Nuclear service ships problem
hard to tackle, Murmansk seminar agrees
Nuclear service ships problem hard to tackle, Murmansk seminar agrees
Bellona by Anna Kireeva (translated by Maria Kaminskaya)
February 7, 2007
(For personal use only)
MURMANSK - Nuclear service vessels remain a vexing problem in Northwest Russia.
A large number of these ships have been in a critical condition since they were
taken out of operation several years ago. How – and how soon – such vessels will
be decommissioned were issues on the agenda of a seminar attended by nuclear
industry officials and non-government organisations hosted by Bellona-Murmansk.
The seminar late last month, entitled “Problems of
decommissioning of nuclear service vessels and the creation of a regional
industrial decommissioning centre,” included participants from the Russian
Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom), design and engineering institutes, the
government of the Murmansk Region, ship repairing yards and non-governmental
organizations.
“This is a very useful practice,” said Viktor Akhunov, head of Rosatom’s
department responsible for decommissioning of Russia’s nuclear sites, referring
to the Bellona seminar.
“It is very interesting and important to hear all kinds of opinions. This gives
us an opportunity to make the correct choice out of best options available,”
Akhunov said in an interview with Bellona Web.
Akhunov’s apparent openness to hearing NGO opinion on matters like
decommissioning nuclear service ships represent a departure from his
historically sceptical stance toward civil society organizations.
According to Andrei Zolotkov, head of Bellona-Murmansk, the seminar is the
“beginning of a route that might take decades to complete.”
Laid up or still in operation in Russia’s Northwest are 72 nuclear service
vessels, of which 28 are in dilapidated condition. Many are partly or completely
waterlogged. These 28 ships include seven floating spent nuclear fuel (SNF)
storage facilities, five specialised tankers, one floating radiation monitoring
station and 15 floating storage facilities for liquid radioactive waste (LRW).
“The problem is not just the SNF storage ship Lepse, which keeps in its holds
defective nuclear fuel; from Lepse, we will have to move on to Lotta, Imandra
and other vessels,” said Zolotkov in reference to other problematic nuclear
waste storage and service ships languishing at the Murmank’s nuclear icebreaker
base, Atomflot.
SNF storage ships Lepse, Lotta and Imandra are operated by the Murmansk Shipping
Company, which also runs Atomflot and its icebreaker fleet.
“Few people have an idea of what a nuclear service vessel is like. Its
decommissioning can be much more dangerous than decommissioning a nuclear
submarine,” Zolotkov said.
Zolotkov is confident that the most important step for now is to determine the
site for the construction of a future radioactive waste repository.
“Without such a burial site, no works on decommissioning nuclear service vessels
will ever start,” he said.
The problematic vessels
According to Akhunov, no works on decommissioning of nuclear service vessels are
currently underway as the country lacks specialised centres to handle
radioactive waste management.
“I can say absolutely seriously that we will not be decommissioning these
vessels today, nor will we in a year, because we are not ready for it,” Akhunov
said in his interview. He explained that the process of decommissioning
generates large amounts of secondary radioactive waste, which no one – given the
current lack of waste management treatment or strategy in the country – has
worked out a feasible storage plan for.
In Akhunov’s opinion, the best option for now would be to put such vessels “into
dead storage until we have created a regional [industrial decommissioning]
centre, which is currently being planned for construction in Saida Bay.”
Akhunov said further that the hold of the floating storage facilities contain
highly irradiated absorption rods – that component of a nuclear fuel assembly
that controls the nuclear reaction – that are stored in their claddings and for
which no safe removal or decommission procedure has yet been devised. Nor are
there technological means to reprocess the complex chemical compositions of
liquid radioactive waste that will have to be unloaded from the nuclear service
vessels.
Some of these ships are foundering and will have to be first made seaworthy
before their delivery to a ship repair yard, where they will undergo a technical
inspection and a radiation analysis. There are no waterside storage facilities
in the region that could accept containers with solid radioactive waste (SRW) or
large-size fragments of the would-be decommissioned nuclear service vessels for
storage.
Those vessels that have been taken out of operation are carefully protected from
even the slightest chance of exposure lest they lose their buoyancy. The ships’
various systems and mechanisms are in such a dilapidated condition that even
keeping the vessels afloat carries a multitude of risks. Decommissioning
prospects are thwarted by the absence of SRW storage containers in the region,
where spent nuclear fuel from Lepse, for instance, could be stored.
Rosatom’s three-stage decommissioning concept
Still, despite the unsolved problems posed by the need to decommission nuclear
service vessels, Rosatom has approved a concept of phased decommissioning
efforts for such ships. The concept includes three stages.
