History of Highly Enriched Uranium Production in Russia
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/08929882.2011.566467
ISSN1547-7800
Autores Tópico(s)Graphite, nuclear technology, radiation studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. V. F. Petrovsky, Deputy head of the USSR Delegation to the 44th UN General Assembly, in “Statement on the Item Entitled ‘Report of the International Atomic Energy Agency,’” 25 October 1989. Quoted in Thomas B. Cochran, Robert S. Norris, and Oleg A. Bukharin, Making the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin, (Westview Press, Boulder, 1995), p. 52. 2. Production of this HEU is accounted in the separative work capacity that was available for HEU production. 3. The exact tails assays are unknown. Enrichment tails have been reported to contain from 0.2 percent or 0.24 percent to 0.36 percent uranium-235, Oleg Bukharin, “Russia's Gaseous Centrifuge Technology and Uranium Enrichment Complex,” Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, January 2004, p. 29. It is likely that some gaseous diffusion cascades operated with higher than 0.3 percent tails assays and some centrifuge cascades with lower than 0.25 percent. 4. Reactor data are from the IAEA Power Reactors Information System (PRIS), . 5. Each VVER-440 contained in its core 42 tons of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent in uranium-235. By the end of 1989, the 36 reactors of this class had accumulated 336 full reactor-years of operation. Assuming that annual refueling replaced one third of the core, the total amount of uranium consumed by VVER-440 reactors was equivalent to 148 full cores (6,200 tons). Producing this amount of LEU would have required 29 million SWUs. Refueling frequency from Mashinostroitelny Zavod Elemash, “VVER-440 Nuclear Fuel,” . 6. Each VVER-1000 core contained 71 tons of uranium enriched to 4.4 percent. This reactor operated on a cycle in which one fourth of its core was replaced annually. The 17 reactors of this class that were producing electricity as of 1989 required the equivalent of 31 full cores or 2200 tons of LEU for their operations through the end of 1989. Production of this LEU required 14.2 million SWU. Data on refueling are from“VVER-1000 Nuclear Fuel,” . 7. Since RBMKs are capable of refueling without shutting down, their LEU requirements are estimated based on fuel burnup. By the end of 1989, 18 RMBK reactors had generated about 860,000 gigawatt-hours of electric energy, which, assuming a heat to electricity conversion efficiency of 30 percent, corresponds to 120,000 GWt-days of thermal power. Assuming that the reactors operated at design fuel burnup of 22.2 MWt days of fission heat generated per kg of uranium, RBMK reactors required 5,500 tons of LEU. Burnup data from D. J. Bradley and David R. Payson, Behind the Nuclear Curtain: Radioactive Waste Management in the Former Soviet Union (Columbus, OH: Battelle Press, 1997), p. 93. 8. The amount of 2 percent enriched uranium produced by blend-down of HEU from reprocessed breeder, naval and research-reactor fuel has been estimated to be 1900 tons. Oleg Bukharin, “Analysis of the Size and Quality of Uranium Inventories in Russia,” Science & Global Security 6 (1996): 64–65. This process also consumed about 1.8 tons of fresh 90 percent HEU, which will be accounted for later. Producing the remaining 3600 tons of LEU required by the RBMKs through 1989 would have used about 6.6 million SWU. 9. By 1989, the EGP-6 reactors had used about 60 tons of fuel, which would require about 0.2 million SWU to produce. Based on data in V. I. Kalinkin et al., “Khranenie Otrabotavshego Yadernogo Topliva Energeticheskikh Reaktorov (Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel of Power Reactors),” (Preprint VNIPIET, St.-Petersburg, 2009), p. 13. 10. The active zone of the first BN-350 core contained about 210 fuel assemblies with two different initial enrichment levels: 17 percent and 26 percent. The total mass of uranium in the core was 6.4 tons, originally containing 1.3 tons of uranium-235. In 1976 the core was modified to contain fuel elements with three enrichment levels: 17 percent, 21 percent, and 26 percent.The modification increased the mass of uranium-235 to 1.43 tons, N. V. Gorin, Ya. Z. Kandiev, and Yu. I. Chernukhin, “Validation of Nuclear and Radiation Safety of a Container for Spent AMB Reactor Fuel Assemblies at the Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Plant,” Atomic Energy 100 (2006): 6, 396. 