And now I finish the topic with an overview of the practice and prospects for the use and possible disposal of DUHF, the publication of an interview with the author of Bellona's report on DUHF, Alexander Nikitin, a discussion of the social component of this story and conclusions on all 4 parts. So let's go.
Collage for the 4th part: Greenpeace, ZOU, MOX-fuel, A. Nikitin.
DUHF status and use
I have already talked in detail about the main purpose of "rich tails" - DUHF with a valuable isotope U-235 content of 0.2-0.25%. It is used as a secondary source of uranium to obtain fuel for modern nuclear power plants. From the volume of DUHF that is now being transported from Germany, it is possible to make an annual fuel supply for 10 nuclear power plants that can replace half of coal-fired CHPPs in Germany and, accordingly, reduce CO2 emissions. So there are no questions here, DUHF with such a content of U-235 is a valuable raw material, just not everyone can benefit from it economically (I gave the economics calculations here ).
Therefore, it is not surprising that in most international documents ( for example, here) and international organizations, DUHF is called a major secondary source of uranium in the present and a potentially valuable raw material for the future. However, it is rightly added everywhere that the possibilities of using this raw material in the future will strongly depend on many factors that are still difficult to predict, and it is not excluded that it may be buried.
Even the most popular example of using DUHF as a raw material for uranium re-enrichment described above shows that while not all countries can do this technologically, not everywhere is it economically justified, and not everyone has such a need at all. Therefore, almost a commonplace is that this is a material that still needs to be stored safely and cheaply for a long time (about 100 years), to look for its use, and whether the demand for it grows or not in the future - it will be seen there.
At the same time, the situation is different in different countries due to historical, technological and economic reasons, therefore, different interesting nuances follow from this concept at the national levels. For example, Russia, France, Great Britain consider DUHF (or rather, depleted uranium) as a valuable resource for the future or are already using it in the present. In the USA, part of DUHF is really recognized as a waste (we will figure out why below), in Germany such a scenario is most likely (well, there are generally no prospects for the atom, so it's not surprising).
There are quite a few options for using depleted uranium from DUHF, some of them were used in industry (weighting agents in aviation, shipbuilding, and even in Formula 1), some were used for military purposes (cores for projectiles and armor fillers, as well as elements of thermonuclear bombs), some promising directions are being investigated (as a material for radiation protection for various tasks, for use in semiconductors, catalysts or sorbents), etc. But nevertheless, the volumes of this use are small, and part (military) is generally a so-so prospect that I do not want to consider. But let's take a closer look at the direction, with the development of which the hopes of atomic scientists are largely connected.
MOX fuel
In addition to using DUHF for additional extraction of the 235th uranium isotope, it can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants and in another way - as a source of the 238th uranium isotope in MOX fuel. MOX is a fuel made from a mixture of plutonium oxides, separated from spent nuclear fuel (SNF), and uranium oxides, usually just depleted, obtained from the same DUHF stocks. In a typical nuclear reactor, in addition to fission of the uranium isotope U-235, plutonium Pu-239 is formed by the capture of neutrons by the isotope U-238. In this case, Pu-239 behaves very similarly to U-235 - it also splits by thermal neutrons with a similar energy release. On average, in the nuclear power plant fuel during its operation, 2/3 of the energy is released due to the fission of U-235, and up to 1/3 of the energy is due to the decay of the Pu-239 formed there. In the unloaded SNF of unburned plutonium - up to 1% by weight,much like the unburned U-235.
Annually, about 70 tons of plutonium are taken from the NPP reactors with SNF. In principle, if it were isolated and processed into MOX fuel, then it would be enough to load up to 20% of all nuclear power plants. So the involvement of plutonium in the fuel cycle allows more efficient use of useful fuel resources - both uranium and plutonium. And in fact, the attitude to spent nuclear fuel (withdrawal / non-withdrawal) runs approximately along the same border in different countries as to DUHF, and in fact, to everything else too - if there are technologies and allow handling the substance and extracting useful components - then this is not a departure, if not, then everything is more complicated. A very limited number of countries are able to simply process spent nuclear fuel, as well as to enrich uranium efficiently and in large quantities.
