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.)
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