11. The BN-350 is estimated to have required 4.5 million SWU to produce its fuel, assuming that the average fuel burnup was 50,000 MWd/ton and the lifetime average thermal power of the reactor was 580 MWt. It is estimated that the BN-350 used two full “old-type” cores during its first three years of operation and about 14 new-type cores before the end of 1998, when the reactor was finally shut down. The BN-350 would have required about 32 tons of uranium with 17 percent enrichment, 17 tons of 21 percent enriched uranium, and 50 tons of 26 percent enriched uranium. I. I. Vasilyev et al., “Narabotka radionuklidov v Aktivnoi Zone Reaktora BN-350,” (presentation at Kazatomexpo 2010, MAEK Kazatomprom, Aktau, 2010). This assumes that all enriched uranium used to manufacture new BN-350 fuel was produced before 1988. 12. The BN-600 is estimated to have required 8.1 million SWU to produce its fuel. The initial BN-600 reactor core contained 8.26 tons of enriched uranium in 369 fuel assemblies with enrichments of 21 percent and 33 percent. The reactor went critical in 1981 and operated with its original fuel configuration until 1987. During that time, it was refueled at least six times, i.e., used seven full cores or 58 tons of enriched uranium. Of these, 33 tons contained uranium enriched to 21 percent and 25 tons to 33 percent, corresponding to a total requirement of 3.2 million SWU. In 1987, the size of the core was increased to 11.63 tons uranium with three different enrichment levels: 17 percent; 21 percent; and 26 percent. This modification significantly reduced fuel failures and the reactor operated without unscheduled refueling. During 1987–90 it operated at average fuel burnup of 45,000 MWd/ton, and after that with burnup of 60,000 MWd/ton. This means that the BN-600 operations after 1987 required about 185 tons of enriched uranium fuel through the end of 2009: 68, 47 and 70 tons were uranium with enrichment levels of 17 percent, 21 percent, and 26 percent respectively. It is assumed that this material was produced before 1989 and required 8.1 million SWU, bringing the total SWU requirement for BN-600 fuel to 11.3 million SWU. The data on BN-600 is from Yu. K. Buksha et al. “Operation Experience of the BN-600 Fast Reactor,” Nuclear Engineering and Design 173 (1997): 67–79. Estimates of the fuel consumption are in agreement with information on the amount of spent fuel of BN-350 and BN-600 reactors reprocessed at Mayak. By 2002, Mayak had reprocessed 250 tons of spent fuel from these reactors, Vladimir Korotkevich, Evgeny Kudryavtsev, “Tekhnologia i Bezopasnost obrashcheniya s obluchennym yadernym toplivom v Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Technology and Safety of Handling of Irradiated Nuclear Fuel in Russian Federation),” Bulletenpo atomnoy energii, TsNIIAtominform, No. 12, (2002), 26. 13. Bukharin, “Analysis of the Size and Quality of Uranium Inventories in Russia,” op. cit., p. 68. 14. This does not include three OK-150 reactors on the nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin. 15. Reistad, Ole, Mærli, Bremer, and Bøhmer, “Russian Naval Nuclear Fuel and Reactors, “Nonproliferation Review 12(2005): 1, 173; V. A. Lebedev, “Yadernaya energetika i atomny podvodny flot (Nuclear Power Industry and Nuclear Submarine Fleet),” ProAtom.ru, 18 May 2009, gives the numbers 6, 7.5, and 21 percent for enrichment of uranium in fuel of first-generation reactors. See also International Atomic Energy Agency, “Predicted Radionuclide Release from Marine Reactors Dumped in the Kara Sea,” IAEA-TECDOC-938, (April 1997), p. 21. For the purposes of this estimate, the average enrichment in the first-generation reactor fuel is assumed to be 20 percent, so that each core would have contained about 50 kg of uranium-235. 16. P. M. Rubtsov and P. A. Ruzhanskii, “Estimate of the Radiation Characteristics of Spent Fuel from Submarine and ‘Lenin’ Icebreaker Reactors Scuttled in the Region of the Archipelago Novaya Zemlya,” Atomic Energy 81 (1996): 3, 657. 17. V. M. Kuznetsov, “Energeticheskie bloki atomnogo podvodnogo flota (Power reactors of the nuclear submarine fleet),” 24 January 2007, . 18. Ole Reistad and Povl L. Ølgaard, “Russian Nuclear Power Plants for Marine Applications,” Nordic Nuclear Safety Research (NKS) Report, NKS-138 (April 2006), p. 33, 35. It is assumed that each core contained 600 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium or 120 kg of uranium-235. 