nuclear-news

“This is the first time we will pay for removing. The ship was fully loaded. 14 containers with spent nuclear fuel,” says project coordinator Per-Einar Fiskebeck to the Barents Observer.

The removed waste contained about one million Curie (37.000 TBq) of long lived isotopes.

Unloading the 40-years old spent uranium fuel elements from the rundown storage tanks and repacking them to transport containers came with a price-tag of 5 million kroner (€500.000), while the shipment from Andreeva Bay to Murmansk will cost additional 2,5 million kroner (€250.000).

This week’s shipment is the fourth this year, but the first one paid by Norway.

Per-Einar Fiskebeck, an engineer with the County Governor of Troms & Finnmark, has since the 1990s worked in close cooperation with SevRao, Russia’s regional enterprise in charge of cleaning up the nuclear waste site on the western banks of the Litsa fjord.

Here, only 65 kilometers from the border to Norway, the Soviet navy packed away its lethal leftovers. Without too much thought for the costs of future clean up.

In Norway, like in Russia, the demand for action came out of fears for possible radioactive leakages that could have potentially negative impact on the important fisheries in the Barents Sea.

So far, isotopes contamination has only been discovered in the sediments in the near proximity off the shore and not further out in the bay.

Concerns of nuclear accidents and radioactive leakages are also why Norwegian authorities have granted hundres of millions kroner in aid to secure and clean up the site…….

In 2017, the first load of containers with spent nuclear fuel left Andreeva Bay towards Murmansk, from where it go by rail to Mayak, Russia’s reprocessing plant north of Chelyabinsk east of the Ural Mountains.

So far in 2019, three shipments paid by Russia and one shipment paid by Norway have left Andreeva Bay.

“25% of the original amount of spent nuclear fuel is now removed,” says Per-Einar Fiskebeck.

With one-fourth of the waste removed in two and a half years doesn’t mean the remaining will be shipped away with the same speed.

«The fuel elements lifted out and re-packed so far have been undamaged,” Fiskebeck says. Both tank No. 1 and No. 2 are believed to hold mostly unproblematic elements.

He explains how some of the other elements will be a much more challenging task.

Tank 3A holds numerous rusty, partly destroyed steel pipes where concrete of poor quality was filled in the space between. Some of those fuel assemblies are stuck in the canisters, while some of the canisters are stuck in the cells.

This is high level nuclear waste with radiation levels close to the uranium fuel comparable to the melted fuel rods inside the ill-fated Chernobyl reactor.

Risk-assessments give a clear recommendation: Do not try to lift any of the assemblies before you are sure nothing falls out.