Minatom: Dreams of Glory

Some progress

There have been some improvements at Russia's nuclear power reactors. The nuclear industry now provides monthly reports on “incidents” at power stations as required by Russian law and international standards. It informs local, regional, and national officials immediately of any significant accident. Production at Russia's nuclear power stations has increased—up 8.3 percent from 1999 to 2000, when 130 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity were generated. Minatom also reported that there were 67 incidents in 2000, down from 88 in 1999. 2

The ministry is actively modernizing nuclear materials and nuclear waste storage facilities and practices. The haphazard practices that led to the disasters at Kyshtym in 1958, and at Lake Karachai and Chernobyl, are no longer permitted. Western funding, particularly from the United States under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, has enabled considerable improvements in waste handling, storage, and stewardship of nuclear materials.

But there is good reason to believe that Minatom is not adequately prepared to embark on new programs. A culture of technological hubris that dates to the Soviet era remains. Several projects make no sense, considering their past record of failure and their potential for significant human and environmental cost. These include a new generation of breeder reactors, floating nuclear power stations, and projects with Iran, India, China, Finland, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and perhaps Myanmar. Minatom is still extending the operating lives of older reactors, where incidents occur frequently, and significant nuclear contamination can be found in and around many, if not all, power stations.

A crash program

Russia's nuclear industry envisions a crash program of rapid expansion over the next two decades. In addition to the 19 civilian power reactors now operating at nine sites, it would build another 40 reactors by 2020, including breeder reactors. Most of the plants would be built near major urban centers to keep transmission costs down. Given world construction experience, which shows the lead time from ground-breaking to operation to average 10 years, there is no way Russia's nuclear industry can achieve this target.

Russia wants to build floating nuclear power stations to serve its Arctic regions. For some years, the Sevmash Shipbuilding yard in Severodvinsk has tried to sell the idea of floating reactors to supply heat and electricity to the town and its shipyards. Sevmash is famous as Russia's leading nuclear submarine builder (the Kursk was built there). The plan calls for a floating reactor to generate 70 megawatts of power and 50 gigacalories of heat at a cost of $110 million.

This reactor follows the same blueprints as another floating nuclear power plant project that began in the Far East in 1998. That project, for a station in Pevek, Chukotka, was figuratively frozen amid financial problems in the region. But it had passed the stage of feasibility studies, and parts had been ordered from the Izhorsk Steel Plant in St. Petersburg.

The Sevmash reactor will float in the Northern Dvina River. Its construction will keep Sevmash workers and equipment busy. But if it is built, hundreds of thousands of people will live in close proximity to a reactor of unproven reliability. 3

The notion of floating reactors has always been popular with Russian nuclear engineers. The idea grew out of nuclear submarine, airplane, and locomotive programs, including that of the TES-3, a reactor developed at Obninsk that could be moved around on a few railway flatbed cars or on tank treads. Sevmash has produced designs for floating nuclear oil exploration platforms as well. All of the floating reactors are based on nuclear submarine engines, and no one really knows if they are appropriate for civilian use.

Contamination

Russia's stationary reactors have enough trouble operating safely. Minatom has repeatedly denied assertions that its Tomsk military production facilities have pumped radioactivity into the Tom and the Romashka rivers in the Tomsk region of Siberia. But U.S. and Russian scientists say the degree of radioactive contamination measured in those rivers is the highest in the world. The chairman of the regional ecological committee, Alexander Adam, has acknowledged that radioactive silt is steadily washed out from the nuclear chemical plant in Seversk. “But,” he says, it is “on a small scale and with the radiation not exceeding permitted levels.” Still, Tomsk officials continue to permit the pumping of liquid radioactive wastes into underground tunnels in violation of various environmental laws. The plant's license for this method of disposal expired in March 2001, when waste vitrification technology was supposed to be in place. 4

