The Authorities Try To Conceal Other Scandal With the BelNPP

Will the Belarusians spend billions to store radioactive waste on their land?

The Council of Ministers approved the "Strategy for BelNPP spent nuclear fuel handling". According to the document, the fuel cycle of BelNPP will take 4 years with nuclear fuel reloaded every 12 months. According to calculations, over 60 years two power units of the plant will produce "5294 fuel assemblies with a total mass of 2492 tons of heavy metal".

Some media rushed to write that spent nuclear fuel (SNF) would be allegedly transported to Russia.

Is this true? What will happen to SNF and radioactive waste from the Astravets nuclear power plant?

Russian nuclear physicist Andrei Ozharovsky answers questions of Charter97.org:

- The "Strategy" published by the Belarusian government has no grounds. To date, no intergovernmental agreement on spent nuclear fuel handling has been concluded with the Russian Federation.

The conclusion of this treaty is provided by an intergovernmental agreement of 2011. But now it is 2019, the BelNPP will soon receive nuclear fuel and there is still no agreement on SNF.

One should see that Belarus failed to reach an agreement with Russia. If everything was simple, the agreement on SNF could have been signed in 2012, 2013, 2014 and so on.

Publication of this "strategy" is an attempt to conceal the scandalous situation: Rosatom will now force Belarus to accept fresh fuel, but it's not clear what to do with spent fuel.

Let's read the very "strategy". It will be really useful.

- And what exactly does it say?

- For example, Chapter 6:

"If the agreement on the SNF return to the Russian Federation can't be implemented, the long-term intermediate storage of SNF with its subsequent burial in the deep geological formation is currently accepted as an alternative option for SNF handling of the Belarusian NPP."

That is, the Belarusian government only assumes that the agreement with Russia can be concluded, and assumes that it may not take place. And such stipulations are mentioned several times in the "strategy".

Agree that if no agreement is signed yet, there are probably some serious disputes. And it is easy to identify them.

The Russian Federation authorizes the import of foreign SNF in two cases: for temporary storage and/or reprocessing. But the word "reprocessing" does not reflect in full the essence of this process. In fact, "SNF reprocessing" is a chemical process for extracting undecayed uranium and plutonium from SNF. Uranium can again be used as fuel for nuclear power plants, and plutonium is used to produce military products.

"Reprocessing" was invented long before the notion of "peaceful atom" appeared. This is what the first nuclear reactors were built for, both in the USSR and in the USA: to release plutonium and turn it into fuel for bombs.

But apart from the "useful" substances - uranium and plutonium - SNF contains a lot more, namely, all the dangerous radioactive isotopes we know - cesium, strontium, iodine. There is a cocktail of radioactive isotopes there: about 2000 short-lived radionuclides and about 200 medium and long-lived radionuclides.

That is, SNF is not only uranium and plutonium but also a whole bouquet of radionuclides, which are always harmful when released into the environment. When uranium and plutonium are extracted, this cocktail of radionuclides remains in the so-called "secondary radioactive waste", which, according to the legislation of the Russian Federation, should be returned to the country of origin, i.e. to Belarus.

And now let's see what the "strategy" says. The same Chapter 6:

"Based on the calculated impact indicators ... for the environment, the preferred option is to recycle SNF".

And this is the most dubious statement of the whole "strategy" because normal countries do not recycle SNF. Now the global trend is to consider SNF as waste from the very beginning. The main problem with SNF reprocessing is that it increases the volume of radioactive waste.

But Chapter 6 is even more interesting:

"Currently, the preferred option for SNF handling at the Belarusian NPP is the reprocessing of SNF in the Russian Federation with the return of waste included in the glass matrix containing radionuclides of the cesium-strontium fraction, with the elimination of long-lived radionuclides, to the Republic of Belarus."

This is the most key part of the document. It shows why no agreement has been signed between Belarus and Russia so far. Russia should not agree to return to Belarus the entire cocktail of dangerous radionuclides, but only the "cesium-strontium fraction," and "included in the glass matrix."

It should be noted that the SNF reprocessing generates a huge amount of liquid radioactive waste. Its volume increases by about 2000 times. I do not exaggerate. One ton of SNF releases about 2000 tons of liquid radioactive waste. Of course, they are less active, but their volume is increasing sharply.

And it is strange, to put it mildly, to plan that all these liquid wastes will remain in Russia and will be discharged into rivers and lakes. It is weird fantasies that only "medium-lived" nuclear waste - such as strontium with a half-life of about 30 years, and all the rest will remain in Russia - will return to Belarus. It falls behind the Russian legislation. Let me remind you, it requires ALL nuclear wastes to be returned to their country of origin.

