Tag Archives: Mayak Chemical Combine

The 2017 Nuclear Cloud: Unreported Nuclear Accidents

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The probable culprit behind a mysterious cloud of radioactive particles detected floating above much of Europe in 2017 appears to have been identified. The radiation spike – in the form of an extremely high airborne concentration of the radioactive isotope ruthenium–106 – was detected by scientists in October 2017, but the source of the dramatic radiation surge (almost 1,000 times normal levels) was never definitively confirmed.  At the time, many speculated that nuclear facilities in Russia were responsiblefor what was perceived as an accidental ruthenium–106 release – despite denials at the time by Russian authorities.

Now new research looks to back up the Russian origin hypothesis, according to an international team of almost 70 scientists led by radionuclides researcher Olivier Masson from the Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire (IRSN) in France.  “Based on airborne concentration spreading and chemical considerations, it is possible to assume that the release occurred in the Southern Urals region (Russian Federation),” the researchers explain in their new paper.

In what they claim is the most comprehensive assessment of the incident to date, Masson and his team analysed over 1,300 readings taken of the radioactive cloud, recorded by 176 measuring stations in almost 30 countries.  While the airborne radioactive matter released was not harmful to human health, it nonetheless constituted the most serious release of radioactive material since the Fukushima accident in 2011 – with maximum values of 176 millibecquerels of the isotope per cubic metre of air.

Shortly after the release, Russian officials suggested the radiation surge might have been due to a crashing satellite, with the isotope being released from the battery of a spacecraft re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.  “The measurements indicate the largest singular release of radioactivity from a civilian reprocessing plant,” says one of the researchers, radioecologist Georg Steinhauser from the University of Hanover.  Specifically, the new evidence – based on modelling of air mass movements around the time of the accident – indicates Russia’s Mayak nuclear complex in the southern Urals “should be considered as a likely candidate for the release”, the researchers conclude…

If the researchers’ modelling is correct, the accident occurred sometime in late September 2017, on either the 25th or 26th of the month – almost exactly 60 years to the day after one of the worst nuclear accidents in history at the same site: the Kyshtym disaster, ranked as the third most serious nuclear accident ever on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

Excerpts frorm  PETER DOCKRILL,  Mysterious Radioactive Cloud That Blanketed Europe Traced to Russian Nuclear Facility, Science Alert, July 30, 2019

Nuclear Waste Management in Russia

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Russia opened it first ever repository for low and medium level nuclear waste last week in a major benchmark for the country’s radioactive waste …Alexander Nikitin, chairman of the Environmental Rights Center Bellona… called the opening of the repository “the first important step” of Russia’s National Operator for Radioactive waste management.

The 48,000 cubic meter facility in the Sverdlovsk Region’s close nuclear city of Novouralsk lies at shallow depth and operates as a repository for what state nuclear corporation Rosatom classifies as type 3 and 4 wastes.The new facility will be able to store solid waste in isolation from the outside environment for 300 years, ten times longer than any other current storage schemes in Russia….

The Novouralsk site…. is the first of several that will open in Russia in the coming years….Rosatom plans to build a repository for type 3 and 4 waste at the closed nuclear city of Ozersk, where the notorious Mayak Chemical Combine is located. Another is planned for the closed city of Seversk in the Tomsk Region.

A site for Rosatom types 1 and 2 waste, representing high level nuclear waste, is currently being sited at the Nizhnekansky Rock Mass in the Krasnoyarsk Region.If the rock mass proves suitable for deep geological storage of intermediate and high level waste, construction of the repository could begin in 2024. How much waste the site would hold has yet to be determined.

Excerpts from Charles Digges, Russia’s first nuclear waste repository starts operation, Bellona, December 14, 2016

Nuclear Waste Management in Russia Gets Better

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Russia could be moving closer to shutting down its infamous and highly contaminated Mayak Chemical Combine– Russia’s only spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility – as the government builds a new pilot spent fuel storage and reprocessing facility in the closed city of Zheleznogorsk, near Krasnoyarsk, called RT-2. The Zheleznogorsk facility was once home to one of Russia’s 13 weapons grade plutonium production reactors…The pilot facilities at Zheleznogorsk – known as Krasnoyarsk-26 during the Soviet era – fall under the purview of an industry division called the National Operator, as established by Russia’s 2011 law “On handling spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.  The law further stipulates that all spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste produced prior to 2011 is the government’s financial responsibility, where beyond 2011, the bills go to individual nuclear power plants.

Alexander Nikitin, Chairman of the Environmental Right’s Center (ERC) Bellona in St. Petersburg, who has visited the Zheleznogorsk site twice this year, said after the AtomEco conference held late last month in Moscow that the facility is designed to hold and reprocess two of Russia’s thorniest types of spent nuclear fuel: that produced by VVER-1000 reactors and the spent fuel that comes from RBMKs [Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalniy], “High Power Channel-type Reactor” is a class of graphite-moderated nuclear power reactor designed and built by the Soviet Union.]  Russia has neither been able to store or reprocess fuel from the Chernobyl-type RBMK – one of the oldest, and most fatally flawed reactor lines in Russia’s civilian line up.

The Zheleznogorsk facility will also be capable of storing spent fuel from VVER-1000 reactors in wet storage. The spent RMBK fuel will be held at RT-2 in dry storage.  Spent VVER-1000 fuel is already arriving at Zheleznogorsk from reactors at the Balakovo, Kalinin, Novovoronezh and Rostov nuclear power plants. RBMK fuel will come from the Leningrad, Kursk, and Smolensk plants.

In all, RT-2 is designed to hold some 50,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. Russia currently hosts some 23,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, the majority of it stored on site at the reactors that produced it.

The reclamation of fuel from Soviet built reactors in former Soviet satellite states, which Russia is obligated to take back and either reprocess or store, is also slowing down… In the case of Hungary, for example, the local government has found it more economical to store the fuel itself than to repatriate it to Russia, easing up somewhat the amount of foreign spent fuel flowing to the country.

But Russia’ state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has finally – and publically – reached the conclusion that Mayak and its legacy of overwhelming radiological pollution is no longer viable…

Nikitin, was told during his visits to RT-2 that the pilot facilities are slated to push through their first batches of reprocessed VVER 1000 and RBMK fuel – while producing no residual radioactive waste – by 2018.  If the test runs prove successful, RT-2 could move on to industrial scale storage and reprocessing   But Nikitin and Rosatom have their doubts about the rosy predictions of the National Operator. For one, Nikitin is skeptical of the value of reprocessing RMBK fuel..

Charles Digges,New spent nuclear fuel storage and reprocessing site in Siberia could end contamination from Mayak,  Bellona,  Nov. 14, 2013