The disastrous problem of Russia’s mounting spent nuclear fuel waste

RUSSIAN NUCLEAR INDUSTRY OVERVIEW, Earth Life Johannesburg Vladimir Slivyak Russian environmental group, Ecodefense

National Research University Higher School of Economics Moscow December 2014

“……..Waste and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing

According to governmental sources, about 500 million tons of radioactive waste is accumulated

at various facilities across Russia. There is no clear plan as to how the waste problem should

be solved. Rosatom has pushed through the Russian Parliament the “Law on the Radioactive

Waste treatment,” a first of its kind in Russian history. The adoption of the law was protested

in a dozen of regions across Russia because it effectively excludes local population from the

decision-making process over establishing new sites to store and dump radioactive wastes.

Judging by the supplementary documents given to the parliamentarians in 2009 along with the

proposed draft of the law, the radioactive waste management plan outlined by Rosatom would

affect no more than 30% of all accumulated wastes until 2030. It is unclear when and how the

majority of the Russian radioactive waste will undergo proper management or treatment. Some

of the storage facilities across Russia are in poor condition and require urgent measures to avoid

radiation leaks.22

The overall amount of spent nuclear fuel accumulated at Russian nuclear sites is estimated

at over 22,000 tons. Fuel from seven commercial reactors (six VVER-440s and the BN-600) is

transported for reprocessing at the Mayak nuclear facility in Chelyabinsk Region – a place of a

devastating nuclear accident of 1957, which caused widespread radioactive contamination and

led to the resettlement of about 20,000 of local residents in the subsequent years.

Spent nuclear fuel reprocessing does not help to solve the problem of nuclear waste. Rather, it

makes the problem that much bigger. Between 100 to 200 tons of radioactive waste of various

compositions and activity levels is generated during reprocessing per just 1 ton of spent fuel

reprocessed. As a result of the reprocessing activities at Mayak, large amounts of radioactive

waste have been accumulated and, over the years, partly dumped into the local river, Techa,

causing ever wider radioactive contamination.

In 2005, Mayak’s former director, Vitaly Sadovnikov, was taken to court and charged with illegal dumping of radioactive waste into theTecha. Although he was found guilty by the court, Sadovnikov was immediately released under

an amnesty granted by the Russian government. Nevertheless, the court’s decision concluded

that radioactivity levels in the river water were so high in some parts of the Techa that the water

could well be qualified as liquid radioactive waste.23

Although environmental groups successfully pushed the nuclear industry to resettle Muslyumovo

– the most contaminated village in the region – several thousands of local residents still live in

the radioactively contaminated area on the banks of the Techa. The Russian government and the

nuclear industry refuse to provide resettlement funding for the local residents while many of

them continue to suffer from radiation-caused illnesses, including conditions related to genetic

damage.

In 2011, about twenty families of local villagers along with two environmental groups

(Ecodefense, Planet of Hope) filed a class action against the nuclear industry and several

government ministries over the lack of radiation protection in the contaminated area.

Spent fuel from the VVER-1000s and RBMKs is only stored in Russia, as the country does not

possess a facility for reprocessing such fuel. While reprocessing of spent RBMK fuel was never

seriously planned, a plan to build a facility to reprocess spent fuel from the VVER-1000 reactors,

to be sited in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, has existed since the 1980s. After it was approved by the

Soviet government, the plan was stopped by mass protests around 1990. It is unclear if Rosatom

will ever bring it to implementation.

One of the issues under discussion in the nuclear industry is the future plans for the management

of spent nuclear fuel. Rosatom may either go for reprocessing and extraction of plutonium –

especially if the development program for breeder reactors and the concept of using plutonium

as fuel gets political approval – or for final disposal of spent fuel in a repository in a deep

geological formation near Krasnoyarsk. Presently, the option of long-term storage there is

approved with a new storage site partly completed in that area. It is projected that the storage

site will hold close to 40,000 tons of spent fuel in the future. As of today, spent fuel is mostly

stored at nuclear power plants around the country, and the old storage facilities are overfull or

nearing capacity; Rosatom is planning to move 22,000 tons of this fuel to Krasnoyarsk by 2025.

But any final solution for the highly radioactive spent fuel must include efficient barriers to

prevent the radiation from escaping into the surrounding environment during the next million

years. Such a solution obviously does not exist……….. http://earthlife.org.za/www/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/russian-nuc-ind-overview.pdf

December 8, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, wastes

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