Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Here are some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Russian garrison at Chernobyl hands plant back to Ukraine, IAEA says
Russian forces occupying the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant packed up and left late this week, leaving the site in the hands of Ukrainian operators, the U.N.’s nuclear energy agency said.
Two convoys of troops that had been stationed at Chernobyl left the plant Thursday and headed for Belarus, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement. Russian forces transferred control of the site to “Ukrainian personnel,” the statement said.
As of Thursday there were still some Russian troops at Chernobyl, which Moscow seized Feb. 24, but Ukrainian officials told IAEA that they are likely preparing to leave.
This development comes amid reports that some of the soldiers stationed at Chernobyl had received high doses of radiation. IAEA said Thursday that it had not been able to confirm those reports but that the agency was “seeking further information in order to provide an independent assessment of the situation.”
Meanwhile, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi met Thursday with officials from Moscow. Grossi had a similar meeting Wednesday with Kyiv to discuss “urgent technical assistance for nuclear safety and security to Ukraine,” the agency said.
ARPA-E program to award $48M for advanced nuclear spent fuel research
Research teams looking into streamlining spent nuclear fuel reprocessing can get a chunk of cash from the Department of Energy under its advanced projects program, the agency announced in March.
Interested applicants have until April 14 to submit a concept paper for the Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy (CURIE) program, which DOE announced March 13. The agency has around $48 million to give away to awardees.
The CURIE program, run under the Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), is aimed at developing technologies that “enable commercially viable reprocessing of used nuclear fuel (UNF) from the current light water reactor fleet” which would be used as feedstock for advanced reactors, the agency said in a funding announcement.
Projects funded under the program should develop technologies that will “significantly improve the economics and process monitoring of reprocessing technologies while dramatically reducing the volume of high-level waste” from light water reactors, the announcement said.