At several civilian nuclear power stations, leaks, stoppages, and incidents appear to be common. A small area near the Novovoronezh nuclear power plant became contaminated when cobalt 60 washed into ground-water from radioactively polluted soil. The soil was located near a radioactive waste site that leaked in 1985. Minatom reported at the time that most of the polluted soil had been removed and buried, with only an insignificant part remaining. Minatom says that the radioactivity found in the water and fish of the nearby Don River is within “average indices” and the plant has operated according to norms. Plant officials deny that the contamination of the water is connected to the plant. 5

Plant safety remains a problem at many stations. Updating second- and third-generation plants is needed, but costly and time-consuming upgrades may be delayed. Only now is an automated system to detect radiation being installed at the nuclear power plant in Kursk. Until recently, laboratory workers monitored background radiation at the power plant manually. Tougher safety requirements finally made plant administrators adopt new equipment, and in 2001 a new system, made up of German and Russian automatic sensors, began testing for radionuclides in the air. 6

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Employees work at gloveboxes in the new U.S.-funded nuclear waste facility at Severodvinsk.

The Beloyarsk station, at one time the flagship of the nascent nuclear industry with reactors dating to 1963, has had a number of problems. Most recently, in September 2000, Reactor 3 shut down automatically as a result of a sharp change in the electric current frequency in the energy system. This followed the emergency disconnection of a generator for unclear reasons. As usual, the authorities—in this case plant director Oleg Saraiev—said that the accident posed no threat to humans or the environment because the safety system had operated properly. But the owners of the local Sverdlovsk regional electrical grid, Sverdlovenergo, did not comment on the role weaknesses in their grid may have played in causing fluctuations in the electric current frequency, nor on its potential to disrupt safe operation at Beloyarsk. 7 The creation of many regional electric companies throughout Russia and their inability to pay for repairs and capital improvements may lead to problems for other nuclear stations.

Can Russia handle its own waste?

In 1999, when Minatom proposed burying radioactive waste from other countries in Russia's far eastern Kuril Islands, the Sakhalin Regional Duma rejected the plan out of hand. The Russian State Duma had submitted for Sakhalin's review three draft laws providing for the creation of a nuclear waste entombment facility on Simushir Island, for which the Kur-chatov Institute for Atomic Energy in Moscow had provided the regulations. The Kurchatov Institute was in charge of design and construction— but its scientists had simply ignored the fact that Simushir is in one of the most seismically active zones in the world. 8

Russia's nuclear waste is widespread. It is stored on site at civilian power stations and in or near the closed cities connected with the nuclear enterprise, and even at the Kurchatov Institute in the center of Moscow. The Zvez-dochka Shipbuilding Factory in Severodvinsk, a city of 250,000, recently opened a plant to handle low-level radioactive waste—within city limits. The plant will receive, sort, decontaminate, compress and package solid and liquid wastes packed in standard 200-liter barrels. The barrels will be put into special containers for storage, transport, and burial. This plant fulfills the Nunn-Lugar goals of improving the ecological situation and reducing the risks involved in handling radioactive wastes from scrapped nuclear submarines. The facility will process and package 4,000 cubic meters of liquid, and 200 cubic meters of solid nuclear wastes annually, enabling Zvezdochka to dispose of as many as six decommissioned nuclear submarines a year. 9

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March 2000: Reactor One at the new Rostov plant at Volgodonsk undergoes final testing before startup.

In spite of significant financial and technical support from the United States, the European Community, and Scandinavian countries, Russia must achieve far more than the Zvezdochka plant. The nation's extensive waste includes many carcasses of old naval reactors. (Efforts to raise the nuclear-powered submarine Kursk were hampered by the high level of radioactive contamination in the region.) At Saida Inlet, two kilometers from Snezhnogorsk, 43 nuclear submarine reactors are stored afloat in special metal protective covers. The authorities have yet to remove spent nuclear fuel from two submarine reactors. The Nerpa dockyard is supposed to handle the repair and scrapping of Northern Fleet nuclear submarines, but it does not have the funds needed to guard the floating waste, let alone to process it. Nils Boehmer, of Norway's Bellona Foundation, says that “the hulls have started to leak. If the submarines were to sink, this would spell a major environmental disaster for the region.” Northern Fleet submarines hold a total of 248 nuclear reactors and nearly 99 tons of mostly spent nuclear fuel. 10

