The shutdown of the Ignalina nuclear power plant crippled the Lithuanian energy industry. Ignalina NPP: description, history, incidents and interesting facts

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 the auxiliary systems of the nuclear power plant begins - for example, pumping stations, technical gas shops, in the case of RBMK this is also a huge structure of the gas Emergency Reactor Cooling System, a 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 process of monitoring standards for radioactive contamination of scrap metal from the Ignalina NPP after decontamination (surface cleaning).

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 the Ignalina NPP, this theoretical approach was implemented 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 are talking about hundreds of years to a safe level) isotopes.

Exterior view of the 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 plant 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 was experiencing organizational and financial problems 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 spent fuel, and even the information on the damaged spent fuel 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, a section of high-pressure cylinders, a 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 the 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.

A shot showing the dynamics of the number of personnel at the Ignalina NPP in the process of disassembly is not without interest for Russian workers of nuclear power plants with RBMK

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 currently 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, 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. The horizontal lines are the permissible values that are released 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 work of this plant is based on the processes of sorting (not surprisingly), incineration and cementation, compactification (i.e. pressing, mainly scrap metal) and packaging into containers, which will for now be stored in intermediate storage facilities for radioactive waste (part of B234), until B19 is ready and B25. An interesting feature of the plant is its high automation, 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-level 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.

The current state of dismantling the nuclear power plant is green - 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

Add tags

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 complied with Brussels' main demand by closing, in exchange for EU membership, the only nuclear power plant in the Baltics, 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 the necessary stages to join this prestigious club.

Brussels believed that since the country demonstrates high economic indicators and is ready to bear the budgetary costs of annual contributions, then it will be able to cope with this 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 in Lithuania is one of the highest 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 nuclear power plants built by Soviet specialists and still operating: Dukovany (1985) and Temelin. Moreover, the commissioning of the last nuclear power plant (construction began in 1981) took 20 years due to the change in the political regime in 1989.

Maybe there is no need to rush to dismantle the Lithuanian nuclear power plant, since so far no country in the world has carried out work on dismantling uranium-graphite reactors of the RBMK type (high-power channel reactor) with a large amount of irradiated reactor graphite containing C-14 radiocarbon . 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.

To date, the International Atomic Agency does not have a safe industrial technology for handling irradiated reactor graphite.

Work on its creation is just underway. In 2017, under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the international GRAPA program was launched at the Tomsk Experimental Demonstration Center for the Decommissioning of Uranium-Graphite Reactors 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 may be an inevitable negative impact on the environment and residents of Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and other neighboring countries.

In a good way, it is necessary to wait for the results of the international GRAPA program in order 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?

Lithuania is one of the most energy-poor regions in the Baltics, where there are neither fossil fuels nor powerful hydroelectric power. There is only the Kaunas station with a capacity of 100.8 MW. This station is capable of generating 376 million kWh/year, which is equal to three percent of the total energy consumption in the country. There is also the Kruonis pumped storage power plant, which pumps water into the upper reservoir if there is excess electricity at night. And at the peak of energy consumption, this water is discharged, producing current. That is, the Kruonis pumped storage power plant produces less energy than it consumes, but it makes it possible to smooth out large loads during peak consumption periods. It was built specifically for the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which physically cannot produce less energy at night. Nuclear power plants lack such flexibility in power regulation.

It turns out that today Lithuania is able to independently provide itself with electricity by only 3%. However, this was not always the case. During the operation of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, this country was a producer of electricity. The energy generated by this nuclear power plant was more than enough to ensure its own energy independence.

What is Ignalina NPP?

Under the USSR, the Baltic countries experienced a shortage of electricity. This did not allow industry to develop, so in the 70s it was decided to build a new nuclear power plant. Its location was chosen in such a way that, if possible, power lines could be laid from this station to Latvia, Belarus, and Lithuania. Therefore, the station was actually created in Lithuania, but in maximum proximity to the borders of Belarus and Latvia. You could even say that the station was close to Kaliningrad and Estonia. It was designed to supply this entire large region with electricity.

A little history

Construction began in 1974. In parallel with the construction of the station, a town for power engineers, Snechkus (now called Visaginas), was formed and actively developed around the Ignalina NPP. The nuclear power plant itself was equipped with unique water-graphite reactors (RBMK-1500), which at that time were considered the most powerful in the world. Just one unit had a thermal power of 4800 W, which made it possible to produce a net energy capacity of 1185 MW. And this despite the fact that the thermal power was reduced by 12.5% for safety reasons due to the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. As a result, the thermal power of the unit amounted to 4200 MW. The third and fourth blocks each produced 1,380 MW of energy capacity.

