Will the European Union resurrect the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant? How the life of a nuclear power plant ends, using the example of the Ignalina plant

The famous Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant was built in Lithuania during the Soviet era. It was initially planned to use 6 power units here, each of which would have an energy capacity of 1185-1380 MW. However, the project was never implemented due to various reasons. Let's figure out why it was never possible to build this power plant and what the Ignalina NPP looks like today.

Construction and plans

Construction of the station began in 1974. In parallel with it, a town was being built where the employees servicing this huge enterprise would live. So, the very first one energy block was launched on December 31, 1983. In 1987, the second block was put into operation. In total, they expected to build 4 reactors, and in the future - 2 more. The third of them was laid down in 1985. However, it was never built. As for the fourth power unit, it remains only in plans.

It is likely that if not for the so-called perestroika, all the reactors would have been put into operation, and Lithuania would have been “basking” in cheap electricity, but the project was finally closed when Lithuania joined the EU. It’s a pity, since this one was equipped with the most powerful water-graphite reactors at that time, which provided high energy output.

Prospects for the operation of Ignalina NPP

They were truly rosy. You can talk endlessly about the prospects for the operation of this power plant. Thanks to her, Lithuania received very cheap electricity in huge quantities. The country requires only 10 billion kWh per year. However, the two operating units produced a total of 12.26 billion kWh of electricity over the same period of time. In general, taking into account other hydroelectric power plants and wind turbines, the country had 13.9 kWh per year. Consequently, 3.9 kWh of electricity could be sold to nearby states. Imagine how many times the country’s energy capacity would increase if the third and fourth energy blocks were built!

In addition to cheap electricity for the population and production, as well as the opportunity to fill its budget with foreign currency from the sale of excess kWh, the country could receive huge investments in the industrial field. After all, big financiers are always looking for convenient countries with cheap electricity. In this case, Lithuania is an ideal platform. What can we say about the political dividends that the country would receive from energy-dependent countries. Unfortunately, all this was lost, and today the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant practically does not operate in Lithuania.

Reasons stated for closure

After the collapse of the USSR, the Lithuanian Government and population were delirious with the idea of ​​joining the EU. One of the conditions was the closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant to ensure safety. The fact is that this power plant used reactors that were structurally similar to the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. And although Ignalina NPP was one of the most safe stations According to the IAEA conclusion, the EU demanded its closure. Otherwise, membership in this organization would be impossible.

The Lithuanian government agreed to these conditions and decided to shut down the station. In 2004, the first unit was stopped, and in 2009, the second. Lithuania has fully fulfilled the conditions for obtaining EU membership, but the process of complete shutdown and deactivation of power units is still ongoing, and its completion is scheduled for 2034.

Real reasons for closing

Many experts believe that the real reason for closing the INPP was the reluctance of the EU leaders to have a strong member in the European Union that would become a full participant along with the leaders. After the closure of the power plant, Lithuania was forced to buy expensive energy resources abroad, and its budget began to be filled with new money.

As a result, it has become a country dependent on the EU, which, if necessary, can accept conditions that are obviously unfavorable for it to please other EU states. But if Lithuania had such a solid tool for attracting investment and capital to the budget, the country’s government would behave differently.

INPP today

What the facility looks like today can be seen in the photos of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant posted in this article. Unfortunately, today it does not produce electricity and is at the stage of shutdown. The fact is that closing a power plant is a complex and lengthy process. You can't just put a lock on the gate because nuclear fuel requires maintenance.

As of January 20, 2017, 1,991 people worked at the station. All of them carry out work related to the storage of spent nuclear fuel, decontaminate and dismantle equipment that remains at the nuclear power plant, and create repositories for short-lived low-level waste.

The estimated completion date for all work is August 2034. Before this time, the reactor units of the first and second units must be dismantled.

We visited Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and this time we’ll look at Ignalinskaya. These two stations are very similar. Both stations are based on RBMK water-graphite reactors (recognized as quite dangerous), both have already been stopped, both have satellite cities - Pripyat and Visaginas.

