RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT IN THE USSR: A REVIEW OF UNCLASSIFIED SOURCES, 1963-1990
The Soviet Union operates a vast and growing radioactive waste management system. Detailed information on this system is rare and a general overall picture only emerges after a review of a great deal of literature. Poor waste management practices and slow implementation of environmental restoration activities have caused a great deal of national concern. The release of information on the cause and extent of an accident involving high-level waste at the Kyshtym production reactor site in 1957, as well as other contamination at the site, serve to highlight past Soviet waste management practices. As a result, the area of waste management is now receiving greater emphasis, and more public disclosures. Little is known about Soviet waste management practices related to uranium mining, conversion, and fuel fabrication processes. However, releases of radioactive material to the environment from uranium mining and milling operations, such as from mill tailings piles, are causing public concern. Official Soviet policy calls for a closed fuel cycle, with reprocessing of power reactor fuel that has been cooled for five years. For power reactors, only VVER-440 reactor fuel has been reprocessed in any significant amount, and a decision on the disposition of RBMK reactor fuel has been postponed indefinitely. Soviet reprocessing efforts are falling behind schedule; thus longer storage times for spent fuel will be required, primarily at multiple reactor stations. Information on reprocessing in the Soviet Union has been severely limited until 1989, when two reprocessing sites were acknowledged by the Soviets. A 400-metric ton (MT) per year reprocessing facility, located at Kyshtym, has been operational since 1949 for reprocessing production reactor fuel. This facility is reported to have been reprocessing VVER-440 and naval reactor fuel since 1978, with about 2000 MT of VVER-440 fuel being reprocessed by July 1989. A second facility, located near Krasnoyarsk and having a 1500 MT per year capacity as the first of several modules, was about 30% completed by July 1989. The completion of this plant was subsequently "indefinitely postponed." The initial reprocessing scheme at the Kyshtym site used sodium uranyl acetate precipitation from fuel dissolved in nitric acid solutions. The basic method~ ology now appears to be based on the conventional PUREX process. Dry reprocessing on a pilot or laboratory scale has been under way in Dimitrovgrad since 1984, and a larger unit is now being built, according to the French CEA. Perhaps significantly, much research is being done on partitioning high-level waste into element fractions. The Soviets appear to have the technology to remove radioactive noble gases released during reprocessing operations; however, there are no indications of its implementation. Millions of curies of liquid low- and intermediate-level wastes have been disposed of by well injection into underground areas where they were supposedly contained by watertight rock strata. Some gaseous wastes were also disposed of by well injection. This practice is not referred to in recent literature and thus may not be widely used today. Rather, it appears that these waste streams are now first treated to reduce volume, and then solidified using bitumen or concrete. These solidified liquid wastes from Soviet nuclear power reactor operations, along with solid wastes, are disposed of in shallow-land burial sites located at most large power reactor stations. In addition, 35 shallow-land burial sites have been alluded to by the Soviets for disposal of industrial, medical, and research low-level wastes as well as ionization sources. Research on tritium-bearing and other gaseous wastes is mentioned, as well as a waste minimization program aimed at reducing the volume of waste streams by 30%. The Soviets have announced that their high-level waste management plan is to 1) store liquid wastes for 3-5 years; 2) incorporate the waste into glass (at a final glass volume of 100-150 liters/MT of fuel reprocessed); 3) set it aside in air-cooled storage for 30-50 years; and 4} provide for its final disposal in a deep geologic repository. High-level waste solidification research started in the 1950s, and a pilot vitrification facility has operated for 10 years at Kyshtym. A fully radioactive unit also operated there for about two years until 1988 and produced 160 MT of HLW phosphate glass, containing 3.9 x 106 curies of radioactivity. [This corresponds to radioactivity in about 10 MT of 10-year-old power reactor fuel.] Problems with the glass melter electrodes have caused this latter plant to shut down, but a new design and plant are being developed. A site near Krasnoyarsk has also recently been referred to as a disposal site for low- and intermediate-level waste streams and possibly for vitrified wastes from Kyshtym. Deep geologic disposal of vitrified high-level waste has been studied, at a modest level of effort, over the last decade in the Soviet Union. Key disposal concepts under consideration include mining shafts, deep drill holes, and underground excavations. Although a variety of host rock types have been addressed, the emphasis appears to be on salt, clay, and granite. The Soviet Union appears to require the use of man-made barriers and waste packages in permanent disposal, but the geologic formation will be relied upon as the primary protective barrier. The construction schedule for a Soviet repository has not been stated. Meanwhile, a decision on the first repository site may be made in 1990, with a candidate site being at Chelyabinsk.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC06-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1086600
- Report Number(s):
- PNL-7182
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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