"Mayak" attracted a nuclear reactor

Igor Kurchatov personally monitored the progress of work on the "peaceful atom" project. Soon, nuclear power plants, as a new and promising way to generate energy, began to be built around the world. The Chelyabinsk region also had to acquire its own station.

"Peaceful" atom

The South Ural NPP is a long-term construction larger than the Chelyabinsk metro. The site for the station began to be erected 10 years earlier than digging tunnels - in 1982 - but apart from the barely begun skeletons of buildings in the village of Metlino, which is 15 km from Ozersk and 140 km from Chelyabinsk, there is nothing to this day. The first time construction was suspended in 1986: the terrible Chernobyl accident extinguished the desire to create such facilities for a long time. Now almost four and a half thousand people live in the Chelyabinsk region, one way or another affected by that disaster - these are the liquidators and their families. They on own experience made sure that jokes with radiation are bad and forever convinced that Atom stations cannot be safe.

However, the South Urals residents have faced the consequences of radioactive contamination before. From 1949 to 1956, Mayak waste was dumped into the Techa River; in 1957, the explosion of a radioactive waste tank at the same Mayak led to the contamination of a vast territory (the East Ural radioactive trace). The echo of those events is still felt, therefore, when in 2006 the construction of its own nuclear power plant was to be resumed, protests were held throughout the region.

Some pluses

The regional government did not share the fears of the residents. From the point of view of the economy, the region had a shortage of energy - about 20% had to be purchased from neighbors. The construction of the station also guaranteed the creation of about ten thousand new jobs for the residents of Ozyorsk and Snezhinsk. The South Ural NPP was supposed to become the safest in the world in terms of waste processing: spent fuel practically did not need to be transported, the Mayak Production Association located right there planned to deal with its neutralization.

However, the start of construction, scheduled for 2011-2013, was again postponed indefinitely. And the reason for this was by no means the indignation of citizens and environmentalists, but the reasons, again, purely economic. During the crisis of 2008, energy consumption in the region decreased, and the federal authorities considered the construction unprofitable. Moreover, according to the new project, the South Ukraine NPP should have been equipped with the latest fast neutron reactors, the creation and operation of which cost 2-3 times more than conventional ones. Rosatom, in turn, considered the amount of water in the nearby lakes to be insufficient, which, according to experts' calculations, would not be enough to properly cool the four reactors. The public calmed down again.

To be or not to be?

They started talking about construction again in 2011 - and again “at the wrong time”: in March, a strong earthquake and tsunami damaged the power units of the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima-1, which caused a leak of radioactive water and pollution of a vast territory. Frightened by the consequences of the disaster and the ineffectiveness of Japan's liquidation measures, many European countries hastened to develop programs to phase out nuclear energy. For example, Germany plans to close all of its 17 nuclear power plants by 2022, as do the UK and Spain.

Panic moods were not shared in Russia: Rosatom specialists are sure that Japanese engineers made too many mistakes in the first hours after the accident, and the unacceptable wear of the reactor was the main cause of the disaster. Therefore, negotiations between federal and regional officials regarding the construction of the South Ukraine NPP nevertheless took place, albeit under the displeased murmur of environmentalists.

The project of the station was once again revised - now it was planned to launch 2 power units with a total capacity of 2400 MW. But the agreement was not reached again - Rosatom still did not like the water supply scheme, the federal authorities were in no hurry to allocate funds. It was only in November 2013 that it became known that the South Ukraine NPP was included in the scheme for the construction of energy facilities until 2030. This means that any work in Ozersk will not begin until 2025. In any case, nothing depends on the Chelyabinsk region - the financing of such facilities lies entirely with federal budget, and who pays, he orders the music.

From the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant, a train of several container cars arrived at the Mayak Production Association, which delivered fuel assemblies of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from AMB reactors (Atom Mirny Bolshoy) to the radiochemical plant. On October 30, the wagon was successfully unloaded, during which the cassette with AMB SNF was removed from the transport and packaging kit and placed in the storage pool of the RT-1 plant.