So, the very first unit was launched on December 31, 1938. The second block joined four years later - in 1987. It was planned to build 4 blocks, which would later be supplemented by two more. They already intended to build the third reactor, having laid it down in 1985, but the fourth unit remained only in plans.

The third and fourth blocks would have been built, but due to the accident at Chernobyl (where the banal experiments that caused the accident took place) and the so-called perestroika, construction of the third block stopped in 1988. The final point was the collapse of the USSR and the accession of Lithuania to the European Union.

After the collapse of the USSR

By the way, after leaving the USSR, Lithuania received the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant as a dividend from the Soviet Union. The country also got a huge transit port of Klaipeda, the best transport system, and an oil refinery.

The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant became the pinnacle of the country's economy, because it made it possible to supply production and households with cheap electricity. In total, the country requires about 10 billion kWh of energy per year, and today Lithuania is not able to produce such large volumes of electricity, even taking into account the construction of wind farms from 24 turbines and all the attempts made to provide the country with electricity. However, only two units of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant would solve the problem of energy supply to Lithuania, since in 1993 they were able to produce 12.26 billion kWh of energy. This is 88% of the country's total electricity production. Consequently, only two blocks fully satisfied the needs of the entire country, and the energy of the remaining two blocks could be sold (exported). But even with two operating capacities, the country produced 13.9 billion kWh of energy per year, therefore, 3.9 billion kWh could be sold.

Imagine how much the country’s economic and energy potential would increase if all four nuclear power plant units operated. This would make it possible to produce about 30 billion kWh of electricity per year, which would make it possible to sell energy to Belarus, the entire Baltic states, adjacent parts of Russia and even Poland.

Why was the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant closed?

Many experts believe that Lithuania did a very wrong thing when it accepted the conditions for joining the European Union. In accordance with these conditions, accession to the EU was possible only in the event of the closure of this power plant. Already on February 19, 2001, the government adopted a program to close the first unit of the nuclear power plant. Already in 2004, the first unit stopped working. On December 31, 2009, the second reactor was also shut down, and Lithuania thereby fully fulfilled its obligations to the EU.

Interestingly, as the deadline for closing nuclear power plants approached, referendums were held in the country. The last one failed due to low voter turnout. About half of the country's population came to the referendum, but 90% of them voted to extend the operation of the power plant. Despite this, it was still closed.

Consequences

Without the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, Lithuania today has a very difficult time due to high electricity tariffs and huge energy dependence on other countries. But to say that after the closure of the nuclear power plant, Lithuania found itself with nothing left to its own would be an understatement. In addition to rising electricity prices, the country has to spend huge amounts of money every year to close the station. After all, you can’t just put a lock on the building of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant; it takes 25 years to deactivate the units.

How much does it cost Lithuania to close a power plant?

In January 2014 (4 years after the closure of the nuclear power plant), 2,100 people worked at the station. Many of these people are highly qualified specialists with large salaries, but the country does not have to spend much money on their maintenance. Much more money is spent on deactivating nuclear power plants. Different experts give different figures, but on average they agree that about five billion dollars are needed to deactivate blocks. Of course, it is important to note that the EU allocated $450 million to Lithuania to close the Ignalina nuclear power plant, but these are ridiculous amounts compared to the huge capital that is needed to completely decommission the plant and deactivate the units.

It turns out that the Government of Lithuania, with its stupid intention to become a member of the European Union, turned a “golden” enterprise with enormous economic potential for the country into a large voracious monster that entails only losses.

Where can I get electricity?

But further - more. Lithuania still needs electricity. Just one hydroelectric power station and two dozen wind turbines are practically useless given the amount of electricity required. It would be possible to buy energy from neighbors if the neighbors had free kilowatts, but they do not. Therefore, the Kaunas Thermal Power Plant, the State District Power Plant in Elektrenai and other weak thermal stations had to take the rap. As a result, it was necessary to purchase fuel in huge quantities. Gas, coal, oil - all this was imported from abroad, in particular from Russia. Lithuanians had to forget about cheap electricity, because after the closure of the INPP, most of the country's budget was spent on purchasing energy resources.

Lithuania has problems with gas

A little later, the Russian Gazprom took advantage of its monopoly on the Lithuanian market and raised gas prices. Lithuania had nowhere to go, and the government had to buy expensive gas from Russia. Many Lithuanians are still dissatisfied with this decision of the Russian Gazprom and blame Russia for all its sins.

