A one-stop-shop for spent fuel management is one way to describe Russia’s Mining and Chemical Complex (MCC) near Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. The complex is designed to handle spent fuel at its different stages, all at one site. In many countries, these activities — involving fuel that is no longer useful but still very radioactive — are performed at separate facilities that are, in some cases, up to hundreds of kilometers apart. By taking an integrated approach, Russia’s national strategy for spent fuel management aims to improve efficiency, cut costs and optimize safety and security.
“Russia’s nuclear power industry is continuing to develop and increase its contribution to the country’s overall energy mix. So, we need to make sure that the management of spent nuclear fuel is reliable, sustainable, safe and secure,” said Anzhelika Khaperskaya, a senior manager in the Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Project Office of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom), and one of the designers of the integrated approach. “The integrated complex will help us cut down on the need to transport nuclear materials or waste and allow us to focus safety and security measures in one place, which is also better from an economic point of view.”
About 4000 kilometers east of Moscow, in central Siberia, the repurposing of the MCC under this integrated approach began in 2017. The site’s existing personnel and facilities provided the necessary infrastructure to jumpstart the integration.
Previously, Russia had primarily stored its spent fuel and partly processed this fuel at the RT-1 plant at the Mayak Production Association near Ekaterinburg, about 1600 kilometers east of Moscow, in western Siberia.
Unlike the RT-1 plant, which mainly handles reprocessing and has a small pilot fabrication facility, the MCC already has wet and dry spent fuel storage, as well as facilities for reprocessing and fabrication of new fuels for light water and fast reactors, and will eventually have an underground research laboratory for high-level waste disposal. The complex is expected to be fully integrated and operational by 2035.
The integrated complex will improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the Russian nuclear industry and make nuclear energy even safer and more environmentally friendly.