SNF management from AMB reactors is one of the most acute problems in the field of nuclear and radiation safety. Two AMB reactors at the Beloyarsk NPP were shut down in 1981 and 1989. SNF has been unloaded from the reactors and is currently stored in the spent fuel pools of the Beloyarsk NPP and in the storage pool of the Mayak Production Association. The characteristic features of AMB spent fuel assemblies (SFAs) are the presence of about 40 types of fuel compositions and large overall dimensions: the length of SFAs reaches 14 meters.

A year ago, in November 2016, a container wagon arrived at the Mayak Production Association, delivering a cassette with spent fuel from AMB reactors to the radiochemical plant, which was removed from the transport and packaging kit and placed in the storage pool of the RT-1 plant.

The delivery to the enterprise was carried out in the form of an experimental batch in order to make sure that the Beloyarsk NPP and Mayak are ready for the removal of this type of SNF for reprocessing. Therefore, on October 30, 2017, the extraction of the 14-meter long length from the container and installation in the storage place took place in the normal mode.

“The start of the export of fuel from AMB SNF from the Beloyarsk NPP to our enterprise crowned the long hard work of specialists from several organizations of Rosatom,” said Dmitry Kolupaev, Chief Engineer Software "Mayak". – This is the final stage of the process of creating a transport and technological export scheme, including a set of technical and organizational work at the Mayak Production Association and the Beloyarsk NPP, as well as the creation of a railway echelon with unique TUK-84 transport and packaging kits for the transportation of SNF from AMB developed by RFNC-VNIITF. The implementation of the entire project will make it possible to solve the problem of radiation-hazardous facilities - these are the nuclear fuel storage pools of the first and second units of the Beloyarsk NPP, and in the medium term to begin decommissioning the power units themselves. Before the "Mayak" stands even more difficult task: within three years, the construction of the section for butchering and canning is to be completed, where 14-meter SFAs will be fragmented and placed in canisters, the dimensions of which will allow processing this fuel at a radiochemical plant. And then we will be able to transfer the SNF from AMB reactors to a completely safe state. Uranium will again be used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants, and radioactive waste will be reliably vitrified.”

Beloyarsk NPP is the first commercial nuclear power plant in the history of the country's nuclear power industry, and the only one with reactors of different types on the same site. The Beloyarsk NPP operates the world's only power units with industrial-grade fast neutron reactors BN-600 and BN-800. The first power units of the Beloyarsk NPP with thermal reactors AMB-100 and AMB-200 have exhausted their service life

Nuclear power plants

• Balakovo (Balakovo, Saratov region).
• Beloyarskaya (Beloyarsky, Yekaterinburg region).
• Bilibino ATES (Bilibino, Magadan region).
• Kalininskaya (Udomlya, Tver region).
• Kola (Polyarnye Zori, Murmansk region).
• Leningrad (Sosnovy Bor, St. Petersburg region).
• Smolensk (Desnogorsk, Smolensk region).
• Kursk (Kurchatov, Kursk region).
• Novovoronezhskaya (Novovoronezhsk, Voronezh region).

Special regime cities of the nuclear weapons complex

• Arzamas-16 (now the Kremlin, Nizhny Novgorod region). All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics. Development and design of nuclear charges. Experimental plant "Communist". Electromechanical plant "Avangard" (serial production).
• Zlatoust-36 (Chelyabinsk region). Serial production of nuclear warheads (?) and ballistic missiles for submarines (SLBMs).
• Krasnoyarsk-26 (now Zheleznogorsk). Underground mining and chemical plant. Processing of irradiated fuel from nuclear power plants, production of weapons-grade plutonium. Three nuclear reactors.
• Krasnoyarsk-45. Electromechanical plant. Uranium enrichment (?). Serial production of ballistic missiles for submarines (SLBMs). Creation of spacecraft, mainly satellites for military, reconnaissance purposes.
• Sverdlovsk-44. Serial assembly of nuclear weapons.
• Sverdlovsk-45. Serial assembly of nuclear weapons.
• Tomsk-7 (now Seversk). Siberian Chemical Plant. Enrichment of uranium, production of weapons-grade plutonium.
• Chelyabinsk-65 (now Ozersk). Software "Mayak". Reprocessing of irradiated fuel from nuclear power plants and ship nuclear power plants, production of weapons-grade plutonium.
• Chelyabinsk-70 (now Snezhinsk). VNII technical physics. Development and design of nuclear charges.