Moving from theory to practice, we must recall the first news item mentioned in the disclaimer of the last article. In January, the first batch of MOX fuel was loaded into the BN-800 reactor of power unit No. 4 of Beloyarsk NPP , and in June a full load was prepared for the entire reactor core, to which it will be transferred by 2022.
BN-800 reactor at Beloyarsk NPP. Photo of the author, who lives 30 km away.
So the stories that Rosatom is accumulating reserves of depleted uranium in order to then use them in a closed fuel cycle in fast reactors (and in the plans also in conventional ones) are not just talk about the future, as Greenpeace says. This is already happening. Yes, of course, the volume of use of this fuel is scanty in comparison with the accumulated stocks of DUHF - tens of tons per year against about a million tons of accumulated DUHF. With such a rate of use, the DUHF reserves will last for hundreds of thousands of years. Nevertheless, this is a working technology, not a fantasy. In the mid-term, only BN-1200 and BREST-OD-300 and research MBIR are shining behind the operating reactors BN-600 and BN-800. Abroad, "fast" plans are still limited to units of reactors.... Plans for the large-scale introduction of fast reactors in the second half of the 21st century are still only in China (and partly in Russia, but only according to statements), which is still the locomotive of the development of the world's nuclear energy. However, under favorable conditions, fast reactors may have a second chance. In particular, at least 4 out of 6 promising directions of fourth generation reactor building are precisely fast reactors.
Fuel assembly (FA) for the BN-800 reactor. Source .
However, MOX fuel is used not only in fast reactors, but also in conventional nuclear power plants, in thermal nuclear power engineering. Now up to 5% of the new fuel used by nuclear power plants in the world and up to 10% in France (in 24 reactors) is MOX fuel.
In general, France is the leader here, their largest SNF reprocessing plant in La Hague processes up to 1,700 tons of spent nuclear fuel per year - this is about 70% of all spent nuclear fuel in Western Europe. At the same time, the share of nuclear energy in France from Europe is about 55%. So they process not only their own fuel, but also fuel from Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and even not from Europe - from Japan and China. True, the scale of using plutonium from this fuel for the production of MOX is not as large as it could be - no more than 200 tons of fuel per year. So when Greenpeace declares that no country in the world carries nuclear waste (and they also call spent nuclear fuel waste, like DUHF), you can safely remind them about the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in France. And this despite the fact that the radiotoxicity of spent nuclear fuel is incomparably higher than that of DUHF.
The world's largest SNF reprocessing plant La Hague, Orano, France. Source .
Russia also plans to expand the use of MOX fuel with a gradual transition to two-component nuclear power (here is an interesting presentation about this ) - with thermal and fast reactors. Fast reactors are needed here to improve the isotopic composition of plutonium and its expanded production. However, in this two-component system, it is planned to focus mainly on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for REMIX fuel (an undivided mixture of uranium and plutonium separated from spent nuclear fuel with an addition of enriched uranium) for VVER reactors. An experimental center for a new SNF reprocessing technology is now being commissioned in Zheleznogorsk... All this will not only make it possible to include fissile isotopes of uranium and plutonium from spent fuel into the fuel cycle, thereby reducing the use of fresh uranium resources by up to 20%, but also to solve the problem of SNF management, significantly reducing the volume of disposal of high-level waste (up to 100 times) and that they pose a threat (from hundreds of thousands of years to hundreds of years).
So this is all also a story about the rational use of resources, reducing risks and harm to the environment, for which environmental activists stand up. And at the same time, this is a story about a change in the face of nuclear energy and the solution of its current problems (such as handling spent nuclear fuel), which anti-nuclear activists no longer like at all.
In total, only about 2000 tons of MOX fuel have been used in the world to date, and the annual production capacity in Russia, France, England and Japan is no more than 400 tons. This means that the reserves of DUHF existing in the world (about 2 million tons) with the current volume of use will be enough for tens of thousands of years. At the same time, about 50-60 thousand tons of uranium is mined and used annually, most of which is also converted into hexafluoride for enrichment, which means that up to 90% of its volume goes into the DUHF category, replenishing its world reserves.