An alternative to gas was nuclear fuel from the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. And if the latter worked, then gas would not become expensive, since electricity could replace natural fuel in a number of cases (not everywhere, of course). However, Gazprom could not ignore the opportunity to make easy money.

Why does the EU need this?

Why did the European Union demand that Lithuania close the INPP? Formally, it was a question of safety, since the Ignalina NPP used reactors that were structurally similar to the reactors used at the Chernobyl NPP. However, there were no serious incidents at Ignalina after 22 years of operation of the reactors, and the station itself was included in the list of the safest nuclear power plants in the world according to the IAEA conclusion. Yes, there were sometimes problematic situations. In particular, in 1988, the exhaust steam exhaust system pipeline was damaged due to water hammer. Also, due to cold weather in 1994, fire-fighting equipment froze. In 2017, smoke occurred at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. As a result, the alarm went off and firefighters were called to the station, who quickly eliminated the source of the smoke. These events did not entail any negative consequences.

Let's return to Europe and the EU's demand to close the INPP. Given the high level of security at the plant, the EU's demand to close the plant was political in nature.

Political background

The EU government understood that such a station determined the independence of Lithuania, which is why it could talk on equal terms with other members of the European Union. Thanks to the INPP, Lithuania had enormous potential for industrial growth due to the low cost of electricity. This would ensure a constant influx of currency and attract investment. However, now Lithuania's budget is half filled with money from the EU, so the country is often forced to make decisions that it does not like. Many experts understand why the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant was closed: they unanimously insist that the reason was political in nature.

Alternative to closure

If we were to close the station, it could have been done more wisely. The fact is that an operating nuclear power plant made it possible to modernize or build new water power generators instead of high-power channel reactors. The proceeds from the sale of electricity could be used to build hydroelectric power stations, and then the closure of the INPP would not be so painful for the Republic of Lithuania. Cheap electricity would create excellent conditions for attracting investment in industrial development, and the presence of nearby countries with electricity shortages (Latvia, Estonia, Poland, even Russia) would allow the country to receive foreign currency. Unfortunately, the Lithuanian government made a stupid decision and simply implemented the project to close the INPP without first developing a plan for the transition to other (non-nuclear) energy sources, but the EU could not prevent this under any pretext.

But what happened happened, and one of the most developed countries of the USSR with enormous economic and energy potential lost it all.

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 implies dismantling, disposal of radioactive residues and stripping of industrial structures to the “green lawn”). This project (output) is actually a pilot for RBMK, and is based on several key technological chains, of which one of the most important is this very B234 plant.

Ignalina NPP

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

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

At the Ignalina NPP, this theoretical approach was implemented 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 (), 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 are talking about hundreds of years to a safe level) isotopes.

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

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

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 spent fuel storage facility B1 , for many reasons at once. Nukem was experiencing organizational and financial problems 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 spent fuel, and even the information on the damaged spent fuel 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.

Not without interest for Russian workers of nuclear power plants with RBMKs is a frame showing the dynamics of the number of personnel at the Ignalina NPP

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.

The work of this plant is based on the processes of sorting (not surprisingly), incineration and cementation, compactification (i.e. pressing, mainly scrap metal) and packaging into containers, which will for now be stored in intermediate storage facilities for radioactive waste (part of B234), until B19 is ready and B25. An interesting feature of the plant is its high automation, using Brokk robots and manipulators Walischmiller.

Some remote controlled equipment B234

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

The current state of dismantling the nuclear power plant is green - 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.

Real workers of the national economy - specialists from large industries, entrepreneurs, workers in agriculture and the transit industry - talk about their activities and compare the current state of affairs with Soviet times. As the debut interview of this series, we present to readers a conversation with the former head of the department of the Ignalina nuclear power plant closed in 2010, the head of the Belarusian community of Visaginas Oleg DAVIDYUK:

- Mr. Davidyuk, do you remember your first working day at the Ignalina nuclear power plant?

This was a very long time ago, some readers probably weren’t even born then, and the Ignalina nuclear power plant itself didn’t exist yet, it was under construction. I don’t remember the very first day, but the time itself... There really wasn’t anything outstanding or interesting: we studied projects and dealt with orders. You see, before that I worked at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, so then this project did not surprise me at all. It was a similar station. It turned out that I simply moved from one large station to another large one.

- Then you came to Lithuania for the first time? What were your impressions?

