DECONTAMINATION & DECOMMISSIONING |
Russia supports cleanup in Japan
NEI speaks to Sergey Polgorodnik, Tenex director general, about its work at the Fukushima site in Japan
Below: Sergey Polgorodnik is Tenex director general
It’s been more than a decade since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. How has Russia supported accident management and cleanup efforts? Over the past six years, Rosatom research institutes have been actively involved in R&D and engineering works aimed at remediation of the Fukushima Daiichi site. The government of Japan subsidises most of these projects. For example, one was to create a demonstration large-scale facility for the removal of tritium from liquid radioactive waste, other projects were related to the simulation of corium (material formed during the melting of nuclear fuel and internals) and the study of its properties in order to choose optimal solutions for its retrieval, packaging and storage. There are several engineering projects focused on solving specific technical problems at the plant site. Another area of work is projects
carried out between Russian and Japanese ministries of education. There are bilateral research projects and student exchange programmes.
How can decommissioning expertise from Russian nuclear facilities support remediation in Japan? Are there any common challenges? Please give some examples. One of the examples of
somewhat similar challenges is remediation following the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Although the nature and reasons of these accidents and the reactors themselves are different, there are certain parallels. We use the experience and invite Chernobyl experts for our projects and proposals for the Japanese side. The Chernobyl experience is useful in predicting the properties of molten nuclear fuel, in studying the migration of radionuclides into the environment, as well as in resolving the issues of area cleanup, etc. Other examples of similar challenges can be found in
the Russian experience of nuclear legacy management. The Russian nuclear programme is one of the oldest in the world — last year we celebrated our 75th anniversary. As in other countries that have been using nuclear energy for a long time, we have many unique objects created during the formative years of nuclear energy, when there was neither experience nor understanding of how to work with radiation and radiation hazard. In 2015, Rosatom completed the first state programme aimed at eliminating the most dangerous nuclear legacy facilities. We have gained extensive experience in solving non-standard tasks, developed special technologies, and tested many unique solutions, like handling of high-level waste of unknown composition, its subsequent retrieval, packaging, transportation and storage, which could be useful at Fukushima.
In addition, Russia is one of the few countries actively developing technologies for reprocessing various types of spent nuclear fuel. We believe that the safest way to handle spent nuclear fuel in the long term is to separate it into components and handle each of these components separately. Rosatom enterprises have solutions for the reprocessing
of practically any type of spent nuclear fuel, including leaky, emergency and even destroyed nuclear fuel.
In your view, how important are remote/robotic technologies for decommissioning? Is Russia supporting development of these technologies for use at Fukushima? Using robotic systems could help solve certain decommissioning tasks safer, faster and more efficiently. There are facilities where even an initial inspection should be carried out using robots. In Russia, we use both well-known brands and robots of our own design for dismantling works. For example, we have developed a robot to dismantle the graphite stack of our first uranium graphite reactors. We have also made our own robot for detecting welds in spent nuclear fuel pools which may make it possible to restore and weld them in place, under water, without unloading the fuel.
26 | May 2021 |
www.neimagazine.com
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