Fuel cycle. Strategies and national programmes in Russia

Full text of publication follows. A necessary condition to solve the problem of the balanced development of nuclear power capacities is to increase the potentialities of the adequate response to the changes that continuously take place in society and nature. This condition can be realised provided that nuclear power engineering is built as an interrelated, dynamically developed system. To establish this system it is necessary to determine the tasks of the nuclear reactor fuel cycles. And, undoubtedly, the most urgent problems of fuel cycles are related to spent nuclear fuel management. How to store? Or why reprocess? In any case, it becomes more difficult to set these problems aside. Possible ways to reduce the impact of long-lived minor actinides and fission products from spent nuclear fuel on the environment are related to separation technologies for partitioning (fractioning) of hazardous components and their transmutation. Russia has gained significant experience in the development these types of technologies. Some problems of minor actinide separation and burning can be solved using non-aqueous regeneration methods for spent oxide nuclear fuel. The granulated regenerate produced by this technology is applicable to vibro-packing of fuel elements and irradiation targets that make it possible to consider the current safety requirements and ecological compatibility of the processes and to significantly improve the technical and economical parameters of the fuel cycle as a whole. The aqueous technologies, which are widely studied, can be applied to removal of minor actinides and long-term fission products from reprocessing wastes of the LWR SNF that was demonstrated in the RT-1 Russian plant. Using the unique processes developed at present the classical PUREX process can be modified for fractioning minor actinides. The study of other methods aimed at the target removal of individual components from SNF, e.g. extraction in liquid CO2 or gas fluoride technology is also under way. Further progress in this area will be considered in Russia national programme, ''New Technological Platform of Nuclear Power Engineering'', which is currently being developed. New investigations and high-tech developments in this area will contribute to solving the problem of the balanced development of nuclear power facilities. (author)