Plutonium use in nuclear power in Russia

Abstract

In the last two or three years world attention has been focused on plutonium. Plutonium is a byproduct of the production of electricity at nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is now a real factor of progress in energy production: about 17% of all electricity produced in the world is generated by nuclear power plants, and this percentage is increasing. It is being increasingly acknowledged that nuclear power is the only way of producing electricity that is capable of providing power to mankind over a long period of time and successfully solving global ecological problems (greenhouse effect, acid rain, and so on). However, the potential danger of nuclear power cannot be ignored (production of plutonium and other highly toxic products in spent fuel).The desire worldwide to make nuclear disarmament irreversible makes this problem particularly acute. There are now two extreme points of view regarding plutonium: In one plutonium is a waste product of the nuclear power industry and in the other plutonium is a national property. This approach is based on the objective difference in the levels of technological development of the nuclear fuel cycle in specific countries and not on only the subjective separation into nuclear specialists and environmentalists. If a country has a quite well-developed technology for utilizing plutonium so as to solve the problems of nonproliferation, safety, and ecological acceptability of a fuel cycle incorporating plutonium, and economic competitiveness, then plutonium is a national resource. In the opposite case, plutonium is a source of danger on a global scale.Work on the use of plutonium in nuclear power, mastery of the uranium-plutonium fuel cycle and its technology, analysis of the role of fast and thermal reactors, and other problems has been intensively conducted for a long time at the enterprises of the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation. It should be noted that mankind is only now beginning to master nuclear fission reactions, and many aspects of this progress, including the fact that the possibilities have not been completely determined, still lie ahead.Plutonium Utilization in Fast Reactors. The technology for fabricating mixed uranium-plutonium pellet fuel for fast reactors has now been perfected, and industrial prototype installations "Granat" and "Paket" for production of fuel and fuel elements have been built by the Industrial Association "Mayak."Two cores loaded with weapons-grade plutonium oxide have been tested in the BR-10 experimental fast reactor. Large batches of fuel elements, made of mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel, and fabricated by different technologies using plutonium with different isotopic composition, have been investigated and tested in the BOR-60 reactor at the Scientific-Reasearch Institute of Nuclear Reactors. This reactor has been operating on mixed oxide fuel, based on energy plutonium of different isotopic composition, for many years. Reactor tests, followed by the investigation and chemical reprocessing of experimental fuel assembli...