Nuclear weapons test site

• Northern (1954-1992). Since February 27, 1992 - the Central training ground of the Russian Federation.

Research and educational nuclear centers and institutions with research nuclear reactors

• Sosnovy Bor (St. Petersburg region). Training Center Navy.
• Dubna (Moscow region). Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
• Obninsk (Kaluga region). NPO "Typhoon". Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE). Installations "Topaz-1", "Topaz-2". Naval Training Center.
• Moscow. Institute of Atomic Energy. I. V. Kurchatova (thermonuclear complex ANGARA-5). Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI). Research Production Association"Aileron". Research and production association "Energy". Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics.
• Protvino (Moscow region). Institute of High Energy Physics. Accelerator of elementary particles.
• Sverdlovsk branch of the Research and Design Institute of Experimental Technologies. (40 km from Yekaterinburg).
• Novosibirsk. Academgorodok of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• Troitsk (Moscow region). Institute for Thermonuclear Research (installations "Tokomak").
• Dimitrovgrad (Ulyanovsk region). Research Institute of Nuclear Reactors. V.I. Lenin.
• Nizhny Novgorod. Design Bureau of Nuclear Reactors.
• St. Petersburg. Research and production association "Electrophysics". Radium Institute. V. G. Khlopina. Research and Design Institute of Energy Technology. Research Institute of Radiation Hygiene of the Ministry of Health of Russia.
• Norilsk. Experimental nuclear reactor.
• Podolsk Scientific Research Production Association "Luch".

Uranium deposits, enterprises for its extraction and primary processing

• Lermontov (Stavropol Territory). Uranium-molybdenum inclusions of volcanic rocks. Software "Diamond". Extraction and enrichment of ore.
• Pervomaisky (Chita region). Zabaikalsky Mining and Processing Plant.
• Vikhorevka (Irkutsk region). Extraction (?) of uranium and thorium.
• Aldan (Yakutia). Mining of uranium, thorium and rare earth elements.
• Slyudyanka (Irkutsk region). Deposit of uranium-containing and rare earth elements.
• Krasnokamensk (Chita region). Uranium mine.
• Borsk (Chita region). A depleted (?) uranium mine - the so-called "gorge of death", where ore was mined by prisoners of Stalin's legers.
• Lovozero (Murmansk region). Uranium and thorium minerals.
• Lake Onega area. Uranium and vanadium minerals.
• Vishnevogorsk, Novogorny (Central Ural). uranium mineralization.

Uranium metallurgy

• Elektrostal (Moscow region). Software "Machine-building plant".
• Novosibirsk. PO "Plant of chemical concentrates".
• Glazov (Udmurtia). PO "Chepetsky Mechanical Plant".

Enterprises for the production of nuclear fuel, highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium

• Chelyabinsk-65 (Chelyabinsk region). Software "Mayak".
• Tomsk-7 (Tomsk region). Siberian chemical plant.
• Krasnoyarsk-26 (Krasnoyarsk Territory). Mining and chemical plant.
• Yekaterinburg. Ural Electrochemical Plant.
• Kirovo-Chepetsk (Kirov region). Chemical plant them. B. P. Konstantinova.
• Angarsk (Irkutsk region). Chemical electrolysis plant.

Shipbuilding and ship repair plants and nuclear fleet bases

• St. Petersburg. Leningrad Admiralty Association. Software "Baltic Plant".
• Severodvinsk. Production Association "Sevmashpredpriyatie", Production Association "Sever".
• Nizhny Novgorod. Software "Krasnoe Sormovo".
• Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Shipyard "Leninsky Komsomol".
• Big Stone (Primorsky Territory). Shipyard "Zvezda".
• Murmansk. Technical base of PTO "Atomflot", shipyard "Nerpa".

