Seversk is the biggest closed city of Rosatom with the population over 116,000. The city forming enterprise is Siberian Chemical Combie (SCC) – one of the major nuclear power complexes in the world and the major nuclear fuel cycle front-end enterprise in Russia and in the whole world.
Today several ambitious innovation programs are being realized by SCC, such as uranium conversion center establishment (for UF6 preparation) and the ¨Break-Through¨ project fine-tuning technologies. The former suggests nuclear fuel cycle based on fast breeder reactor.
There are 6 thousand people currently working at the plant, however, upon the realization of the plans, up to a thousand new vacancies may appear. For the nearest 10 years the development of the plant will cost about 100 billion RUB.
“Tomsk region will inevitably become a place for nuclear power development. The switch to the new nuclear power in the region, which needs it not today, but tomorrow, will not entail immediate realization, but fundamental solving of technological, structural and economic problems. There are good opportunities for it” – says Evgenyi Adamov, head of the “Break-Through” project.
The priority for Seversk today is construction of a power complex, consisting of lead-cooled fast breeder reactor Brest-300 and transformer nuclear fuel cycle, including nuclear waste processing and solid nitride fuel emission.
Very Special Reactor
The Breast-300 reactor is quite unique. For instance, during its run it can accumulate fuel, which allows it to provide the nuclear power industry with the resources for another thousand years. At the same time, according to the project developers, the nuclear catastrophes are absolutely out of question due to the reactor structural features.
Currently the preparation of documentation concerning the reactor allocation license is in progress. Public hearings on the project are an important stage of the work, materials are being prepared. “According to the Federal Target Program schedule, we should take to the power launch in 2020” – Vadim Lemekhov, the device chief designer, is giving his prognosis.
This project offers plenty of innovations. The developers already know most of the construction materials. The reactor vessel has strong heat-insulation, which will allow easy maintenance and refueling. ¨We expect the lead to stay unfrozen for a year after the installation, which is quite enough for any scheduled maintenance¨ – Vadim Lemekhov remarked. However the project also offers the system of heating and temperature maintenance, he says.
Until recently the uranium in Seversk was purified using the column-typed mounts. These days the plant has switched to centrifugal extractor units, which are much more modern and economical. “We separate uranium from its stable chemical impurities, including regenerate from uranium-232. No one has ever used this kind of extractor before. In the world there is no analog to this centrifugal unit” – says Vyacheslav Glushenkov, the head of SCC.
The unit was introduced in August 2012, now the fine-tuning technology is in progress. Rated power development is scheduled for April 2013. Inside the unit uranium gets purified with the help of centrifugal forces, which are 500-800 times higher than the earth gravity. The system is compact and fully automatic.
The system is maintained by two operators that make one shift. For now there are six shifts in total. The average salary at the plant is over 52,000 RUB that is why many people are competing to be able to work for this high-technology enterprise. On the whole no more than 30 people will be needed here.
“All these new kinds of production that we are starting won´t demand a big number of people. There will be no need in such a numerous personnel as it used to be. Meanwhile the scope will increase and the salaries will grow respectively. Besides we are going to provide additional aids for economics which will allow us to create new jobs ¨, says the SCC Director Sergey Tochilin.
The introduction of new technology even now allowed increasing the power by half. Opening onto design level the scope will increase more than four times, while the staff will be reduced twice and the energy consumption – three times.
Uranium finishing unit on centrifugal extractors will be the base of future conversion facility. As we remember, about two years ago there was made a decision to concentrate Russian uranium conversion power in SCC, so by 2016 a production center of the highest level is to appear in Seversk.
Decommissioning
Another important project connected with the development of SCC is Expo-Demo Centre for IGR reactors decommissioning (“ODC UGR” LLC). The high experience of the centre specialists will make the plant one of the leading specialists in the field.
Today SCC is preparing to decommission plutonium reactors. There used to be five of them in Seversk, now all of them are stopped. Besides the centre already has three state contracts with the total sum of more than 1.5 billion RUB: the enterprise is working on decommissioning of the reactors of Mining and Chemical Combine, which is a part of Rosatom as well as the Beloyarsk NPP stopped units. There are 254 people working for ODC right now, the number of staff is expected to increase up to 320 employees in future.
“Our main task for all our innovation projects is to organize production the way it would be in demand on the global market, becoming more high-tech and efficient. For this we have both technologies and specialists” – sums up Sergey Tochilin.