But there are also differences. The INPP was built somewhat later than the Chernobyl one, operating without accidents from 1983 to 2009. The reactors themselves are also different - despite the same type, they are presented in different modifications - RBMK-1000 at the Chernobyl NPP and RBMK-1500 (more powerful) at the INPP. There are also purely external architectural differences. It must also be said that there were 4 power units operating at the Chernobyl NPP (and 2 more were being built), and at the INPP there were only two working power units.

And, of course, the biggest difference is that the INPP completed its life without serious accidents or incidents, unlike the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which became notorious throughout the world and gave birth to a dead thirty-kilometer Exclusion Zone. Physicists say that the RBMK-type reactor was simply doomed to explode one day - if there had been no Chernobyl, this could have happened either here, near Visaginas, or at the Leningrad NPP near St. Petersburg.

So, today’s walk is around the Ignalina nuclear power plant.

02. We approach the main entrance to the station. The entire territory is under the surveillance of video cameras, but you can take photographs here quite freely.

03. This is what the station looks like up close. Slightly to the left of the center of the photo - the main thing administrative building A nuclear power plant with the reactor hall towering above it.

04. The reactor hall did not seem very high compared to Chernobyl. I don’t know what this is connected with - perhaps a slightly different design of the machine is used here, which loads fuel and graphite rods into the reactor. Or perhaps it's just an optical effect.

05. Pay attention to the ventilation pipes - they differ from those used at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and have a very recognizable shape.

06. To the right of the entrance there is a working dining room. Workers who are dismantling the station are now having lunch in the canteen.

07. As in Chernobyl, many workers are dressed in camouflage. By the way, many of the local residents of Visaginas worked to eliminate the consequences of the Chernobyl accident.

08. Central entrance. Of course, it’s not so easy to get inside - despite the stop, the station continues to remain a closed security facility, the territory of which is full of places with high levels radiation.

09. From the INPP towards the city of Visaginas there is such a heating main. According to local residents, at the time when the nuclear power plant was operating, hot water I was in the city even in winter in garages. That is, the station also served as a large boiler house.

10. We go around the station from the other side. Here, too, there is some kind of pipe laid on concrete blocks. Most likely, this is also hot water or steam.

11. Fence of the first security perimeter, which could not be penetrated during the operation of the station. An observation tower is visible on the left.

12. We enter the territory. Now the only thing separating us from the reactor blocks is small fence near the very walls of the station.

13. Two tall buildings without windows, these are reactor halls, each with a triple ventilation pipe. On the right in the distance there is a long, lower building - this is the turbine room. The steam heated by the reactors is fed through a steam circuit to turbines in the turbine room, where it rotates turbines that generate electricity.

14. If you look in the other direction, you can see this railway loading center with a giant overhead crane - these rails go straight to the power units. Most likely, fuel was delivered to the nuclear power plant from here.

15. Security perimeter towers, now empty. There is no longer any fuel at the station, but quite a lot of dangerous “dirt” remains. According to local taxi driver Oleg, dismantling workers have now just reached the reactor halls, where there is a lot of radioactive metal.

16. And this is a recently built nuclear waste storage facility.

17. The storage facility is empty for now, but soon spent fuel assemblies from reactors will be stored here.

18. Fire department guarding the nuclear power plant and nearby facilities. Most likely, of a paramilitary type, as was the case in Chernobyl.

19. Entrance stele.

20. Power lines.

21. Local residents are very dissatisfied with the closure of the INPP, but they connect their future precisely with nuclear energy- now in these places a project is gradually being implemented to build the Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant in these places - a new type of nuclear power plant.

The two-unit Ignalina NPP, located in Lithuania, is the second RBMK nuclear power plant to be completely shut down (after Chernobyl). The reactors were finally shut down here on December 31, 2004 and December 31, 2009, and since then the nuclear power plant has been decommissioned (this euphemism means dismantling, burying radioactive residues and clearing industrial structures to the “green lawn”). This (output) project is actually a pilot for the RBMK, and relies on several key technological chains, of which one of the most important is this B234 plant, testing of which began in May 2017.