From the above, we must honestly state at least 3 facts:
- Now it is difficult to say unequivocally whether the volume of use of DUHF in the form of MOX fuel will significantly increase or decrease in the future on a global scale. There are many forecasts and factors influencing this. But Russia and a number of other countries have plans for such an expansion.
- The existing DUHF reserves at the current rate of use will last for thousands of years.
- The rate of formation of new DUHF exceeds the rate of its use.
Does this mean that the volumes of accumulated DUHF are only increasing? Strangely enough, no. Let's see why.
To Uranus, yes. Hexafluoride - no
To be used as nuclear fuel, fissile heavy elements - uranium or plutonium - are needed. Their chemical form (usually oxides, or in the future nitrides or other exotic) plays a role in determining the density and strength characteristics of the fuel, but is secondary to its nuclear-physical properties in comparison with the isotopic composition of the fissile material. Therefore, in the DUHF reserves, it is uranium that is valuable as a fuel resource. And despite the relative safety of handling DUHF, this chemically hazardous fluoride form is not the best solution for long-term storage.
Therefore, the global trend is deconversion, or defluorization of DUHF reserves, i.e. conversion of uranium hexafluoride into another chemical form - into uranium nitrous oxide (ZOU, or U3O8). ZOU is a thermally and chemically stable compound, insoluble in water and non-volatile. Most it is for long-term storage and even, if such a task arises, burial, tk. this is just one of the most common forms of uranium compounds in nature, and it is also less radioactive than natural uranium. In this case, in addition to uranium oxides, other products containing fluorine are obtained from hexafluoride during deconversion. For example, the same anhydrous hydrogen fluoride HF used in industry. So uranium hexafluoride also acts as a secondary source of fluorine, which is now mined in Russia from Chinese raw materials.
So, the accumulation of DUHF in the world does not occur precisely because the rate of its transfer to the OUF is comparable to the rate of formation of a new DUHF - about 60 thousand tons per year. And the rates of deconversion will only increase, so that in the coming decades, the world stocks of DUHF will be converted into a safer form.
World capacities for deconversion of DUHF into uranium oxide-oxide. At the moment, about 25% of the world's DUHF reserves have already been converted into a safer oxide form. In France - 75%, in Russia and the USA - about 10%. Source .
French experience
The French are the leaders in deconversion. They legally need to convert DUHF stocks into nitrous oxide for long-term storage, and they are not considered waste. The first powerful unit "W1" for the transfer of hexafluoride to the ZOU was developed and launched already in 1984. Its productivity is 10 thousand tons. DUHF per year. Later, a second unit "W2" was built with the same capacity. The deconversion capacity in France already exceeds the volume of new DUHF formation, so their DUHF stocks are decreasing. According to various estimates, up to 300 thousand tons of DUHF (not only French ones) in France have already been converted into a safer form of oxides.
The received stocks of ZOO are stored in metal containers DV-70 with a wall thickness of 5 mm, a volume of 3 m3 and containing 10 tons of ZOO. The containers are stored in several tiers in hangars at two French nuclear plants, at Bessines and Tricastin. At the same time, out of 10 tons of DUHF, 8 tons of OUF are obtained, and taking into account a more compact package, OUH also takes 5-6 times less storage area.
ZOU storage facilities in France. They are stored in such piles in light hangars at nuclear plants as a stock and raw material for the future, since the French nuclear industry and energy still have plans for this future. Photo sources ( 1 and 2 ).
