The safety of nuclear power plants operating with the first-generation BBER-440 and RBMK-1000 reactors in Russia and other countries is being given special attention by interested organizations and by the public. These reactors were developed more than 20 years ago and do not adequately meet modern safety standards. More than 300 international, bilateral, and national projects, which have been carried out and are being conducted at the present time. have been devoted to this problem. All first-generation reactors have been repeatedly examined with the participation of the IAEA and experts from many countries. Specific technical and organizational measures, which make it possible to improve the safety of the reactors and to keep them operating until their service life is exhausted, have been identified and are being implemented [1].At the same time. suggestions are being advanced concerning the premature decommissioning of nuclear power plants with first-generation reactors. In considering such an alternative one of the most important problems is assessment of the practical possibilities for Russia and other countries for implementing measures associated with decommissioning of a nuclear power plant (replacement with fossil fuel power plants, increasing the production or purchases of fuel, and so on). In 1993, at the request of the heads of state of the "Seven" countries, the European reconstruction and development bank and the world bank, together with the International Energy Agency and the government of Russia, made an assessment [2, 3] of the cost of premature decommissioning of some operating nuclear power plants. In these works the first-generation BBER-440 and all RBMK reactors with a total power of 12.76 GW were to be decommissioned in 1995-1997. It was found that to replace the decommissioned power plants and to improve the safety of the operating power generating units 14.3 billion dollars will have to be invested in the period 1993-2000:2.5 billion to increase the safety of power plants, 9.6 billion for new thermal and power plants, 1.3 billion for electric transmission lines, and 0.9 billion for transporting gas. Moreover, approximately another 1.7 billion dollars will have to be spent each year for fuel. These estimates were made for a forecast according to which a large decrease of electricity consumption in the period 1995-2000 (by 15-20% compared to 1990) was assumed.The assessments by the world and European banks were made under some simplifying assumptions and they did not examine completely all links of the fuel-energy cycle:Only three unified electric power systems were considered: Western Europe, Center, and Central Volga; installation of new power plant capacities was not envisioned, with the exception of one or two BBER-1000 powergenerating units which are almost completed; new power plants were assumed to operate exclusively on natural gas (with gas-turbine units and underground gasification of coal), the necessity of additional production and transportation of gas was ignored (with the ex...
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