Ignalina NPP

Unlike Ukraine, Lithuania, and especially those behind the idea to decommission 20-year-old EU reactors, have money for decommissioning, at least part of it. Nevertheless, the process of decommissioning the Ingalinskaya nuclear power plant, quite harmonious on paper, has already turned into a soap opera. Since from 2019 Rosatom will have to carry out similar work (decommissioning units 1.2 of the Leningrad NPP and then all RBMKs sequentially), it will be interesting to look at the technologies, solutions and problems that have arisen around Ignalinka.



The process of reloading spent fuel from wet storage into the CONSTOR container, Ignalina NPP.

In general, the “immediate dismantling” procedure (i.e., the station begins to be dismantled, in fact, a month or two after the shutdown, using the station’s operating personnel) consists of the following important sections:

• Unloading fuel from the reactor, cooling pools into the spent fuel storage facility to ensure the nuclear safety of the reactor and reactor hall with the possibility of stopping the supply of cooling water to the reactor and spent fuel pool. In addition to standard SNF, such work must be carried out with damaged SNF, which must be penalized before moving, and with any radioactive replaceable elements of the reactor - for example, additional absorbers. The whole procedure takes from 2-3 years to infinity if there are problems with the spent nuclear fuel storage facility.
• At the same time, dismantling of auxiliary systems of nuclear power plants begins - for example pumping stations, workshops technical gases, in the case of RBMK this is still a huge structure Gas System Emergency Reactor Cooling, generator with auxiliary systems.
• In parallel, the infrastructure for future intermediate-level radioactive waste (RAW) is being prepared - this is an on-site or remote near-surface storage facility, which is a concrete trench covered with clay and soil on top. There will be a lot of self-propelled waste from nuclear power plants; this is a noticeable part of the primary circuit and systems associated with the reactor.
• Once the infrastructure is ready, you can begin to disassemble the elements of the nuclear power plant that may carry radioactive contamination or activation, sorting by activity level and attempting to clean them from surface contamination. What can be washed to the standards goes into scrap metal, what doesn’t goes into landfill. It is still not known exactly how much of the buried waste will be from the RBMK; in order to decide on it, it is necessary to dismantle at least one.

The main problem with RBMK and many other graphite reactors is graphite. Irradiated graphite has a specific activity of about 0.3-1 gigabecquerel per kg, including ~130 MBq/kg of the bad isotope C14 with a half-life of 5700 years. Because of C14, the annual limit of intake into the body according to safety standards is defined as 34 MBq of other options, except for the burial of thousands of tons of graphite, are not particularly visible, but the cost of this operation still makes us think about how exactly it can be optimized. In particular, for the first plutonium production reactors at Mayak, the Mining and Chemical Combine and Siberian Chemical Combine, it was decided to fill the graphite frame with concrete - i.e. organize a burial ground right on the site of the reactor.

Some other types of reactors with graphite also have problems with its disposal.

At Ignalina NPP this theoretical approach the implementation was practically 1 to 1, at least at the project stage. Along with the decision to shut down the reactors, a decommissioning program was developed, which received approximately 80% of the funds from the European Union and Lithuania itself undertook to finance the rest. The plan provided for the construction of a new spent fuel storage facility in containers at the nuclear power plant site B1(about container and wet spent fuel storage facilities), a new workshop for sorting and compactification of radioactive waste B234, as well as two sites for radioactive waste - trench disposal for short-lived isotopes and very low activity radioactive waste B19 and above ground storage B25 for radioactive waste of medium and low activity with “medium-living” ( we're talking about about hundreds of years before safe level) isotopes.

Appearance waste processing complex B34 (B2 is a separate building, not included in the frame)

Against the backdrop of the construction of a new infrastructure for working with spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste (it must be understood that the nuclear power plants already had storage facilities for spent fuel and radioactive waste, however, designed only for operation and not for dismantling), the dismantling of those same auxiliary systems of the nuclear power plant had to take place. At the same time, it was decided to postpone the resolution of the issue with radioactive graphite until the future, until it was removed from the reactor and placed in storage.

The storage facility that already exists next to the nuclear power plant is designed for 120 containers, each containing 51 fuel assemblies, and is currently completely filled.

The contract for the development and construction of B1 and B234 was received by the German Nukem Technologies in 2005, various Lithuanian companies + Areva were awarded the development of disposal projects, and the NPP operating personnel were engaged in dismantling the NPP systems.