Scrap-metal hunters have descended on these floating wastes in the hopes of stealing non-ferrous metals to sell for profit. (Death by electrocution has skyrocketed in Russia as scavengers, many young boys, venture into electrical substations and up on power lines to cut away copper wire to sell). Some scrap-metal hunters near Snezhnogorsk have been discovered inside the safety covers of the reactor storage containers where they were cutting away pieces of non-ferrous metals. Meanwhile, more reactors continue to arrive; by 2005 there will be more than 100 units stored at the inlet. 11

The decision to embark on a new nuclear power program at a time when European nations have become increasingly critical of Russian efforts to clean up its radioactive waste and vessels from the Baltic, Barents, and Arctic regions is just one indication of how little things have changed within Russia's nuclear enterprise since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Old reactors, same old problems?

In the United States and elsewhere, engineers sometimes struggle to extend the lives of plants that have prematurely met obsolescence dates. Russian engineers also continue to extend the service lives of reactors, including the lives of the inherently unstable Chernobyl-type RMBK. There are four reactors of this type at the Leningrad power plant at Sos-novyi Bor, outside St. Petersburg. The station director, Mikhail Orlov, announced in November 2001 that the service lives of the first and second units at this plant could be extended for a decade without risk. Work has already begun to upgrade safety; $700 million dollars is expected to be spent by 2005. 12 The station continues to plug along into the twenty-first century, but emergency shutdowns have occurred with increasing frequency. 13

Federal emergency management agency officials denied reports that there had been a radioactive discharge on March 1, 2001, at Volgo-donsk, where the new Rostov nuclear power plant and failed Atommash Nuclear Reactor factory are located. Officials admitted there had been a leak in the first loop of a steam generator which, they said, was quickly fixed, with no release of radiation in the station or the surrounding area. 14

This report from Rostov is important because Rostov is intended as a showcase for the post-Soviet nuclear industry. President Vladimir Putin himself visited the station in November 2000 to show his support for a Russian nuclear future. The plant began operations in late March 2001, despite public concerns. Built on the shores of the Tsimlyanskoi Reservoir, 190 kilometers from Rostov-on-Don and 13 kilometers from Volgodonsk, it is the first Russian nuclear power station to come on line since 1993. With state-of-the-art automated monitoring systems to check radiation within a 30-kilometer radius of the power plant and 28 posts outfitted with gauges and modern communications equipment in nearby towns and villages, the Rostov station was supposed to meet all public concerns.

It was intended to help rejuvenate the region's industry by providing an energy cushion to supplement the dwindling supplies of poor quality coal in southern Russia. Construction of the plant's second reactor, which is slated to go into operation in four years, has also begun, with 5 billion rubles allocated for 2001. 15 (If the reactor is finished by 2005, it will set a record for construction speed.)

Rosenergoatom plans to build a third and fourth reactor at the same site. 16 And other reactors will follow. Construction is slated to resume on a nuclear power plant in the Arkhangelsk region that was frozen for 10 years following protests by environmental groups. The area experiences fuel shortages each winter. 17

Russia has also re-established close relationships with other nations of the former Soviet Union, to assist them in running and fueling their reactors. Minatom recently resumed operating Armenia's Metsamor nuclear station, although the European Union has been pressing for the plant's closure (Metsamor's two reactors are located in a seismically active zone, have no containment vessels, and more than 2 million people live within a 30-kilometer radius of the station). Deputy Nuclear Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov said the reactor will operate until at least 2013-2015. The plant is likely to go back on line at any time. 18

The most controversial of Minatom projects is the construction of a new generation of liquid-metal fast-breeder reactors—reactors that “breed” plutonium—to make use of spent nuclear fuel. Breeder reactors have had a checkered history everywhere they have been built—in Japan, France, as well as the former Soviet Union, where they have suffered cost overruns, sodium spills, and fires. The new reactors will most likely be 800-megawatt units, probably located at the Mayak chemical nuclear fuel facility at Chelyabinsk, to take advantage of its huge plutonium stockpiles. 19