Yes, this was my first visit to Lithuania. In fact, at first we didn’t really feel like we were in Lithuania or anywhere else. That is, formally, of course, they knew, but there was no feeling. The station was built from scratch, almost in the forest. Mostly newcomers worked here, so there was nothing unusual. Then we began to travel to the side: to neighboring towns and villages, and there it felt like we were on the territory of Lithuania. And Visaginas itself is a city of visitors.

- How did this feeling manifest itself?

First of all, in the language, of course. In Visaginas, all documentation was conducted in Russian, but when we left the city, we realized that there were settlements around that spoke a different language.

But in Soviet times, they didn’t really worry about language differences. There was an international construction project here, as it was called then, and the unifying language was Russian. So there were no problems.

By the way, I didn’t know then that I would stay in Lithuania. I thought that I would quickly move to work at a nuclear power plant in Belarus. If I had known then that I would stay, I would definitely have immediately started learning Lithuanian. It’s normal, if you come to a country, to learn its language. Although at that time Lithuania was not perceived as a country, of course, and there were no problems due to the language, everything was in Russian. Although I think that this was a minus for the languages of the peoples that were part of the Soviet Union. Now here they call it Russification, and, of course, the people did not like it.

- At the time of commissioning of the Ignalina NPP, how was the project assessed and what hopes were placed on it?

It was a very large-scale project. It was assumed that there would be several atomic blocks, and by all accounts it should have been the largest in the world. Because very powerful blocks were packed. In general, it was a huge construction project, including for the Union.

Initially, it was planned to build and operate four units, but after the Chernobyl accident, the third, unfinished unit was frozen, and the construction of the fourth was postponed. If we imagine that all four blocks were in operation, what would this give to Lithuania?

Here we also need to take into account whether there would have been a collapse of the Soviet Union or not - there are two options. But in general there could be a station. In one case, the station would certainly have developed and still worked. In another case, it could also work, if perhaps there were more blocks and if it had a noticeable impact on the Lithuanian economy.

After all, the fact is that the station was stopped - Visaginas is feeling bad, but Lithuania has electricity and no collapse has occurred. We thought that after the station was closed everything would be catastrophic. But no, there is electricity, prices for it have not risen much, although everything else has risen. It is clear that this happened not because of the closure of the nuclear power plant, but because of the European Union. Of course, I would like the station to still operate. I didn't see her as a threat.

There is an opinion that the big problem today is the conservation of the station and waste disposal. Are local residents worried about this?

The problem here is still the same - there is always not enough money. Money is allocated, then work begins, and suddenly it turns out that the money runs out before everything is completed. This is a common problem, and not only for Lithuania. In the surrounding area this is also the case and the estimates are inflated.

The only difference now is that it is not Moscow or Lithuania itself that gives the money, but Brussels. It may happen that one day they will say: “Enough!”

But here we can only speculate. As for burial, in fact, we also don’t know exactly all the technology, how it’s done and whether it’s safe. Although, of course, it is very important that the waste is disposed of correctly and securely.

In 2005, one block of the station was switched off, and in 2010, the second; did this somehow affect the city, the mood of the residents?

There was no enthusiasm for this, but there were no demonstrations or pickets about this either. The demonstration took place when heating prices in the city rose sharply. Because our heating came from a nuclear power plant, it was cheap.

But after the shutdown of the nuclear power plant, prices tripled.

People were immediately hooked by this, but before that they lived very well.

- How likely do you think the construction of a new nuclear power plant is in Lithuania?

I think the probability is zero. This train has left long ago. Nuclear energy in Lithuania is closed forever.

- What is Visaginas like today, what future awaits it?

Visaginas follows the general trend of Lithuanian cities. People are moving, and not so much to Vilnius and Kaunas, but abroad, to the West. Maybe we have a slightly higher percentage of people leaving because the station is closed.

- What are Visaginas residents doing today, especially those who worked at nuclear power plants? Are there job opportunities for them?

We have some production facilities that are operating and require professionals. There is hope for new productions. And so someone retires, like me, for example. Another thing is that young people have nowhere to work. If they worked at a nuclear power plant, of course, the situation would be better.

- How many went to work at the Belarusian nuclear power plant?

No. And no one lured our specialists there.

They are trying to attract professionals from Russia and Ukraine. They somehow don’t even let Lithuanian specialists in.

Many of us offered their services to Belarusians, but they didn’t hire anyone. This door was closed to our specialists.

- Do you know why this happened?

No, you need to ask them. Why, when there were thousands of people nearby who could work at the BelNPP, they began to bring people from Russia and Ukraine.