IPFM Blog

Japan's nuclear regulator to suspend Monju reactor

2013-05-13T18:47:09Z

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority is expected to indefinitely suspend operations of the Monju fast breeder reactor due to concerns about safety and violations of inspection procedures. The reactor will not be allowed to restart unless its operator, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, conducts a comprehensive review of its safety management system and overhauls the equipment inspection program.

The Monju reactor was most recently shut down after an accident in August 2010. It was expected to begin operations in March 2014, but it will be unable to do so as a result of the NRA actions. Also, Japan was reported considering closing the reactor down entirely.

Areva to build reprocessing plant in China

2013-04-26T19:06:46Z

Areva and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) "signed a letter of intent to build a used fuel treatment and recycling facility in China," according to a press-release by Areva. The facility will have the capacity to reprocess 800 tonnes of spent fuel of Chinese power reactors a year. According to Areva representatives, The agreement appears to include construction of a MOX fuel fabrication facility that would "integrate some of the elements present at Melox" and use "certain elements in terms of processing uranil nitrate that can be fount at the Pierrelatte site."

China was seeking access to the French reprocessing technology as part of the arrangement that involves construction of French power reactors in China. In 2009, France offered to supply a reprocessing facility, but the two sides apparently had disagreements about the price as well as restrictions on the use of technology that France wanted to include in the contract. It is not clear if the two sides managed to successfully address all these disagreements.

In 2010, Belgium and China reached an agreement to provide China with MOX fuel fabrication technology. That agreement also involved China National Nuclear Corporation.

Rokkasho reprocessing plant unlikely to start before 2014

2013-04-25T18:45:54Z

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority put on hold the plan to start operations of the reprocessing plant in Rokkasho. According to an editorial published in Asahi Shimbun, NRA has decided not to carry pre-operation tests of the plant until it approves new safety standard, which it is expected to do in December 2013. Accordingly, the plant will not be able to begin operations before at least 2014.

This would be another delay for the Rokkasho plant after a malfunction of a furnace forced the operator of the plant, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL), to postpone test runs in January 2012. The test runs reportedly resumed in June 2012.

IPFM releases report on transparency in nuclear disarmament

2013-04-24T17:42:31Z

At the 2013 NPT Prepcom in Geneva, IPFM released a report, Increasing Transparency of Nuclear-warhead and Fissile-material Stocks as a Step toward Disarmament, laying out a set of options for how NPT nuclear-weapon states could fulfill their transparency commitments through a series of successively more detailed public declarations of the numbers and deployment status of their nuclear warheads and of their inventories, production, and disposition histories of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium, the key ingredients in nuclear weapons.

The report is available at the IPFM library

The presentation is available as a pdf file.

Civilian plutonium swap increased the amount of UK owned plutonium

2013-04-23T08:36:18Z

The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change announced a series of plutonium title swaps that will increase the amount of UK owned separated plutonium. However, these being title swaps, no physical transfer of material will take place. According to the official statement, DECC has agreed to the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority:

Participating in a series of swaps of plutonium material which will result in the NDA taking ownership of around 750 kg of plutonium stored in the UK, previously owned by certain German utilities.
Facilitating a swap of plutonium ownership between Japanese and German utilities which will result in a decrease of about 650 kg of German owned plutonium in the UK and an equivalent increase in Japanese owned plutonium in the UK.
Taking ownership to around 1850 kg plutonium that was originally allocated to repay plutonium loans (to France) in relation to historic MOX fuel subcontracts.
Taking ownership of around 350 kg of material previously owned by a Dutch Utility.

According to the UK INFCIRC/549 declaration to IAEA, as of 31 December 2011, the United Kingdom had 118.2 tonnes of separated plutonium on its territory. Of this amount, 90.3 tonnes were owned by the UK and 27.9 tonnes by foreign bodies. In July 2012, the United Kingdom and Germany agreed to a title swap that resulted in transfer of ownership of about 4 tonnes of German-owned plutonium to the UK ownership, increasing the amount of UK-owned plutonium to 94.3 tonnes. As a result of the April 2013 transactions, the amount of UK owned plutonium stored in the United Kingdom will increase by another 2.95 tonnes to reach 97.25 tonnes. Correspondingly, the amount of foreign-owned plutonium will decrease to 20.95 tonnes.

