Ecological features of fast reactor nuclear power plants (NPPs) at all stages of their life cycle

Abstract

The future nuclear power industry should focus on the enhanced safety reactors such as inherently safe liquid metal fast neutron reactors. Many years of the operating experience from the BN-600 fast power reactor show that it has some advantages in terms of safety (the large amount of sodium in the reactor, large boiling point margin, etc). The safety systems have been improved in BN-800 which is under construction and further in BN-1200 project. Along with the design features of nuclear power plants, the overall safety culture including the optimization of radiation protection is very important. The UrFU in conjunction with the Rosatom enterprises works in this direction, dealing with the route optimization of work in radiation fields using dynamic programming techniques, optimization of the composition of the homogeneous protective materials for a given isotopic composition of radioactive contamination, the development of computer models of radioactive systems for training of the dismantling personnel. The management of the increasing amount of radioactive waste (RW) is the priority task of the nuclear power industry. Fast reactors allow it to minimize the amount of RW through the extraction of the fission products from the irradiated nuclear fuel while uranium and plutonium are returned to the reactor at a closed nuclear fuel cycle. © 2014 WIT Press.