environmental ministry is expected in days.

Should that decision be a “no,” writes Gorchakov, it’s likely that Framatome will simply move VVER-1000 fuel production to France.

Regardless of how that situation evolves, Framatome executives say the company will move forward with producing fuel assemblies for VVER-440-model reactors, also under license from Russia. They’ll be delivered by at the firm’s Romans-sur-Isère facility in France, starting in 2027, with the aim of fueling Soviet-built reactors in Slovakia and Hungary.

Other European nations operating Soviet reactors include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Finland, all of which have expressed hopes of diversifying away from Russian fuel producers.

But Gorchakov observed that delivery deadlines of VVER-1000 fuel for Bulgaria and the Czech Republic may already have been missed, or are in danger of being missed, due to the delays in launching production at the Lingen facility. Previous reports suggested that Bulgaria was to receive its first shipments last year, and the Czech Republic sometime this year.  Should that be the case, writes Gorchakov, both plants will have to stick it out a bit long on Russian fuel. For our complete coverage of international nuclear industry issues though December, read the whole digest. Subscribe to our mailing list to stay informed about future issues.