The United States abandoned breeder reactors in the late 1970s, after President Carter decided they were both technologically uncertain and a potential source of proliferation. But nuclear engineers in France, Japan, and Russia continue to pursue them. Russia's proposed breeder reactors have the endorsement of both President Vladimir Putin and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Minatom officials believe that breeder reactors could simultaneously solve the worldwide problem of disposing of spent fuel and somehow not contribute to proliferation. Putin has called fast neutron reactors “technically quite feasible.”

But breeder reactors are opposed by nonproliferationists of all stripes and by Russian ecologists. The only fast neutron reactor in Russia, the BN-600, is at the Beloyarsk facility. It does not use plutonium as fuel, and it has had significant problems over its 15-year history. Valery Mel-nikov, a plutonium specialist with the Zelenyi Mir environmental organization, predicts that plutonium fuel will be unsafe. “If it ever becomes technically possible,” he says, “we would be able to use only a small part of it, and at the same time we would get enormous quantities of plutonium in the air, water and earth.” 20

The Soviet mindset

Although the evidence suggests that Russia should not embark on a crash program, the mindset that predominated during the Soviet period— when crash programs were the rule— persists in the Russian nuclear establishment. This mindset includes the belief that nuclear power is a panacea for Russia's energy problems. Nuclear engineers point out that the cost of extracting fossil fuel from Siberia and shipping it to power stations in European Russia is too high and that fossil fuel burning contributes to the greenhouse effect. Nuclear power, they say, addresses both of these problems. Russia's nuclear engineers also tend to believe that they have solved all major technical problems associated with nuclear power, paving the way for new projects like breeders and floating reactors.

The nuclear establishment also continues to show disdain for public involvement in the technology assessment process. Perhaps this is because the engineers recall that anti-nuclear sentiment was tied to the independence movements that developed on the eve of the Soviet breakup. 21

But the historical roots of this phenomenon are deeper, anchored in Soviet traditions that always excluded public participation. According to that tradition, nuclear technology is perfectible—if not inherently safe.

Russian engineers believe public concerns result in needless meddling, and they have organized press centers to counter anti-nuclear activism. While this in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, they also try to avoid completing environmental impact statements when advancing new projects. They also believe that “international organizations”—Greenpeace to name one—are behind any anti-nuclear efforts. Former minister of Atomic Energy Adamov called Western concerns about Minatom programs a “campaign of lies and slurs.” 22

Unlike the environmental groups that oppose them, Russia's nuclear engineers are well-organized and well-financed in the Nuclear Society of Russia, a lobbying group that touts nuclear successes, calls for additional funding, and downplays public opposition. 23

Several research programs have been revived, some of which had languished owing to public concerns. For example, physicists at the Kon-stantinov Nuclear Physics Institute, in Gatchina, just outside St. Petersburg, plan to finish the PIK-100 high-flux nuclear reactor, which has been in the planning stages since the late 1980s. Public opposition during the perestroika era and the absence of funds in the 1990s stalled the project. But now it has been awarded $150 million to bring it to completion. The PIK will be used for solid-state physics, nuclear physics, and radiation chemistry and biology. 24

Verbally, Putin says that nuclear power programs should involve the public during the planning stages. In his press conference in Rostov-on-Don in November 2000, Putin said that the development of nuclear energy was crucial for Russia, although he acknowledged the need to take into account public opinion in addressing environmental and safety issues and the fact that the standard of nuclear power engineering in Russia lagged behind that of the West. 25 But the deeds of his administration, which is attempting to reassert control over the media, suggest a different sentiment. During his tenure, Minatom has more aggressively rejected public participation.

