nuclear-news

Russia’s unsafe new nuclear reactors, the Baltic NPP and others

GAZETA.RU: Nuclear failure Gazeta.ru, May 24, 2013 “……..In fact, Kaliningrad Region’s neighbor Lithuania has been vigorously protesting the construction, voicing not just political complaints but also concerns regarding the future station’s safety. For instance, the Lithuanian government has charged that the VVER-1200 reactors that Rosatom planned to build at the site have never been subjected to safety tests in accordance with the criteria adopted in the European Union. And safety concerns are far from frivolous or irrelevant here. Let’s take a moment to look at the technology improvements that we are told have been implemented in the design.

The VVER-1200 reactor, on which the project of the Baltic NPP was based, includes a novelty called a “core catcher.” This contraption is meant to mitigate the consequences of an accident that evolves according to a Chernobyl or Fukushima scenario – namely, leads to a core meltdown. For one thing, the very presence of a core catcher would imply that such an accident is possible in principle. For another, all a core catcher can do is simply “catch” the highly radioactive mass of a molten reactor core as it burns through the bottom of the reactor vessel. What it cannot do is help contain the accompanying massive release of radioactivity of the kind that poisoned the environment far and wide during the catastrophe at Chernobyl. So what would be the meaning of this expensive new enhancement? Put a tick next to a budget item called “That new fancy gizmo we have – our reactors are the best!”?

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad: VVER-1200s are being built at the second Leningrad nuclear station, near St. Petersburg, and at the new Novovoronezh site, in Central European Russia, and are being planned for a number of other sites across the country – not to mention the export reactor projects in Belarus, Vietnam, Turkey, and other foreign states.

There are other problems with the Baltic NPP. Its price tag was estimated at around EUR 6 billion, and that’s not counting the very costly transmission networks that the plant would badly need. The very electricity export idea was not duly thought through: Kaliningrad Region lacks the modern and reliable transmission and distribution networks that would be required to carry the station’s electricity to consumers either inside the region or abroad. New power lines could – according to a 2009 estimate by the Russian electricity generation and foreign and domestic power trading company Inter RAO – set Rosatom back by an additional nearly EUR 3 billion, driving the station’s cost up by another 50 percent………http://anti-atom.ru/en/node/5185

May 29, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, Russia, safety