19. A. Vyrsky, V. Ulyanov, Istoriya podvodnogo flota Rossii (History of the Russian Submarine Fleet), Moscow, 2002. 20. For the data on the annual number of Russian submarine patrols, see Hans Kristensen, “Russian Strategic Submarine Patrols Rebound,” Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Blog, 17 February 2009, . 21. Kuznetsov, op. cit. 22. Ole Reistad and Povl L. Ølgaard, op. cit., p. 36. 23. V.A. Vinokurov, “Perezaryadk akorabelnykh reaktorov (Refueling of ship reactors),” 10 September 2009, . 24. Ole Reistad and Povl L. Ølgaard, op. cit., p. 40. 25. Thomas Nilsen, Igor Kudrik, and AlexandrNikitin, “The Russian Northern Fleet,”Bellona Report, No. 2: (August 1996), p. 96. 26. The Soviet Union also constructed eight small nuclear-powered submarines and special-purpose underwater ships. These are small underwater ships of the Project 1851 (3 ships), Project 1910 (3), and Project 10831 (1) classes, and a submarine of the Project 651E class. The amount of uranium-235 used in these ships reactors is assumed to be small compared to the uncertainty of the overall estimate. 27. The service ship of the Project 1941 class was decommissioned almost immediately after it entered service, so its reactors were not refueled. The two lead cruisers of the Project 1144 class, completed in 1981 and 1985, were removed from service in 1999. They may therefore have had their reactors refueled in the late 1980s. The third ship of this class, Admiral Nakhimov, was completed in 1989 and decommissioned in 1999, most likely with its original reactor cores. Construction of the fourth Project 1941 cruiser, Piotr Velikiy, was completed in 1998. 28. The initial core of each OK-150 reactor has been estimated to contain 85 kg of uranium-235 in 5 percent enriched uranium. Ole Reistad and Povl L. Ølgaard, op. cit., p. 18. After refueling, the amount of uranium in one of the reactors was increased so that the three reactors together contained 279 kg of uranium-235 in 5 percent enriched uranium. “Predicted Radionuclide Release from Marine Reactors Dumped in the Kara Sea,” op. cit., p. 21. 29. N.N. Melnikov et al., “Long-term Safe Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel from Ship Power Units in Underground Storage Facility in the North-west Region of Russia,” in Ashot Arakelovich Sarkisov, Alain Tournyol Du Clos, eds., Scientific and Technical Issues in the Management of Spent Fuel of Decommissioned Nuclear Submarines (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), p. 285. 30. N.N. Melnikov et al., op. cit., p. 278. 31. The refueling history of the OK-900 reactors has been reported for the period before 2000. During 1970–99, icebreakers with these reactors received 33 new reactor cores in addition to 12 initial cores. Four icebreakers continued operating after 1999, with one, Arktika, decommissioned in 2008 and one, 50 Let Pobedy entering service in 2007. Assuming the same refueling rate, we can estimate that operations of the icebreaker fleet in 2000–2010 required about 25 new reactor cores. Ole Reistad and Povl L. Ølgaard, “Inventory and Source Term Evaluation of Russian Nuclear Power Plants for Marine Applications,” Nordic Nuclear Safety Research (NKS) Report, NKS-139 (April 2006), 26. 32. Ole Reistad and Povl L. Ølgaard, “Russian Nuclear Power Plants for Marine Applications,” op. cit., p 23. 33. “Ole Reistad and Povl L. Ølgaard, “Inventory and Source Term Evaluation of Russian Nuclear Power Plants for Marine Applications,” op. cit., p. 26. 34. The Soviet Union apparently used some of the HEU recovered from the spent fuel of plutonium and tritium production reactors to manufacture naval fuel, see Bukharin, “Analysis of the Size and Quality of Uranium Inventories in Russia,” op. cit., p. 69. Assuming that this was the practice during 1981–91, the Soviet Union would have recovered about 7 tons of reprocessed HEU from 17 tons of fresh HEU that had been used in production-reactor fuel by the end of the 1980s. There is almost no information about the scope of this program, but since there are some disadvantages of using high burn-up reprocessed uranium as a fuel, this practice was probably rather limited and, for the purposes of this estimate, the SWU savings that resulted are not taken into account. 35. Pavel Podvig and Susan S. Voss, “Use of Highly-enriched Uranium in Russian Reactors,” (Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Institute for Nuclear Material Management, 12–16 July 2009), Pavel Podvig, “Consolidating Fissile Materials in Russia's Nuclear Complex,” Research Report 7, International Panel on Fissile Materials, May 2009. 