Urenco experience
Urenco is the second largest player in the global uranium enrichment market after our TVEL (Rosatom subsidiary). I have written about them in detail in previous articles. They have three factories in Europe - in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. They work in different countries, and their customers are all over the world. So this commercial company has been operating for almost half a century under all international and national laws. Moreover, this is not an atomic state corporation or someone's national company, as in Russia, France or China, which, in addition to solving commercial problems, are engaged in the preparation and implementation of a strategy for the development of nuclear industries in their countries and on world markets (with all the pros and cons of this approach) ... Urenco is a company whose main business is precisely the enrichment of uranium for commercial nuclear power plants using their patented centrifuge technology.The rest is secondary to them. Therefore, they simply make money on what they do well and benefit where possible for them and their partners. This is no better or worse than other approaches, it is just a reality and a feature that must be understood when speaking about the market for nuclear materials and uranium enrichment.
Therefore, when Urenco was profitable, they sent part of their DUHF to France for deconversion. Of the 300 thousand tons of hexafluoride processed by the French, 46 thousand tons. (in terms of uranium metal) is a DUHF from the European Urenco, processed under contracts from 2003 to 2014 . Urenco took the resulting ZOU and handed it over to the Dutch organization for radioactive waste management CORVA, again, considering it beneficial for itself. After all, Urenco has no plans for the future production of MOX fuel.
By the way, the descendants of Rembrandt, Bosch and other Bruegels in the Dutch CORVA very creatively approached the issue of designing their storage facilities for radioactive waste and materials - the need for coordination and approval from local communities obliged (we would have it!). Therefore, they made them symbolically beautiful on the outside, and inside they generally opened a branch of local museums and an art gallery .
This is a building for high-level waste generated during the reprocessing in France of fuel from the only nuclear power plant in the Netherlands Borsele (with a capacity of only 440 MW, and it is located nearby) and the only Dutch research reactor. Over time, the building will be repainted in a less vivid color, symbolizing a gradual decline in heat generation and waste activity.
And this is an art gallery organized right inside the radioactive waste storage facility. A great way to combine business with pleasure is to touch art and see that RAO is not scary. And this is important for both employees and visitors.
And in this building (the project and the render is shown here), depleted uranium will be stored in the form of a ZOU for about 100 years. The façade houses the largest sundial in Europe by the famous Dutch artist William Verstraeten . They symbolize the importance of time in the management of radioactive waste and materials.
By 2130, the Netherlands should put into operation a deep disposal site for radioactive waste. While the OPERA repository project looks like this... If by that time the ZOU are not used, they will also be placed there. At the same time, the issue price is 2 billion euros. That in terms of a kg of depleted uranium - about 7.7 euros per kg.
Another example of Urenco's pragmatic approach is the decision in 2010 to build a deconversion plant itself at the site in Cuipenhurst (UK) - Tails Management Facility (TMF)... In 2020, it should be fully launched. Perhaps in this way they decided to save on French deconversion services (although they bought the technology from them, like everyone else in the world), perhaps they decided to make money on similar services for the British Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which has its own DUHF reserves remaining from the work of the English gaseous diffusion plant in Kaipenhurst, which was in operation before joining the Urenco site. It is no coincidence that the deconversion plant was built at the British site of Urenco, and not in Germany or the Netherlands, where there are no such reserves. The total reserves of DUHF in Kaipenhurst, from Urenco and NDA - about 130 thousand tons.And the nuance is that now Urenco DUHF from Germany and the Netherlands will also be sent here for deconversion. And where is Greenpeace saying that no one except the "nuclear garbage dump" of Russia is taking foreign DUHF to itself? They have been transporting them for many years and in full compliance with international rules and laws.
By the way, the British also DUHF and the ZOU obtained from it do not consider waste. After reprocessing, the depleted uranium owned by the NDA will remain in Kaipenhurst for long-term storage under the management of Unenco, as well as part of Urenco's own ZOO. Nuclear power in the UK is developing and they are investing in research on how to use depleted uranium.
In Germany, the attitude towards nuclear energy is the most negative of the countries where Urenco operates. Therefore, while their depleted uranium from Gronau will be converted into the form of RAM for long-term storage, and then, most likely, they will be disposed of as low-level waste, potentially in the amount of up to 100 thousand tons. However, so far, even in Germany, DUHF, RAM and depleted uranium do not have the status of radioactive waste.