It appears that after this title swap there will be no more German separated plutonium in the United Kingdom. The amount of plutonium belogning to Japan will increase from 17.028 tonnes, reported by Japan as of 31 December 2011, to 17.678 kg.

All HEU removed from Czech Republic

2013-04-05T13:57:57Z

U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced today that it completed removal of all HEU from Czech Republic. The shipment included 68 kg of HEU, apparently in spent fuel of the LVR-15 reactor at the Research Centre Řež of the Nuclear Research Institute. According to the NNSA photo account of the shipment, the cask with spent fuel left Řež on 22 March 2013 and arrived in Gdansk, Poland on 24 March 2013. Containers with the casks were loaded in the ship Mikhail Dudin that arrived in Murmansk several days ago. The spent fuel will be transported to the Mayak plant. The reactor reportedly used IRT-2M fuel assemblies with uranium enriched to 36% U-235.

The LVR-15 reactor has been converted to LEU, although it reportedly uses HEU targets to produce medical isotopes. Nevertheless, the amount of HEU in this process is very small, so Czech Republic could be added to the list of countries from which HEU has been removed. According to NNSA, "the Czech Republic becomes the tenth country from which all HEU has been removed since President Obama announced in Prague an international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world."

UPDATE: According to Bellona, previous shipments of HEU from Czech Republic included 80 kg of spent fuel of the LVR-15 reactor in 2007, and three shipments of fresh fuel: 6 kg in 2004, 14 kg in 2005, and 12.2 kg in 2010. Also, in 2006 Russia removed from Czech Republic 0.2 kg of plutonium. LEU fuel for the LVR-15 reactor was supplied by TVEL in March 2011.

HEU spent fuel of a Czech research reactor arrived in Murmansk

2013-04-04T12:37:54Z

According to a report by Bellona, a shipment of spent research reactor fuel arrived in Murmansk from ~~Poland~~ Czech Republic. The ship that delivered by a cargo ship Mikhail Dudin. The shipment was apparently conducted with assistance of the GTRI program. The fuel will be sent to the Mayak plant.

UPDATE 04/05/2013: The original report stated that the fuel arrived from Poland. This was incorrect - the origin of the fuel was Czech Republic. NNSA announced today that the shipment included 68 kg of HEU fuel from the reactor in Rez. The shipment is described in a separate entry.

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Areva launches commercial production at Georges Besse II North enrichment plant

2013-03-29T08:47:15Z

On March 29, 2013 Areva formally launched its Georges Besse II North uranium enrichment facility at Tricastin. The launch is part of the plan to inclrease the capacity of the facility to 7.5 million SWU by 2016. The Georges Besse II South plant (with reported capacity of 2.5 million SWU) was inaugurated in December 2010. It reached the production level of 1.5 million SWU in June 2012 and was operating at about 70% of its capacity as of the end of 2012.

The cost of the U.S. MOX plant is estimated to be $7.7 billion

2013-03-20T22:21:06Z

DOE is currently forecasting an increase in the total project cost for the MOX facility from $4.9 billion to $7.7 billion and a delay in the start of operations from October 2016 to November 2019. This estimate has been quoted in the U.S. Government Accountability Office report Department of Energy: Concerns with Major Construction Projects at the Office of Environmental Management and NNSA released on March 20, 2013 (GAO-13-484T). An earlier GAO report, released in February 2013, suggested the cost of the construction is about $6.8 billion.

According to NNSA officials and the contractor for the MOX facility, one of the primary reasons for the proposed cost increase and schedule delay is due to inadequately designed critical system components, such as the gloveboxes used in the facility for handling plutonium and the infrastructure needed to support these gloveboxes.

Life-cycle cost estimate for the Plutonium Disposition Program. In addition to setting the cost and schedule performance baselines of the MOX facility and Waste Solidification Building, NNSA has developed a life-cycle cost estimate for the overall effort of the Plutonium Disposition Program to dispose of at least 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium. NNSA officials told us that there has never been a review of this life-cycle estimate by an outside entity but that they are conducting an independent assessment of portions of the life-cycle cost estimate, including the operating cost of the MOX facility.

