Russia is one of the few nuclear countries that have all the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle -from uranium mining and power production by nuclear power plants, reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and separation from spent fuel of fissioning materials and radionuclides suitable for use in industry, medicine, and elsewhere up to reprocessing and disposal of radioactive wastes in deep geological formations. This makes it necessary to treat the problem of safety of the nuclear fuel cycle as a systems problem, the approach to which must be the same for all elements of the cycle. The difficulty here lies in the fact that the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle are technologically diverse and belong to different sectors of industry (mining, power engineering, machine building, chemical industry, and finally science).Many elements of the nuclear fuel cycle are directly connected to atomic energy worldwide as well as the military nuclear industry. Because of the latter connection, the influence of national and international public opinion on the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle was limited with respect to both the corresponding standardization base and the principles and approaches to ensuring safety of the design, construction, and operation of the elements.In the present report we analyze trends in assuring the safety of the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle and we determine a possible approach to the formulation of systems of standardized specifications from the standpoint of the state regulatory agency responsible for ensuring nuclear and radiation safety (Gosatomnadzor).The types of nuclear-fuel-cycle elements considered here do not reflect the entire diversity of production, materials and parts which pose a radiation hazard to the public. Only ttie elements that pose the greatest hazard to the public and the environment are considered: a mining and metallurgical complex, an enrichment plant, a nuclear fuel manufacturer, a complex that transports spent nuclear fuel, nuclear power plants, a radiochemical plant, and an site for storing radioactive wastes for recycling of fissioning materials or for extracting plutonium from weapons.We shall assess each type of fuel-cycle element from the standpoint of the potential hazard it poses to the public and the environment, the degree of stress in the parameters of the technological processes, and past accidents. Safety approaches are compared for the most highly developed element of the nuclear fuel cycle -nuclear power plants.An important problem in formulating modern safety requirements for the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle and producing a corresponding system of standardized specifications is to extend them to already existing objects of the nuclear fuel cycle.
COMPARATIVE POTENTIAL HAZARD OF THE ELEMENTS OF THE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLEWe shall compare, on the basis of the parameters presented in Table 1, the potential hazard of the elements of the nuclear fuel cycle as a factor determining the development of a standardized base. We shall explain the reason for choosing ...
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