- How can the Belarusian authorities and Russia claim "mutually exclusive paragraphs"?

- I guess that in 2011, when the contract for the construction of BelNPP was signed, Rosatom simply deceived the Belarusian authorities saying: "Don't worry, we'll deal with the waste."

If Belarus, as stated in the "strategy," would get back only the cesium-strontium fraction, it turns out that it would regularly dump tons of radioactive waste after SNF reprocessing in Russia. It looks like an attempt to "cheat".

But I suspect this is the fault of Russia which told lies in 2011.

Let's turn to Chapter 6:

"It is recommended to use the principle of radiation equivalence when handling SNF products (recycled nuclear materials and radionuclides not subject to further use).”

Agree that this looks strange: Belarus exports to the Russian Federation all "long-lived" and transuranic elements, and then wants to take only "medium-lived" cesium and strontium.

Keep on reading:

"The methodology for determining the specified radiation equivalence should be specified within the framework of the negotiation process between the authorized organizations of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation."

It indicates that there are no agreements at present, the negotiation process will continue.

If Rosatom, a Russian corporation, agrees to leave "long-lived" radioactive waste in Russia, it will be unfair to Russia. I think that this issue will remain disputable.

However, the Belarusian side realizes it and claims that it is necessary:

"To create a facility for long-term storage of SNF and HLW (high-level nuclear waste) in the Republic of Belarus, based on container solutions ...," Chapter 5 of the Strategy says.

That is, it is seriously considered that storage facilities and, most likely, the burial of radioactive substances should be built in Belarus.

- How much will it cost the Belarusian taxpayers?

- The "strategy" provides certain amounts, but, in my opinion, the economic assessment of the storage and burial of radioactive substances from the BelNPP is greatly underestimated.

"The total cost for SNF handling under the existing technologies is estimated from $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion for the entire period of operation of the Belarusian NPP (up to 100 years)," the document says.

And this is increasingly suspicious. Even if a fantastic variant works and only cesium and strontium return from Russia, they require storage for about 300 years. That is, this figure is multiplied by 3 and we get about $10 billion of expenses only for the storage of the cesium-strontium fraction. But it's a fantasy that only this fraction can return to Belarus.

The document contains another "dream" of the Belarusian authorities:

"By the time the SNF is returned to the Republic of Belarus (approximately by 2050), it is necessary to confirm the presence of facilities for its handling in the country."

That is, they plan to build these storage facilities only by 2050. Probably, this was a kind of "carrot" from Rosatom: yes, it will cost billions, but it won't affect the ruling power now - these people are unlikely to live to 2050. It turns out that people, deciding on the construction and launch of the NPP in Belarus, shun the responsibility.

I'd like to say that in developed countries, in Sweden, the costs of isolation of SNF and other radioactive waste are calculated for millennia to come.

Here is another point of interest on the economic side of the "strategy":

"Currently, the Republic of Belarus is developing mechanisms to create funds for the Belarusian NPP to accumulate in full the necessary amount of money for the handling with SNF and RAW (radioactive waste) by the end of its commercial operation."

Excellent! The Belarusian authorities are just "developing mechanisms", and the operating organization "Rosenergoatom" has no money to work with SNF. If you ask any nuclear power plant in Russia about money for SNF handling, it will answer: no, we are going to seek this money in the state budget. Such "mechanisms" do not work in Russia! Thus, the question "who will pay for SNF reprocessing from Belarus" remains open.

One more thing should be noted. The Belarusian authorities hope that only cesium and strontium will return to them, so they say: "This will rule out the need to create a burial site for SNF or HLW in deep geological formations, which has no analogue in the world at the moment."

This is right. There is no long-term solution to the problem of high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel in the world. There is not a single active disposal site for long-lived radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel that would solve the problem once and for all. And the projects that exist in Sweden, for example, are very expensive and cost about 9 billion euros.

Reprocessing only increases the volume of radioactive waste and can cause conflicts between Rosatom and Belarus.

As a result, it may happen that the temporary SNF storage, which is to be built next to Astravets NPP, will be gradually turned by the Belarusian authorities into a long-term storage facility, and then - into a permanent storage facility. Simply because there are no other options. And the authors of the "strategy" admit it:

"At present, the national SNF handling policy of many countries provides for a wait-and-see strategy for long-term controlled intermediate storage with deferred decision-making on the type of the fuel cycle."

And this "wait-and-see" situation will lead to the fact that future generations of Belarusians will have to keep paying - probably for millennia - for radionuclides from the storage near the BelNPP not to be released into the environment.

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