The first two decommissioning stages will ensure radiation and environmental
safety during the storage of these facilities until the time comes to move them
for the actual decommissioning process. The third stage envisions secure
isolation – or burial – of the SRW that will be generated during nuclear storage
vessels’ decommissioning.
But according to Vladimir Mazokin, a representative of the Dollezhal Research
and Development Institute of Power Engineering, Russia currently has no suitable
centres for collection, temporary storage, industrial reprocessing or long-term
isolation of SRW generated during decommissioning. This fact detracts from the
credibility of Rosatom’s third planned stage of decommissioning.
Mazokin, added, however, that one nuclear service vessel (PKDS-4) has been
decommissioned, and three have undergone conversion (PTB PM-50, SMT Severka,
TNT-29).
Mazokin is of the opinion that decommissioning of nuclear service vessels should
– if at all possible – take place where they are laid up because their transport
involves certain challenges and risks. There are as yet no estimates for the
costs of decommissioning of floating storage facilities as no project
evaluations or calculations have been carried out.
The Nerpa ship repair yard
The seminar’s participants agreed that nuclear service vessels’ decommissioning
has to be managed by facilities that have at their disposal both the relevant
infrastructure and experience in cutting up nuclear submarines. Sections removed
from nuclear service vessels during the cut-up procedure will – as happens with
blocks cut out of submarines – be moved for interim decay storage until
radiation levels subside.
The Nerpa ship repair yard is experienced in submarine decommissioning, but
there are a number of adjustments to be made at the site before it can start
service vessel decommissioning operations. The plant will need, for instanace,
to create special capacities to unload defective nuclear fuel, expand the SRW
storage area for the conditioning of accumulated radioactive waste, and
restructure the LRW management systems, sanitary and security systems and
radiation control systems. Other measures have to be taken, such as minimising
the decommissioning procudures’ harmful effects on the plant’s staff and the
area’s population and environment.
The Russian-German project in Saida Bay
The joint Russian-German nuclear decommissioning project in progress at Saida
Bay on Russia’s Kola Peninsula envisions the creation of a shore-based long-term
storage facility for the storage of 120 reactor blocks, including all necessary
infrastructure. The project is aimed at improving and maintaining the safety of
the environment and arranging for the material and technical development of the
Russian sites involved in nuclear submarine decommissioning for the smooth and
dynamic course of the decommissioning process.
The project also provides for the necessary conditions for the safe management
of waste generated during the decommissioning of nuclear submarines in the
Russian north.
In July 2006, construction was completed on the first line of the storage
complex, which paved the way for the decision to continue the project until
2008.
The complex will keep in storage 58 sections and installations from nuclear
service vessels, surface ships and submarines, submarines equipped with 30
reactor compartments (without the SNF), 11 sections of nuclear-powered fleet’s
floating storage facilities (without the SNF), sections of steam-generating
systems of nuclear-powered icebreakers (without the SNF), three reactor
compartments of surface ships (without the SNF), two sections of floating
storage facilities, the nuclear storage facility Lepse (with the SNF), and two
submarine reactor compartments (with the SNF).
The complex is expected to be fully operational by December 2008.
SRW conditioning and storage centre
The Saida Bay project’s third phase, to be completed by 2014, will see the
construction of a regional SRW conditioning and long-term storage centre. This
part of the project will be financed by German funds in the amount of EUR 300m.
The centre will manage waste conditioning, interim storage, radiation
decontamination and complete removal of residual radioactive materials,
radiation control and long-term SRW storage. Such a centre will provide the
opportunity to perform complete dismantling and decommissioning of reactor
compartments and other SRW.
But the project only accommodates for the manageable solid radioactive waste
that is generated while cutting up nuclear-powered vessels or during the
remediation of contaminated areas of shoreline storage (around 42,000 square
metres), and for the solid radioactive materials that can be moved for
management after long-term storage (around 52,000 square metres). Conditioning
or storage of waste containing nuclear fuel will be outside its
responsibilities.
Positive reflections on public participation
“We are satisfied with how the seminar went. Rosatom heard representatives of
public organisations and we could see that we agree on a lot of issues,” said
Bellona-Murmansk’s director Sergei Zhavoronkin.
The seminar’s participants noted the importance of the issue raised during the
discussion.
“Talking to non-profit organisations is very useful and helps us in the
decision-making process,” said Akhunov, adding that he thinks Rosatom’s position
on decommissioning nuclear service vessels coincides with Bellona’s.
“From the point of view of simple common sense, we need to have consultations
with the public, although we are not obliged to [do so] by the law. Our agency
intends to do it,” said Akhunov.