And yes, the idea of sending a part of DUHF for re-enrichment to Russia is also a pragmatic decision of Urenco, mutually beneficial for Rosatom, since Urenco gets back 30% of this uranium in the form of natural equivalent, gets rid of twice depleted uranium (yes, this motivation is probably also present), and Rosatom earns on enrichment and gets what it considers a resource. At the same time, the practice when the depleted part of uranium remains at the enrichment plant is worldwide, it is just usually DUHF after enrichment of natural uranium, and in Russia - also after enrichment of DUHF.
USA experience
In the US, the approach to the status of DUHF is twofold, since there is DUHF there, which has different owners - both private and state. They have two large closed diffusion uranium enrichment plants in Paducah and Portsmouth, which are owned by the Department of Energy (DOE). Above, I showed a photo of their warehouses from satellites. They accumulate the main reserves of DUHF in the United States - about 800 thousand tons. In 2004, they adopted a Portsmouth / Paducah Project Office Mission ( Portsmouth / Paducah Project Office Mission ) plan for plant decommissioning and DUHF stockpile management . The program assumes the deconversion of DUHF into the ZOO with the associated production of fluorinated products and the release of containers from DUHF, which is more than 60 thousand steel containers. At the same time, after defluorination of DUHF, they plan toto place depleted uranium (DU) in the form of oxide for long-term storage at three sites adapted for storage of radioactive waste (RW). However, they have not finally decided what to do with it and do not refer to RW by default, believing its possible further use. And they even launched a whole program of research into ways of its future use .
DUHF storage facility in the USA. Source .
It is curious that about 20% of their DUHF reserves are rather “rich” tailings - more than 0.34%. Those. This is quite an economically attractive raw material, from which up to 40 thousand tons of natural uranium equivalent can be obtained - its almost annual production all over the world. But they do not have free capacities of their own, and the re-enrichment of their tailings in Russia, as the Europeans do, is legally limited in the United States. But they do not exclude the possibility of additional enrichment of DUHF in the event that they have new technologies and want to do this. In particular, the DOE plans to transfer up to 300 thousand tons within 40 years. DUHF (about 40% of reserves) to the future Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) consortium , which is developing a promising technology for laser isotope separation. Things GLE while there are so-so, but the very intention and scale are important - DOE considers at least 300 thousand tons of DUHF (37% of reserves) as raw materials for re-enrichment, not waste.
But besides the old federal reserves, there is also new DUHF in the United States, which is generated by private enrichment companies. More precisely, this is one Urenco USA enrichment plant (see previous article ). And for such private traders (current and future), the United States determined that let them decide what to do with DUHF: they will figure out how to use it profitably, please, and if not, then they were left with the option that they have the right to turn over DUHF and depleted uranium to DOE property in the status of low-level radioactive waste. And Urenco decided, even before the construction of the plant, that it would be more profitable for them and that they would do so. And exactly what they have the right to do so and confirmed by the 2005 memorandumin relation to the waste of the Urenco USA plant (aka LOUISIANA ENERGY SERVICES, LP ). But Greenpeace likes to refer to this memorandum as confirmation that since 2005 DUHF has allegedly been classified as radioactive waste in the United States. Everything, as we can see, is somewhat more complicated. At least as far as I could figure it out, although I don't exclude that I misunderstood something.
By the way, the maximum total capacity of DUHF deconversion units in the United States is about 22 thousand tons. in year. But so far for 9 years they have converted into the form of oxides slightly more than 70 thousand tons of DUHF , which is even less than in Russia over the same period. Refining of all reserves in the United States is planned to take at least another 30 years.
Experience and plans of Russia
In Russia, at JSC PO ECP in Zelenogorsk, a unit for deconversion and defluorination of DUHF has been operating since 2009 using the same French technology, and it is called "W-ECP", by analogy with the French "W", at the end of last year it about 100 thousand tons have already been converted into the ZOU form . DUHF , i.e. more than 10% of Russian reserves. At the same time, 52 thousand tons of hydrofluoric acid and more than 10 thousand tons of anhydrous hydrogen fluoride HF were received and shipped to consumers. In part, they are used to re-convert natural uranium for enrichment. This eliminates the need to purchase fluorite in China - the main raw material for fluorine production in Russia.