36. Ole Reistad, and Styrkaar Hustveit, “HEU Fuel Cycle Inventories and Progress on Global Minimization,” The Nonproliferation Review 15, (2008): 2, 265–287. 37. Based on data in Reistad and Hustveit, op. cit. 38. Reistad and Hustveit, op. cit., p. 268. Also, according to Rosatom data, in 2002, the Obninsk institute stored 14.4 tons of spent research reactor fuel containing 12.8 tons of uranium-235 (see Korotkevich and Kudryavtsev, op. cit., p. 25). Most of this material appears to be HEU from various decommissioned critical assemblies and therefore can be considered part of the HEU stock. This number most likely includes the 3.5 tons of HEU in BFS-1 and BFS-2 critical assemblies mentioned in the text. The only reactor that exposed HEU fuel to significant burn-up was BR-10 fast reactor. This reactor consumed an estimated 1.5 tons of 90 percent HEU. 39. During 1951–53, OK-180 produced plutonium. 40. D. F. Newman, C. J. Gesh, E. F. Love, and S. L. Harms, “Summary of Near-Term Options for Russian Plutonium Production Reactors,” PNL-9982 (UC-520), Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Richland, WA, July 1994. 41. The total amount of weapon-grade plutonium produced in the Soviet Union and Russia is estimated to be 145 tons, of which 1235 kg had been produced before 1955, see Diakov, “The History of Plutonium Production in Russia,” in this issue. 42. V. F. Konovalov et al., “Development of Uranium and Lithium Elements for Production of Plutonium and Tritium,” in A. M. Petrosyants, ed., Russia's Nuclear Industry (Moscow: Energoatomizdat, 1999). 43. AID-80 and AID-90 uranium-oxide fuel elements respectively. The reactor may have also used AID-21 fuel elements with 21 percent enrichment, which were developed around the same time. Konovalov et al., op. cit. 44. I. N. Beckman, Radiokhimiya, Moscow, 2006. 45. V. I. Sadovnikov and A. P. Zharov, Istoriya atomnoy promyshlennosti SSSR (History of the Nuclear Industry of the USSR), Ozersk, 2000. 46. B. L. Ioffe, O. V. Shvedov, “Heavy Water Reactors and Nuclear Power Plants in the USSR and Russia: Past, Present, and Future,” Atomic Energy 86 (1999): 4, 297. 47. The reactor was also used to produce plutonium in 1951–53, Diakov, “The History of Plutonium Production in Russia,” in this issue. 48. G.V. Kiselev, V.N. Konev, “History of the Realization of the Thorium Regime in the Soviet Atomic Project,” Uspekhi FizicheskikhNauk, 177 (2007): 12, 1361–1384. 49. V. I. Sadovnikov and A. P. Zharov, op. cit. 50. Ye. N. Sokolov et al., “The 50-Year History of the Central Machine-Building Design Bureau,” in A. M. Petrosyants, ed., Russia's Nuclear Industry (Moscow: Energoatomizdat, 1999). 51. This assumes that the reactors operated at a uranium-235 burn-up of about 60 percent and a capacity factor of about 70 percent. 52. This assumes that the reactors operated at uranium-235 burn-up of 60 percent and with a capacity factor of 70 percent. This is in agreement with the data on reprocessing of fuel of the Ruslan and Lyudmila reactors at the RT-1 facility at Ozersk. By 2002, the RT-1 had plant reprocessed 20 MTHM of HEU fuel of these reactors. Vladimir Korotkevich, EvgenyKudryavtsev, op. cit., p. 26. 53. Pavel Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), p. 480. 54. Oleg Bukharin, “Understanding Russia's Uranium Enrichment Complex,” Science & Global Security 12 (2004): 202–204. 55. “Material for 16,000 Nuclear Warheads Eliminated by Megatons to Megawatts,” US Enrichment Company press release, 9 September 2010. 56. U.S. Department of Energy, “FY 2011 Congressional Budget Request: National Nuclear Security Administration,” DOE/CF-0047,February 2010, p. 377. 57. Bukharin, “Analysis of the Size and Quality of Uranium Inventories in Russia,” op. cit., pp. 64–65. 58. Earlier estimates also accounted for production losses that were taken to be about 3 percent of the total separative capacity. David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 112. We do not take this into account here, since the actual production capacity is not known with this level of accuracy. 59. This estimate is consistent with the statement made by Viktor Mikhailov, then Minister of Atomic Energy, in 1993. Commenting on the U.S.