Humanity Can Provide Itself With Safe Energy For Five Thousand Years

11:13, September 28, 2020

An UrFU physicist told why it is necessary to switch to a bycomponent nuclear system

Humanity can switch to practically inexhaustible energy resources and provide itself with fuel for the next 5 thousand years. Mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) will significantly minimize radioactive waste and reduce the need for natural uranium mining. Thus, the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant is preparing for a historic event for the nuclear power industry. In 2021, the full-scale transition of the fourth power unit with the BN-800 reactor to the core with a full load of MOX fuel will begin. And a year later, fuel assemblies with uranium fuel will no longer be used in the reactor core.

“The transition to MOX fuel is a necessary element for the transition to a two-component nuclear power system. That is, in reactors with fast neutrons, uranium-238 will be converted into plutonium-239, which, as a mixed uranium-plutonium fuel, will be used to operate pressurized water reactors known as VVER, ”a leading researcher of the radiation laboratory told Oblastnaya Gazeta Institute of Industrial Ecology, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Experimental Physics of the Ural Federal University Alexey Yekidin. - The reserves of uranium-235, currently used by many nuclear power plants, will only last for the next 100-150 years. By switching to a two-component nuclear system, we will accumulate a tremendous potential of the energy resource and, in fact, will provide ourselves with fuel for the next 5 thousand years. From the point of view of human life, it is an inexhaustible resource”.

Nowadays, nuclear power plants in Russia (and in the world) mainly operate on thermal neutron reactors. They generate energy through the fission process of the isotope uranium-235, the reserves of which are limited. But in natural uranium, its content is extremely small - about 1%. The remaining 99% is uranium-238, which is sent for temporary storage or disposal as radioactive waste. MOX fuel is created from a mixture of uranium, consisting mainly of the isotope-238 and plutonium oxides, released during the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.

The BN-800 reactor, which was launched at the fourth power unit of the BaNPP in 2016, was originally designed to use MOX fuel. But until recently, he worked exclusively on uranium. The first batch of the new fuel, produced on an industrial scale, was loaded into the reactor in January. As explained to "Oblgazeta" in the press service of the BNPP, now about 5% of the fuel assemblies in the reactor core are filled with it. In January-February 2021, it is planned to repair the fourth power unit, during which about 37% of assemblies with MOX fuel from their total number will be installed in the core. The first results of using the technology can be summed up no earlier than the end of 2022.

“With the participation of BN-800, the final elements of the closed nuclear fuel cycle technology are being tested. A whole complex of enterprises is involved in this technology: research, radioactive waste processors, nuclear fuel manufacturers. There is still a lot of work to create and master the technology, Beloyarsk NPP is only a part of this large production chain, ”the BNPP explained.

For the development of the technology, Rosatom sparked a joint cooperation project inside of its framework of enterprises and scientific institutes. In particular, the fuel company TVEL was involved in the coordination and scientific management of the project. The basic technology for the manufacture of MOX pellet fuel was developed by the N.I. A. A. Bochvara (Moscow). Pilot assemblies with fuel were manufactured at RIAR (Ulyanovsk region), and industrial production was organized at the site of the Mining and Chemical Combine in Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk Territory). Now the plant is the only supplier of MOX fuel.