Installation "W-EKhZ" in Zelenogorsk, which already has 100 thousand tons. DUHF was transferred to ZOU.
Rosatom has a program for the safe handling of DUHF, which was discussed in detail and even adjusted over the past six months as part of the work of the Public Council of Rosatom and its working groups on this topic, including with the participation of Greenpeace representatives. According to the program, by 2024, another W2-EKhZ deconversion unit will be commissioned. The contract for it with the French company Orano for 40 million euros has already been concluded ) in December 2019. And by 2028, W3-EKhZ will also be commissioned, which will increase the defluorination capacity in Zelenogorsk up to 30 thousand tons / year.
Received containers DV-70 with ZOU in Zelenogorsk are the same as in Europe.
In parallel, by 2026, two W units will be located in Novouralsk. Design has already begun there too... Thus, the total capacity for defluorination of DUHF in Russia will amount to 50 thousand tons. per year - which will be more than any other country in the world. At the same time, proprietary defluorination technologies are being developed, but so far they have not found large-scale application. All these plans will make it possible to transfer all DUHF stocks into a safe form of uranium oxide-oxide by 2057. The original version of the program six months ago assumed that the liquidation of reserves would be by 2080, so the discussion went to the program's benefit and shortened this period.
In addition, it is planned to liquidate two of the four currently existing storage sites for depleted uranium - in Seversk and Angarsk, leaving only two where defluorination units will be - in Novouralsk and Zelenogorsk.
As you can see, the program for handling DUHF in Russia is quite at the global level. Another would be to make the storage facilities beautiful as in the Netherlands and launch a series of fast reactors ...
How much does it cost?
This is an important issue that, unfortunately, Rosatom is reluctant to disclose, as well as the commercial details of the contracts with Urenco. All they say is that the process of transferring DUHF to ZOO is certainly costly, and even the sale of by-products in the form of hydrogen fluoride and hydrofluoric acid does not pay off. But they are ready to bear these costs from their profits, including it in the cost of products, in the framework of the implementation of environmental policy. Looking at the size of the contract for the supply of one “W” unit at 40 million euros , the total cost of deconversion for almost half a century (from 2010 to 2057) will be at least 200 million euros. With TVEL's net profit annually of about $ 1 billion, it is quite a lifting amount.
At the same time, the question of the cost of further storage is also not disclosed. However, I think that it is not very big, because The requirements for maintenance are even lower than for DUHF due to the inert form of the ZOO, and security costs are unlikely to grow, since warehouses will still be in the protected area of secure industrial complexes in closed cities.
And if you have to bury?
A separate question, which Greenpeace is rightly asking, is what will be the cost of burying depleted uranium reserves in case they are still not useful. At the same time, it is apparently assumed that, taking into account the decay of uranium-238 in 4.5 billion years, this will be eternal, and therefore infinitely expensive. Rosatom prefers not even to talk about it, which is understandable, because their strategy involves its use. However, Bellona in her report tried to make estimatesbased on a few foreign projects. If we ignore the strange comparison of OU and spent nuclear fuel, then the range of the cost of the disposal of depleted uranium in near-surface and deep disposal sites (which still do not exist) is from $ 1 to $ 30 per 1 kg. This is in line with the Netherlands' estimate for deep burial at 7.7 € / kg that I quoted above. And this is quite comparable with the cost of disposal of radioactive waste of the 1st hazard class (the most dangerous one is after SNF reprocessing) in Russia, assuming deep disposal - about 1.4 million rubles. for 1 m3 . But it should be understood that the upper estimates are associated with deep burial, typical for high-level long-lived waste, which is not entirely applicable to depleted uranium.