The U.S. National Research Council study on the impact of various Western funding programs to keep persons with military weapons expertise employed claimed that Minatom had begun focusing on “the broader goals of changing research attitudes and ethics.” 26 If only that were so. But Western funding to prevent the brain drain of weapons scientists to rogue nations has actually propped up research in closed military institutes, including nuclear facilities, while civilian R&D has shrunk and the sort of a culture that allows for whistle-blowing and careful risk assessment has yet to emerge—all of which should be no surprise, considering the closed nature of the nuclear ministry.

Another reason for the lack of change is the natural aging of Minatom personnel over the past decade. Insufficient numbers of younger experts have been trained in a new era with new concerns for safety. It is difficult to determine the extent of generational change among leading engineers within Minatom and the many institutes, factories, and facilities under its jurisdiction. But it seems clear from a comparison of the civilian nuclear energy programs being advanced today with those of the late 1980s and mid-1990s that the goals have remained constant.

Discussions with personnel in Obninsk and Severodvinsk reinforced my impression that Minatom remains fully committed to rapid commercialization of fourth- and fifth-generation reactors, even though the problems of radioactive waste, reconstruction of the nuclear industry, and the recruitment of young persons to nuclear science have yet to be solved.

Challenges ahead

In late January 2001, Deputy Minister Bulat Nigmatulin argued that nuclear power in Russia was 20 years behind, and confirmed that Minatom plans to build 39 new nuclear reactors by 2020 to prevent a potential “energy crisis.” 27 The reactors would be built from north to south, from Arkhangelsk to the North Caucasus (not far from Chechnya), and from east to west, on the Pacific and on Russia's European borders. Minatom is in a relatively strong position to push this plan because its budget is huge by Russian standards and because the industry is entirely Russian and does not have to rely on imports. The replacement of Adamov by Rumyantsev seems unlikely to change these goals or the nuclear mindset in the slightest. Rumyantsev is committed to breeder reactors, importing spent fuel for cash, and projects like floating nuclear power stations.

If these plans go ahead, the new reactors, their waste, and other nuclear technologies will consume vast stretches of land and put Russia's rich biodiversity at risk. The same willingness to minimize risks, ignore dangers, and embrace radioactive waste that produced the worst of Russia's and Ukraine's environmental degradation at Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Novaya Zemlya remains. At Kyshtym, 20,000 square kilometers were polluted; all inhabitants had to leave. The evaporation of radioactive waste from Lake Karachai blew 50 miles, requiring 41,000 people to be evacuated. In Russia's nuclear “polygons,” (closed nuclear cities, waste storage areas, and test sites) death rates from leukemia, lung cancer, and thyroid cancer are as much as seven times higher than elsewhere. How widespread the migration of radionu-clides may be in flora and fauna is unknown because state secrecy prevents adequate study.

Some safety mechanisms are in place. In Russia, as in other countries, officials have recognized the need to separate promotional from regulatory activities in a variety of industries to ensure public health and environmental safety. But Minatom has been able to weaken nuclear watchdog efforts. Nuclear specialists who worked in the State Environmental Committee lost their jobs when Putin abolished the agency in 2000. Gosatomnadzor, founded only in 1994, has already lost significant portions of its original power. Now Minatom is trying to eliminate the inspectorate's right to license and perform safety inspections in the civilian sector altogether.

In 1981 Nikolai Dollezhal, one of the pioneers of Soviet nuclear energy, criticized the industry for siting reactor “parks” near urban areas (as a way to keep transmission costs down). He worried about the transport of fuel and waste through highly populated regions, and called for the construction of self-contained nuclear regions with huge fuel-processing, separation, storage, and power production facilities—literally scores of 1,000-megawatt and larger reactors— somewhere east of the Ural Mountains. This would have provided a margin of safety for the inhabitants of the European republics if not for fragile tundra ecosystems.

Minatom's forecasts today provide an even smaller margin for error, because they focus on European Russia and require the handling and transport of vast quantities of fuel, spent fuel, and waste to three fuel-processing centers already overburdened by Soviet-era refuse. Minatom has upgraded standards at many of its facilities, but much more remains to be done.

These tasks must be accomplished before Minatom embarks on its ambitious expansion programs. But Minatom is not yet ready. Both its mindset and technology belong to another era. •