News

Andreeva Bay: Solid radwaste

Publish date: February 6, 2003

The storage sites for solid radioactive waste in Andreeva Bay are the largest in the Northern Fleet. There are no data on the amount and the activity of the waste stored there.

At this time, a new storage site for solid radioactive waste has been completed at Andreeva Bay. However, it is still awaiting Minatom’s evaluation as to whether it meets safety requirements, and has consequently not yet been commissioned. In addition to the storage sites listed below, there are entire other buildings and areas in Andreeva Bay that are radioactively contaminated and should be treated as radioactive waste during upgrading of the base.

Radioactive waste is stored at the following locations:

    3. Site 3 — waste stored in concrete bunker;

    4. Site 7 — waste stored in concrete bunker;

    5. Site 7a — waste stored both in concrete bunker and in open area;

    6. Site 9 — open storage area for containers with waste under construction;

    7. Site 67 — concrete bunker for high activity solid waste, filled to capacity, poor technical condition;

    8. Site 67a — concrete bunker for high activity solid waste;

    9. Site 7d — built in the 1990s to store high activity filtering material used in reactors. Seven concrete bunkers are in direct contact with water in the bay. The idea was to reduce the activity of the material by blending it with the seawater. The grids holding the material, which is in the form of small round pellets, have rusted away and the water is washing the pellets out into the bay.