September 2008 Archives
The Bush administration decided to withdraw the agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation (123 agreement) with Russia from Congress. This move was expected and may, in fact, help the agreement in the long run - it did not have a chance to come into force during this congressional session anyway.
The Nuclear Suppliers Group approved a Statement on Nuclear Cooperation with India (armscontrolwonk.com has a discussion of earlier drafts), which lifts restrictions from nuclear trade with the country. The approval was part of the U.S.-India nuclear deal process. To begin nuclear trade with India, the United States would now need to get the 123 agreement with India to be approved by Congress. Other countries, however, do not depend on the U.S. Congress approval. Earlier, countries like Russia and France expressed interest in exporting their nuclear technologies to India.
The power reactor in Bushehr will not be ready to begin operations in 2008, as it was planned. After a visit of a high-level delegation of Atomstroyexport to Bushehr, Iran announced that the reactor would start in 2009.
UPDATE 09/08/08: Atomstroyexport projects that the launch of the reactor is unlikely to happen before March 2009.
The last Russia's plutonium production reactor, ADE-2 in Zheleznogorsk, will indeed be shut down earlier than it was originally planned (in 2010). Construction of the replacement heat-generating plant in Zheleznogorsk is expected to be completed in the fall of 2009, after which Rosatom would shut down the ADE-2 reactor. The construction of the plant is financed by the United States. Sergey Kiriyenko, the head of Rosatom, said that if the U.S. financing is delayed, the reactor would continue to operate producing weapon-grade plutonium. According to Kiriyenko, Rosatom is spending about 1 billion rubles ($40 million) a year to keep the reactor in operation.
During his visit to Zheleznogorsk, Sergey Kiriyenko, the head of Rosatom, announced the plans to build a large spent fuel storage and reprocessing hub in Zheleznogorsk.
The first part of the plan includes completion of the spent fuel storage facilities there. The pool storage, is expected to be filled to its current capacity of 6,000 tonnes of heavy metal (MTHM) sometime next year. The facility will be expanded to bring its capacity to 8,600 MTHM in 2009-2010. After 2015 the capacity would be increased to 11,000 MTHM, which is expected to satisfy the demand in spent fuel storage capacity through 2025.
Construction of the first stage of the dry storage, which encountered some problems earlier this year, is expected to be done in the first half of 2010. The facility is scheduled to reach its (unspecified) full capacity by 2015.
By 2015 Rosatom plans to create in Zheleznogorsk a "technology demonstration center", which would apparently include a pilot-scale reprocessing facility. The technologies developed by the center would then be used in a new large-scale reprocessing plant that would be built in 2020-2025.
In addition to this, Zheleznogorsk has been chosen as a place for a MOX fuel fabrication facility (Mayak was hoping to get this project). The plant is expected to begin initial operations in 2012. (Some reports indicate that the facility would produce MOX fuel pellets only.)
USEC has estimated that its American Centrifuge Plant project would cost $3.5 billion. The lead cascade of the plant being built in Piketon, Ohio, will consist of 50 AC100 machines. The cascade is expected to be operational by the end of the first quarter of 2009.