In particular, the photographs show the result of dismantling the ECCS in building 117/2

Literally from the first days, practice ceased to resemble theory. The main problems arose around the B1 spent fuel storage facility for many reasons. Nukem tested organizational and financial difficulties At that time, the Lithuanian atomic supervision was not ready (in terms of the qualifications of its personnel) to analyze the decisions of German engineers regarding the storage of damaged SNF, and even the information on the damaged SNF at the station turned out to be fragmentary and incomplete. Initially planned for commissioning in 2009 (with the goal of starting loading SNF from Unit 1 after 5 years of storage in the pools), the storage facility was completed only in 2015 and is only now being put into operation (with the goal of starting reloading in 2018). All these delays led to repeated disputes between the NPP and Nukem.

On the plan of storage facility B1, a purple frame marks the place where radiation-hazardous work will be performed - closing (standard) and opening (non-standard) containers.
The rest of the work will be carried out on the existing wet storage.

Generally speaking, such a story is not uncommon in the nuclear industry: many construction projects of nuclear facilities are terribly delayed (and, as a result, more expensive) due to the complexity of design, which in turn is associated with the comprehensiveness of the issues that developers and their inspectors from nuclear supervision must monitor. A typical example, besides Nukem, whose Lithuanian facilities are being commissioned with a 7-year(!) lag and a 1.5-fold increase in cost, is the Olkiluoto block with the EPR-1600 reactor, which almost destroyed Areva 3, where the project management was not very good and there was a lack of understanding How to make a project under the strict requirements of the Finnish nuclear inspectorate STUK led to monstrous delays and cost overruns.

More about the process of dismantling nuclear power plants, clockwise - an installation for sawing scrap metal, manual decontamination of surfaces, an installation for cleaning liquids from radionuclides using ion-exchange resins, cutting the housing of a low pressure turbine turbine, separating cylinders high pressure, sandblasting chamber.

However, let's return to object B1. This is a covered container storage facility for spent fuel, designed for reloading RBMK fuel assemblies (more precisely, their halves, since the RBMK fuel assemblies are 10 meters long, and in the fuel part they are, in fact, 2 consecutive fuel assemblies on one suspension) into CONSTOR containers, each of which can accommodate 182 fuel assembly halves. In total, 201 containers can be delivered to facility B1, designed to hold 34,200 standard “halves” and several hundred damaged ones, which will be stored in additional sealed canisters.

Before being transferred for storage to B1, all fuel assemblies removed from the reactors (by the way, at the nuclear power plant only the first unit has now been cleared of fuel; in the second there are still more than 1000 fuel assemblies due to lack of space in the cooling pools) are kept for at least 5 years in a centralized “ wet” storage facility, they are also cut up and packaged under water in CONSTOR containers, for which, by the way, the fuel assembly storage facility has to be modified - cranes, container installation units, reloading equipment (I am writing this phrase for Ukrainian fans of the idea that spent fuel from any nuclear power plant can be loaded into any container without much effort).

In general, storage in a container is carried out according to standard scheme- a stainless steel basket with fuel assemblies in a sealed sealed container filled with dry nitrogen, placed in an external massive metal-concrete container (for biosecurity). Taking into account the fact that the freshest fuel assemblies have been aged for 8 years, transport and technological operations for reloading fuel assemblies between numerous facilities, penalizing damaged spent fuel, and minimizing the dose load of personnel during these operations pose difficulties.

Interesting for Russian workers NPP with RBMK frame showing the dynamics of the number of personnel at the Ignalina NPP in the process of disassembly

However, this is in theory. For example, the first version of the CONSTOR container for ISF B1 was rejected due to biosecurity characteristics, after which the manufacturer ( German company GNS) was forced to develop and license another version, which contributed to the delay in the launch of B1.

In total, at the Ignalina NPP today there are about ~22,000 SNF fuel assemblies (i.e. 44,000 halves) and the remainder will be stored in another dry SNF storage facility built in 1999.