Dutch spent fuel arrived for reprocessing at La Hague

2013-03-20T22:16:45Z

A rail shipment of 4.5 tons of used nuclear fuel arrived today from AREVA's railway terminal in Valognes (France) in order to be transported to AREVA la Hague plant for recycling.

This transport is composed of three casks of used fuel. It is operated in accordance with intergovernmental agreement between France and the Netherlands. This transport forms part of a contract signed in 1978 between AREVA and the Dutch electrician EPZ for the processing-recycling of 350 tons of use nuclear fuel. With this transport, about 293 tons will have been delivered and about 275 tons were already treated.

The cost of U.S. MOX plant reached $6.8 billion

2013-02-13T14:47:07Z

According to a report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on February 14, 2013, NNSA recently added $2 billion to the cost of construction of the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF).

Tom Clements summarized the history of the MFFF cost increased as follows:

In 2004, the facility was estimated to cost $1.8 billion. In 2007, the estimate was $4.8 billion, where the cost has been frozen until now. The $6.8 billion price tag now on the facility represents a single, massive jump in the cost estimate of about 30%.

According to Tom Clements, the overall cost of the plutonium disposition program has now reached $18 billion.

No date yet for PIK reactor start-up

2013-01-17T11:47:10Z

According to the director of the the Kurchatov Center, the date of the start-up of the PIK high-flux research reactor will be determined at the end of 2013, when the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Gatchina, near St.-Petersburg completes construction of the first line of the research facility. The reactor first went critical in February 2011, but the start of operations at full power has been delayed several times.

UPDATE 04/22/2013: Nuclear.ru quotes Kurchatov officials as saying that the start-up of the reactor could take "several years." It is expected that the full start-up will not take place until 2015.

U.S. Department of Energy sets strategy for dealing with spent fuel

2013-01-14T20:25:07Z

The U.S. Department of Energy released the Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste (local copy of pdf).

The document largely follows the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission that was established in January 2010 to "conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle." The commission issued its final report in January 2012.

The key elements of the new strategy outlined in the document as follows:

"With the appropriate authorizations from Congress, the Administration currently plans to implement a program over the next 10 years that:

Sites, designs and licenses, constructs and begins operations of a pilot interim storage facility by 2021 with an initial focus on accepting used nuclear fuel from shut-down reactor sites;
Advances toward the siting and licensing of a larger interim storage facility to be available by 2025 that will have sufficient capacity to provide flexibility in the waste management system and allows for acceptance of enough used nuclear fuel to reduce expected government liabilities; and
Makes demonstrable progress on the siting and characterization of repository sites to facilitate the availability of a geologic repository by 2048."

All HEU removed from Austria

2012-12-11T09:28:14Z

U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration successfully returned 1.2 kg of HEU from Austria to the United States. The U.S.-origin material was used in fuel of the TRIGA reactor at the Vienna University of Technology, that has been converted to LEU fuel as part of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative. After the removal of this fuel, no HEU remains in Austria.

According to NNSA, this shipment also "marks the removal of all TRIGA HEU fuel from international civilian commerce."

Russia declares its 2011 civilian plutonium holdings

2012-11-23T15:43:29Z

Russia submitted its annual declaration that contains data on its holdings of civilian plutonium - INFCIRC/549/Add.9/14. According to the declaration, as of the end of 2011 Russia had 49.5 tonnes of unirradiated separated plutonium, 1.1 tonnes more than was declared in 2010.

Of this amount, 48,100 kg is stored at the reprocessing plant, an increase of 1,100 kg over the 2010 amount. Other reported amounts of separated plutonium did not change: 300 kg is in unirradiated MOX fuel held at reactor sites and elsewhere, and 1,100 kg is "held elsewhere". Of the total amount of 49.5 tonnes, 300 kg of plutonium belongs to "foreign bodies". Also, Russia owns 600 kg of plutonium that is "held in locations in other countries". This amount is not included in the total.

In addition, Russia has 75,500 kg of plutonium in spent fuel that is stored at reactor sites, 4,000 kg - in spent fuel that is awaiting reprocessing at the reprocessing plant, and 51,500 kg - in spent fuel "held elsewhere". As of end of 2010, these numbers were 73,000 kg, 4,000 kg, and 49,000 kg respectively. Overall, Russia had 131 tonnes of plutonium still in spent fuel as of December 31, 2011, up 5 tonnes from December 2010.