The pilot demonstration centre (PDC) will be built on the site of the Mining and Chemical Combine (MCC) at Zheleznogorsk near Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. The plant is unique, having no analog in the world, with the basic nuclear production located underground. The center will practice most safe innovative technologies of SNF reprocessing, its work allowing Russia to close its nuclear fuel cycle.
The Center of the Future
The center will initially be used to develop and test new technologies for spent fuel from VVER-1000 reactors reprocessing, meeting the requirements of financial viability, technological safety and ecological acceptability, as well as non-proliferation of fission materials regime. Innovative technologies of SNF reprocessing will be raised to commercial scale, the new types of equipment, used in SNF radiochemical reprocessing, will be tested and improved.
As a result of SNF reprocessing the center will produce uranium oxide concentrate, uranium, plutonium and actinide oxide blend, cured fission products. Uranium-plutonium oxide will be sent for producing mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, which by that time will be conducted at the MCC, while the fission products will be conditioned, treated and minimized up to compact solid shape, to be further expelled from human environment for long-term controlled storage.
Conditions of the Tender
Today’s tender is announced for the first start-up complex, including the building with research chambers, said Sergey Novikov, Rosatom spokesman. According to him, the tender for the construction of the full-scale reprocessing facilities will be announced after the approval of a new federal program “Nuclear and radiation safety provision for 2016 and beyond”. The General Contractor will have to finish construction in a three year period and put it in commission before December 10, 2015.
In 2011 the MCC launched the first stage of at-reactor dry storage facilities of the Leningrad, Kursk and Smolensk NPPs with the total volume of NSF amounting to 8129 tons, while in 2012 the combine started its second stage with the same storage capacity. The General Contractor of the two stages is Bureyagesstroy, a Russian construction company. Pavel Starodubtsev, Deputy Director General, said that his company was currently considering an opportunity to take part in the new tender.