Bases of nuclear submarines of the Northern Fleet

• Zapadnaya Litsa (Nerpichya Bay).
• Gadzhiyevo.
• Polar.
• Vidyaevo.
• Yokanga.
• Gremikha.

Bases of nuclear submarines of the Pacific Fleet

• Fishing.
• Vladivostok (Gulf of Vladimir and Pavlovsky Bay),
• Soviet harbor.
• Nakhodka.
• Magadan.
• Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky.
• Korsakov.

Submarine ballistic missile (SLBM) storage areas

• Revda (Murmansk region).
• Nenoksa (Arkhangelsk region).

Points for equipping missiles with nuclear warheads and loading into submarines

• Severodvinsk.
• Guba Okolnaya (Kola Bay).

Places of temporary storage of irradiated nuclear fuel and enterprises for its processing

• NPP industrial sites.
• Murmansk. Lighter "Lepse", mother ship "Imandra" PTO "Atom-flot".
• Polar. Technical base of the Northern Fleet.
• Yokanga. Technical base of the Northern Fleet.
• Pavlovsky bay. Technical base of the Pacific Fleet.
• Chelyabinsk-65. Software "Mayak".
• Krasnoyarsk-26. Mining and chemical plant.

Industrial accumulators and regional storages (repositories) of radioactive waste

• NPP industrial sites.
• Krasnoyarsk-26. Mining and chemical plant, RT-2.
• Chelyabinsk-65. Software "Mayak".
• Tomsk-7. Siberian chemical plant.
• Severodvinsk (Arkhangelsk region). The industrial site of the Zvyozdochka shipyard of the Sever Production Association.
• Big Stone (Primorsky Territory). Industrial site of the Zvezda shipyard.
• Zapadnaya Litsa (Andreeva Bay). Technical base of the Northern Fleet.
• Gremikha. Technical base of the Northern Fleet.
• Shkotovo-22 (Chazhma Bay). Ship repair and technical base of the Pacific Fleet.
• Fishing. Technical base of the Pacific Fleet.

Storage and disposal sites for decommissioned navy ships and civilian ships with nuclear power plants

• Polyarny, base of the Northern Fleet.
• Gremikha, base of the Northern Fleet.
• Yokanga, base of the Northern Fleet.
• Zapadnaya Litsa (Andreeva Bay), base of the Northern Fleet.
• Severodvinsk, industrial water area of ​​the production association "Sever".
• Murmansk, Atomflot technical base.
• Bolshoy Kamen, water area of ​​the Zvezda shipyard.
• Shkotovo-22 (Chazhma Bay), technical base of the Pacific Fleet.
• Sovetskaya Gavan, the water area of ​​the military-technical base.
• Rybachy, base of the Pacific Fleet.
• Vladivostok (Pavlovsky Bay, Vladimir Bay), bases of the Pacific Fleet.

Undeclared areas of liquid and solid RW dumping and flooding

• Discharge sites for liquid radioactive waste in the Barents Sea.
• Areas of inundation of solid radioactive waste in shallow bays of the Kara side of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and in the area of ​​the Novaya Zemlya deep-water basin.
• Point of unauthorized flooding of the Nickel lighter with solid radioactive waste.
• Guba Chernaya of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The place where the pilot ship "Kit" was laid up, on which experiments were carried out with chemical warfare agents.

