News
Publish date: February 6, 2003
News
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.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
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.