Let's try to understand what depleted uranium should relate to. Radioactive waste is classified by the level of specific activity (how many radionuclides they contain per unit mass) and the average half-life (short-lived, medium- and long-lived). So, the most dangerous is what is obtained during the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel - there is a whole compote of radionuclides with huge specific activities and with very different half-lives (up to hundreds of thousands of years), besides, it still releases heat, which requires special treatment. According to the Russian classification, this is the already mentioned 1st class of waste, the price of their disposal is almost one and a half million rubles per 1 m3.The price here is related to the complexity of the storage process (heat removal) and the requirements for the disposal site - this is the type of waste that is planned to be buried deep underground all over the world. About such burials, including the Russian project, I alreadywrote a separate article .
But for specialists it is obvious, and for the rest I will now show with figures that depleted uranium (DUHF or ZOU) and the 1st class of radioactive waste are completely different things. On average, the activity of depleted uranium is about 3-12 kBq / g , and this is practically the activity of one natural isotope of uranium-238. The specific activity of class 1 RW can be thousands and millions of times higher and determined by tens of technogenic radionuclides. Below are the criteria for assigning to certain RW adopted in Russia:
RW classification according to Russian legislation ( Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation of October 19, 2012 N 1069 ) Source of the table .
It can be seen that in terms of the content of alpha emitters, and the main component of depleted uranium is uranium 238, which is an alpha emitter, the material under discussion refers either to low- (LAO) or, in extreme cases, to intermediate-level radioactive waste (MWR), depending on the matrix material in which burial is supposed.
RW classification in the infographics of the National Operator for RW management with reference to the requirements for organizing disposal facilities for different classes of RW . In total, all radioactive waste in Russia is divided into 6 classes. As the class number grows, its "danger" decreases.
Taking into account the long half-life of uranium-238 (4.5 billion years), depleted uranium can most likely be attributed to the 2nd or 3rd class of radioactive waste, depending on its specific activity. If the ZOO before burial is compressed and / or included in a ceramic or other matrix and its density is increased, then it is quite possible to enter it into the 3rd class of radioactive waste, which must be placed in a near-surface disposal facility at a depth of no more than 100 m. it is near-surface disposal that is considered as the main option.
I will say right away that there are no such points in Russia yet. So far, one (in Novouralsk) is operating and several more are being built for medium-living (up to 30 years half-life) RW of the 3rd and 4th class . As far as I understand, long-lived 2nd class NAO (our case) cannot be taken there.
However, tariffs for the reception of different classes of RW already exist. And they include not only a one-time transfer of radioactive waste, but also maintenance for the entire period of their danger. The cost of disposal of 1 m3 of 3rd class RW is about 170 thousand rubles . Let's roughly estimate that the volume of reserves of OCP even without compaction will be about 220 thousand m3 (800 thousand tons of DUHF = 640 thousand tons of OCP with a density of about 3 t / m3). This means that the cost of the burial is about 37 billion rubles. Less than one annual profit of TVEL company. The sums are not so large for a multi-year project.
But the choice of the disposal strategy is still decades away. And I still want to hope that the scenario of involving depleted uranium in the fuel cycle of the future nuclear power industry will be realized to a greater extent and that it will grow with fast reactors. Or there will be new ways of using depleted uranium, for example, in thermonuclear power engineering. In the meantime, it is being re-enriched, partially used in MOX fuel, gradually converted into a safe form for long-term storage, and invested in R&D for its new uses.
Interview with Alexander Nikitin
All of the above in this and previous articles is essentially my opinion on the topic, developed on the basis of studying numerous sources, conversations with specialists and my own experience in the atomic field. Nevertheless, this question was new to me in many ways. Therefore, I decided to talk about this and related topics with a person with much more experience in such matters. This is Alexander Konstantinovich Nikitin, one of the authors of the report on DUHF, head of Bellona and head of the Ecology Commission of the Public Council of Rosatom. And besides that, he is a captain of the 1st rank in reserve and the only person in Russia who was acquitted after the FSB was accused of divulging state secrets for preparing a report on the radioactive problems of the Northern Fleet in 1995.
