Russia’s Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station Unit 4 has been named a “Top Plant” for 2016 in the nuclear generation category of POWER Magazine’s annual POWER awards.
The magazine noted in its announcement this week that in 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin began a new program to expand his nation’s nuclear capacity, which included construction of the fast-neutron reactor at the Beloyarsk facility.
Bringing the reactor to power was also one of the steps Russia took to fulfill its commitment under the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, a bilateral nonproliferation deal with the United States under which each nation would eliminate 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium. Putin last month suspended Russia’s participation in the agreement.
The Russians completed construction of the country’s mixed-oxide fuel fabrication facility at the Zheleznogorsk site of the Mining and Chemical Combine – which produces fuel assemblies for BN-800, the fast reactor and fourth unit at Beloyarsk – and brought to full power BN-800 for irradiation and disposition of plutonium under the agreement. Russia has begun producing MOX fuel through this process and plans to produce more plutonium-based MOX in upcoming years.
The reactor reached first criticality in 2014 and was connected to the grid at the end of last year. “By August 18, 2016, the unit started operating at 100% power for the first time,” the magazine said, calling it “a major achievement in the right direction.”
POWER lauded the BN-800 as the “most powerful sodium-cooled fast-breeder reactor in the world”; serving multiple purposes such as power generation, plutonium consumption, processing of supertransuranics accumulated in radioactive waste, and isotope production; and being a key component in Russia’s plan to close the nuclear fuel cycle, produce more nuclear fuel, and reduce nuclear waste.
“Today, Russia’s fast-neutron reactor program continues to be integral to the development of a closed uranium-plutonium fuel cycle whose MOX fuel will be reprocessed and recycled,” POWER said.
BN-800 has been commissioned for commercial operation as of Oct. 31, reactor operator Rosenergoatom, the electric power division of state energy company Rosatom, announced this week.
The other winners under 2016 Top Plants in nuclear generation are the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania and the Ningde Nuclear Power Plant in China.