-Russian HEU-LEU deal, Mikhailov said that “The 500 metric tons of HEU that is up for sale represents somewhere around 40 percent of all reserves that we [Russia] possess.” (NUKEM Market Report, 17 September 1993). This suggests that the Soviet Union had about 1250 tons of HEU at the time. Detailed comparison of these estimates is difficult since it is not known what was included in the number given by Mikhailov. This number probably would not include HEU produced for naval fuel and fuel of some research and fast reactors, which also is not accounted for in our estimate. Mikhailov's number, however, would also not include HEU consumed in production reactors, nuclear tests, and losses, while our estimate does include these amounts. Our estimate is also consistent with the data on the amount of reprocessed uranium available for enrichment. By the end of 1988 the Soviet Union had produced about 115 tons of plutonium, which required about 280,000 tons of natural uranium fuel at 420 grams of plutonium produced per ton of uranium irradiated (Diakov, “The History of Plutonium Production in Russia,” in this issue). On using reprocessed uranium to produce weapon-grade HEU see Bukharin, “Analysis of the Size and Quality of Uranium Inventories in Russia,”op. cit., p. 63. 60. The Soviet Union and Russia reprocessed most of the spent fuel of naval reactors. We estimate that unreprocessed naval fuel contains about 10 tonnes of HEU (90 percent equivalent). 61. Highly Enriched Uranium: Striking a Balance; A Historical Report on the United States Highly Enriched Uranium Production, Acquisition, and Utilization Activities from 1945 through September 30, 1996, Rev. 1, Draft, U.S. Department of Energy, January 2001 (publicly released in 2006), p. 92. 62. The first machines installed at D-1 were OK-7, OK-8, OK-9, and later OK-6, A. K. Kruglov, Kak sozdavalas atomnaya promyshlennost v SSSR (This is How the Nuclear Industry of the USSR was Created), TsNIIAtominform, Moscow, 1995, p. 183. 63. Yu. V. Yegorov et al., Ostanovitsya, Oglyanutsya (To Take a Pause and Look Back), Ekaterinburg, UMTs UPI, 2009, p. 10. 64. OK-6 machines were added to the upper cascade. Yegorov et al., op. cit., Kruglov, op. cit., p. 187. 65. D-3 was equipped with T-45, T-46, T-47, and T-49 machines, Yu. L. Golin et al., “Urals Electrochemical Combine (UEKhK), in A. M. Petrosyants, ed., Russia's Nuclear Industry, Moscow, Energoatomizdat, 1999. 66. The D-5 plant was equipped with OK-26 and T-51 machines, Golin et al., op. cit. 67. For data on productivity of diffusion machines, see Kruglov, op. cit. p. 191. 68. Golin et al., op. cit. 69. On doubling of productivity of the UEKhK, see Golin et al. op. cit. 70. Golin et al., op. cit. 71. Viktor Myasnikov, Oruzhie Urala, Ekaterinburg, Pakrus, 2000. 72. Albright et al., op. cit., p. 106. 73. Yu. V. Yegorov et al., op. cit., p. 136. 74. This is in agreement with the information that the first plant had 700,000 centrifuges, assuming that third-generation centrifuges had a capacity of about 1 SWU/yr. For the number of centrifuges see Viktor Myasnikov, Oruzhie Urala (The Armaments of Urals), Ekaterinburg, Pakrus, 2000, for the capacity of centrifuges see Albright et al., op. cit., p. 106. 75. Yegorov et al., op. cit., p. 136. 76. The D-3 and SU-3 plants were shut down in 1967. Installation of centrifuges was completed in 1971. This is in agreement with the reports of numerous failures of fifth-generation centrifuges that the Soviet Union had to deal with in 1972. Oleg Bukharin, “Russia's Gaseous Centrifuge Technology and Uranium Enrichment Complex,” Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, (January 2004), p. 11. 77. Deployment of sixth-generation centrifuges reportedly began in 1984. Bukharin, “Understanding of Russia's Uranium Enrichment Complex,” op. cit., p. 197. 78. V. M. Kondakov, “Siberian Chemical Combine,” in A. M. Petrosyants, ed., Russia's Nuclear Industry (Moscow: Energoatomizdat, 1999). 79. K. Ye. Galetskaya, “Tekhnologii razdeleniya izotopov naprimere Sibirskogo khimicheskogo kombinata” (“Isotope Separation Technologies: the Example of the Siberian Chemical Combine”), Seversk, 2008. 80. Oleg Bukharin, Thomas Cochran and Robert Norris, “New Perspectives on Russia's Ten Secret Cities, Natural Resources Defense Council,”(October 1999), p. 33. 81. Elektro-khimicheskii zavod.Istoriya (Electro-chemical combine. History), Krasnoyarsk regional information center, Rosatom, . 82. This assumes that fourth-generation centrifuges had about 40 percent higher capacity than third-generation machines. Albright et al., op. cit., p. 106.
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