Photo of a nuclear power plant wet storage facility from the IAEA. 15,000 fuel assemblies are now stored here, although it seems to me that the photo shows not fuel assemblies, but additional absorbers or control rods

The Lithuanians are considering the possibility of final geological disposal at a depth of >500 meters (as recommended by the IAEA), but for the next 50 years, with the possibility of extension to 100, apparently the spent fuel will be stored in constructed ISFs.

On the issue of storage periods - calculated values ​​of radionuclide content in the activated graphite of the RBMK stack, in becquerels per gram. Horizontal lines - valid values, releasing from the radioactive waste category, the pink line at the top is the total content of radionuclides. It can be seen that after several decades of illumination, the activity is determined mainly by the C14 isotope

The second important facility, the radioactive waste management plant B234, arose not only to deal with construction waste generated during the dismantling of nuclear power plants, but also due to the new classification of radioactive waste introduced in the EU, which is why the already existing volume of radioactive waste ( these are filters, used protective clothing, cemented liquid radioactive waste, etc.) must be re-sorted and disposed of for disposal or storage.

General view of B34. On the left is a sanitary inspection station, in the middle is the plant itself, to which intermediate storage facilities for low-level waste (SLW) and intermediate-level waste (LLW) are attached.

The operation of this plant is based on the processes of sorting (not surprisingly), combustion and cementation, compactification (i.e. pressing, mainly scrap metal) and packaging into containers, which will be stored in intermediate storage facilities for radioactive waste (part of B234), until B19 is ready and B25. Interesting feature The plant is highly automated, using the familiar Brokk robots and Walischmiller manipulators.

Some remote controlled equipment B234




Design design of an ash incineration-compactification plant and a sorting cell for intermediate and low-level waste.

The total volume of waste that will pass through this plant is hundreds of thousands of cubic meters, which will be divided into 6 new classes of radioactive waste (A, B, C, D, E, F), however, the estimates are still preliminary.

Estimation of the total volume of waste and classes of radioactive waste.

For comparison, when decommissioned, units with VVER produce noticeably smaller volumes of radioactive waste and structures (on the issue of “cheapness of RBMK”).

Comparison of nuclear power plants with 6xVVER-440 and 2 RBMK-1500 in terms of the volume of waste generated during the removal process.

As for the process of dismantling nuclear power plant equipment, today this process has mainly affected the first unit (where the status of a nuclear hazardous facility has been removed), where the dismantling of equipment proceeds at a rate of ~5-8 thousand tons per year. According to today's plans, the complete dismantling of the nuclear power plant should be completed in 2038, however, this date has already been postponed twice. It is interesting that the administration of the nuclear power plant estimates the income from the sale of materials obtained during the dismantling of the nuclear power plant at only 30 million euros.

Current state for dismantling a nuclear power plant - green is what has already been completed, red - the process is underway, yellow - design of operations, gray - not yet affected.

The experience of the Ignalina NPP is interesting because of its applicability in Russia, where dismantling of 8 RBMK units will begin by 2030. Considering that Nukem has been owned by Rosatom since 2009, it has gained experience using European money, and now this experience is being transferred to other Rosatom structures that will decommission the RBMK. This experience is also interesting for the potential market for contracts for the decommissioning of various nuclear power plants, the number of which will increase.

Tags:

• SNF
• NPP
• radioactive waste

The European Union's revision of its financial obligations for the closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant may become a reason for the Lithuanian authorities to think about how to regain the country's previously lost energy sovereignty.

In 2004, Vilnius fulfilled the main demand of Brussels by closing the only one in the Baltic states in exchange for EU membership. nuclear power plant, which generated 70% of all the electricity Lithuania needed. At the same time, the first unit was stopped with a service life until 2022, the second (until 2032) - in 2009. The final decommissioning of the station is planned for 2038. Currently, work is underway to dismantle equipment at the first unit free of spent nuclear fuel. Unloading at the second reactor was completed at the end of 2017, and dismantling work has not yet begun.

The EU's decision to cut the program for financing the closure of the Ignalina nuclear power plant met with a painful reaction from the Lithuanian political establishment. Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis strongly criticized the European Court of Audit's conclusion that “this can be done at the expense of the country's budget,” calling it “unacceptable.” The head of the Cabinet of Ministers also recalled the “absolutely clear commitments of the EU to finance this very capacious project.”