Contaminated areas

• A 30-kilometer sanitary zone and areas contaminated with radionuclides as a result of the catastrophe on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
• The East Ural radioactive trace formed as a result of the explosion on September 29, 1957 of a container with high-level waste at an enterprise in Kyshtym (Chelyabinsk-65).
• Radioactive contamination of the Techa-Iset-Tobol-Irtysh-Ob river basin as a result of long-term discharge of radiochemical production waste at the facilities of the nuclear (weapons and energy) complex in Kyshtym and the spread of radioisotopes from open radioactive waste storage facilities due to wind erosion.
• Radioactive contamination of the Yenisei and individual sections of the floodplain as a result of the industrial operation of two once-through water reactors of a mining and chemical plant and the operation of a radioactive waste storage facility in Krasnoyarsk-26.
• Radioactive contamination of the territory in the sanitary protection zone of the Siberian Chemical Combine (Tomsk-7) and beyond.
• Officially recognized sanitary zones at the sites of the first nuclear explosions on land, under water and in the atmosphere at the nuclear weapons test sites on Novaya Zemlya.
• Totsky district of the Orenburg region. Place of conducting military exercises on the stamina of personnel and military equipment to the damaging factors of the nuclear explosion on September 14, 1954 in the atmosphere.
• Radioactive release as a result of an unauthorized launch of a nuclear submarine reactor, accompanied by a fire, at the Zvyozdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk (Arkhangelsk region) on February 12, 1965.
• Radioactive release as a result of an unauthorized start-up of a nuclear submarine reactor, accompanied by a fire, at the Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard in Nizhny Novgorod in 1970.
• Local radioactive contamination of the water area and adjacent areas as a result of unauthorized start-up and thermal explosion of the nuclear submarine reactor during its reloading at the shipyard of the Navy in Shkotovo-22 (Chazhma Bay) in 1985.
• Pollution of coastal waters of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and open areas of the Kara and Barents Seas due to the discharge of liquid and flooding of solid radioactive waste by ships of the Navy and Atomflot.
• Underground venues nuclear explosions in the interests of the national economy, where the release of products of nuclear reactions to the surface of the earth is noted or underground migration of radionuclides is possible.

South Ural NPP ( Chelyabinsk NPP) location: Russia, Chelyabinsk region, the city of Ozersk -, nuclear power plant map of the world

Status: NPPs under construction , NPPs under construction in Russia

Planned South Ural Nuclear Power Plant

The planned site for the construction of the South Ural NPP (also known as the Chelyabinsk NPP) is the village of Metlino, 140 km northwest of Chelyabinsk, 15 km from the city of Ozersk. Planned capacity is 4,600 MW. South Ukraine NPP will consist of four power units with installed reactors of the type VVER-1200, with a capacity of 1,150 MW each. Near the village of Metlino there is a mothballed site for the construction of the South Ural NPP from three fast neutron reactors BN-800, which was launched in 1982, but later, due to the deteriorating economic situation, at the stage of 10 percent readiness, the work was frozen.

Chelyabinsk NPP on the map. Location options

Since relaunching in 2006 preparatory work for the construction of the South Ukraine NPP, the planned completion date was scheduled for 2020. The reactor type was changed to BN-1200. However, later the South Ural NPP was excluded from the list of construction of electric power facilities of the Russian Federation for 2011-2016, developed by the government, due to a general decrease in energy consumption in the country after the 2008 crisis. As a result, the construction of the first power unit of the Chelyabinsk NPP was postponed to 2021-2025 with the completion of the construction of the entire plant by 2030.

The construction of the South Ural NPP is due to the high level of energy shortage in the Chelyabinsk region. At the time of 2006, about 20% of the region's total demand was purchased outside its borders, as a rule, in the energy-abundant Tyumen region.

The commission that dealt with the issue of construction decided that the site, launched in 1982, is in a state unsuitable for further construction. As a result, a decision was made to build a nuclear power plant with a capacity of up to 4.6 GW with a service life of 50 years and the possibility of extending for another 10-30 years. The main equipment must be supplied only Russian companies. In 2008, a declaration of intent to build the South Ukraine NPP was submitted. Information about the construction of the South Ural NPP can be found quite a bit even in graduation, control, semester or other academic work students and schoolchildren on 5orka.ru, but things are still there. Many young specialists who are ready to work at the plant have already been trained, and such education as the Chelyabinsk NPP is still only in the form of plans and models.

To cool the station's reactors, it was also necessary to build the Suroyamsk reservoir with a total volume of 178 million cubic meters, although it was originally planned to use the water of nearby 13 lakes with a total volume of 894 million cubic meters of water, of which 346 is a useful, usable volume.

Plants similar to the project of the South Ural NPP on VVER-type reactors have already been built by Russian nuclear scientists in, or are being built in and