So we talked not only about the current history of DUHF, but also about the problem of environmental organizations in Russia. Below I publish a video of our conversation, which took 1 hour and 20 minutes, posted on my youtube channel (subscribe to it!). I will not give a full decryption, tk. some of the questions have already been considered by me in this and previous publications (but I still recommend listening to the conversation, since there are many nuances there), I will transcribe here only some moments of the conversation that were not previously touched on in my publications - about how this story with DUHF went through The Public Council of Rosatom, how Greenpeace participated in its work, and, in general, about how an environmental organization lives in Russia and what to do for ordinary people who are worried about radiation and nuclear safety.
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4- :
1. Uranium hexafluoride, as well as various other forms of depleted uranium in general, are considered not as waste but as a resource not only in Russia, but also in many countries of the world. It is also handled, stored, processed, converted into various forms in different countries, including Europe and the United States, and its international transportation for processing, not only to Russia, is a common practice. The storage of the depleted uranium fraction at the plant after its enrichment is also a common international practice. Of course, every country and company has its own characteristics and nuances. One of the specific features of Russia and Rosatom is the possibility (and need) of additional enrichment of large volumes of DUHF.
2.Greenpeace and other environmental organizations and activists protesting forgiving the import of DUHF into Russia provide information on the topic at least inaccurately, with elements of unconscious or deliberate manipulation and distortion. Although there are reliable facts and fair questions in their words. They are guided by their beliefs that the atom is bad, and must be abandoned, and they try to impose this opinion as the only correct option at any opportunity. However, even an analysis of the practice of handling DUHF in the world, which I did in my articles, shows that their idea that this is a waste is far from dominant and at least not the only possible one. Yes, and few people call it a waste except for anti-nuclear activists and organizations of DUHF. In German and Dutch documentsThe governments referred to by Greenpeace and Ekozashchita when referring to the transportation of waste, DUHF are called nuclear or fissile material.
3.In my opinion, Rosatom, in the situation with the import of DUHF, failed the information campaign and then only tried to catch up. Its traditional closeness, unwillingness and unwillingness to share information in a timely manner, lead to disastrous results. In general, Rosatom is large, and in its structure the fuel company TVEL and the export TENEX, which are engaged in the import and processing of DUHF, are far from being the most open ones. The only useful result of Greenpeace in this story is that TVEL was instructed to contact the outraged public and share information. Even though they did not answer all the questions, it was not they who wrote the report on the DUHF, but Bellona and the Public Council. However, there is also a lot of negative from Greenpeace's actions - in the form of heating up radiophobia in society and imposing the wrong opinion that "Russia is a nuclear dump." Greenpeace's goals are of courseanswers, but strategically it is a false imposed choice.
4. Taking into account point 1, the silence of Rosatom on a number of issues does not mean that there is a cover-up for the import of foreign radioactive waste into Russia. As well as the anti-nuclear activities of Greenpeace in Russia for any reason does not mean that these are the intrigues of enemies and competitors. Both that and another in the general case are speculation and conspiracy theories leading to incorrect conclusions and actions.
five.But my main conclusion is this. In the Beautiful Russia of the future, the openness of large nuclear corporations and enterprises is needed (and it will not arise itself), and developed public control over hazardous industries and technologies (any, not just those that someone has designated as bad), and competent media, courts and supervisory authorities, and strong and competent independent environmental NGOs, including those competent in nuclear matters, and more trust between the conditional authorities and society, which will not arise without all of the above. The nuclear industry is full of problems, and experts know them as well as activists, although they usually understand completely different things by them. But their solution requires not only political will, resources, technology, experience and specialists, but also the availability of working mechanisms to achieve public consensus.Even if this is all far beyond the scope of the topic under consideration, and I take on a lot when I am an expert only in a number of atomic issues, but it seems to me that the public resonance on DUHF and on many nuclear issues is caused by this tangle of social problems in our country, not just technical issues. As they say in an old Soviet joke about plumbing - "here the whole system needs to be changed."
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READ OTHER PARTS >>> PART 1 , PART 2 , PART 3