The European Union's decision to revise the program to help Lithuania close its nuclear power plant is based on the fact that the Baltic republic is seeing formal improvements in the economic situation. The regulation approved by the European Commission states: “The total maximum share of the total Union funding applied in accordance with this project [the closure of the Ignalina nuclear power plant] must not exceed 80%. The remaining funding should be allocated from Lithuanian resources and additional sources in addition to the Union budget.”

Therefore, in the new financial perspective for 2021–2027 approved by the EU, Vilnius will receive 552 million euros for the closure of the nuclear power plant, and not 780 million euros, which it had previously counted on.

That is, Lithuania, in which, according to European officials, the economic situation has become much better, will lose almost 30% of the funds planned for the dismantling of Ignalinka. This means that the Lithuanian budget will be burdened with an additional 30 million euros annually.

In this situation, it is difficult to blame Brussels officials for bias. Their position is logical. Indeed, objective evidence in favor of economic improvement in Lithuania is its admission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2018. This international structure was created in 1948 to coordinate projects for the economic reconstruction of Europe within the framework of the Marshall Plan and today unites developed countries with market economies. Lithuania's membership in the OECD means that its economy has passed all necessary steps to get into this prestigious club.

Brussels considered that since the country demonstrates high economic indicators and ready to carry budget expenses for annual contributions, then he will be able to cope with such a task quite independently.

Economic well-being is also supported by the fact that the Lithuanian authorities are increasing budget allocations for NATO defense spending from year to year. There are no problems with this.

But, as it turns out, there is no money to finance the closure of the nuclear power plant. It turns out that everything is good only on paper? But in reality, economic indicators are not so rosy?

For example, according to Eurostat, annual inflation Lithuania has one of the highest prices in the EU. All this, in turn, negatively affects the standard of living of the country’s citizens.

Maybe in this situation it’s not worth closing it? On the contrary, bring the still untouched second unit of the Ignalina NPP back to life by modernizing the equipment and software?

After all, nothing bad happened to Finland, which, being a member of the EU, built its own nuclear power plant in 1995? In turn, the Czech Republic, upon joining the EU, was able to defend its own energy sovereignty, preserving two built Soviet specialists and still working Atom stations: “Dukovany” (1985) and “Temelin”. Moreover, the commissioning of the last nuclear power plant (construction began in 1981) due to the change in 1989 political regime lasted for 20 years.

Maybe there is no need to rush to dismantle the Lithuanian nuclear power plant, since until now no country in the world has carried out work on dismantling uranium-graphite reactors of the RBMK type (reactor high power duct) with big amount irradiated reactor graphite containing radiocarbon C-14. The danger is that this element is easily distributed and absorbed by living organisms in nature. Its half-life is 5.7 thousand years. In addition, in addition to irradiated graphite, radioactive chlorine Cl-36 with a half-life of 300 thousand years is released, which easily dissolves in water, as well as the hydrogen isotope tritium, from which there is practically no protection.

Currently, the International Atomic Agency does not have a safe industrial technology on handling irradiated reactor graphite.

Work on its creation is just underway. In 2017, under the auspices of the International Agency for atomic energy(IAEA) on the basis of the Tomsk Experimental Demonstration Center for the Decommissioning of Uranium-Graphite Reactors, the international GRAPA program was launched with the participation of France and Germany. It is planned that within three to four years a reliable algorithm for the disposal of these dangerous and difficult to detect radionuclides will be developed.

In fact, the project of the Lithuanian authorities is unprecedented in world practice with unpredictable risks; its result could be the inevitable negative impact on environment and residents of Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and other neighboring countries.

In an amicable way, you need to wait for the results of the work international program GRAPA to objectively assess the risks, as well as the scale of financial costs. For this reason, foreign countries with uranium-graphite reactors, including Russia (11 units), have adopted a delayed dismantling strategy. This means that such work will be carried out only after the extended operating life of the reactors and the established time for their exposure have been exhausted. Perhaps, in this regard, Lithuania should take into account world practice and think about bringing the second unit of the Ignalina NPP back to life?