Strategies and national programs of closed fuel cycles: Russian vision

Nowadays, a transition to a full-scale closure of nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) is becoming an actual and key task for any long-term scenarios and nuclear power engineering development strategies. Only successful solution of these tasks and effective industrial implementation of closed NFC are acceptable from the public and ecological viewpoint allows the transition to advanced development of nuclear power engineering both on a national and regional scale and at the world level. It allows the transition of nuclear power engineering from accompanying and alternative component of the fuel energy balance to a primary and basic status, i.e. it makes nuclear power engineering a base for the world power engineering free of greenhouse gases and provided with resources available for millenniums (U-238 and in the future - thorium). The report includes an expert review and analysis of strategies and national programs of leading nuclear countries (France, Japan, USA, China and India) compared to the Russian plans and programs for the period upto 2050 on the basis of the public press materials. It covers the following key positions and directions of the closed NFC development: Start-up dates, scope and objectives of thermal reactor SNF reprocessing; Closed NFC technologies; Dates of putting into operation of pilot industrial fast reactors; Fast reactor fuel cycles; Plans and dates of fast reactor building start-up; Transition to high-density types of fast reactor fuel; Utilization of Pu-bearing fuel in thermal reactor; Nuclear Fuel Cycle closure on MAs; RAW management strategy; National policy, international cooperation and competition in the market of NFC services. In Russia, main system problems of large-scale nuclear power engineering relate to high and continuously growing volumes of SNF and a limited raw material base of the existing nuclear power engineering with thermal neutron reactors. To solve these problems, Federal Target Program 'Nuclear Energy Technologies of New Generation' was adopted in summer 2009. Within the framework of the program, transition to a new technological platform (NTP) of the Russian nuclear power industry is to be provided. The NTP is based d on the transition to U and Pu-closed NFC with Gen IV fast neutron reactors. Developed on this base, innovative nuclear power engineering shall fulfill the Russian demands for energy resources for a historically observable time period, simultaneously solving the problem concerning a reuse of earlier accumulated SNF. Areas of investigations to provide a transition to NTP of the Russian nuclear power engineering are presented