"Rosatom" launched a fuel plant for the innovative BREST-OD-300 reactor

Rosatom State Corporation in the town of Seversk, Tomsk Region, has commissioned a plant to manufacture nuclear fuel for the new BREST-OD-300 fast neutron reactor. The company said on December 25.

"A nuclear fuel fabrication/refabrication module (NFM) for the innovative BREST-OD-300 fast neutron reactor was put into pilot operation in Seversk, Tomsk region. This is the first of three facilities of the unique in the world nuclear industry pilot and demonstration power complex of the IV generation," Rosatom said in a statement.

The power complex is being built on the territory of the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC), which is part of Rosatom's fuel division. Work on the complex is included in the strategic industry project "Breakthrough".

Production at the new plant is as modern and fully automated as possible. The first mockup fuel cassettes with depleted uranium nitride pellets made in the design of the BREST-OD-300 core have already been manufactured there.

All production areas of the plant have been comprehensively tested and there are four technological lines: fuel synthesis from uranium and plutonium, production of fuel pellets, fabrication of fuel elements and assembly of complete fuel cassettes. The main technological staff of the enterprise will consist of 250 workplaces.

The uranium-plutonium nitride fuel fabrication technology is unique, and it is important that it was developed by Rosatom's Russian scientists. Experimental fuel assemblies were successfully tested, and thanks to this, the State Corporation was able to obtain the information needed to justify the start loading of BREST-OD-300. In addition, it was possible to achieve the currently required level of fuel burnup.

Rosatom emphasized that the state corporation has now achieved the world's greatest progress in the development of nuclear technology IV generation.

Earlier, on November 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed Rosatom to consider the possibility of commissioning Khabarovsk and Primorsky nuclear power plants (NPP) by 2032. The head of state corporation Alexei Likhachev was appointed responsible for this task.

Prior to that, on September 8, Putin noted that the country's achievements in the nuclear sphere are impressive. In particular, the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF) in Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod Region, is developing very rapidly. Likhachev, for his part, pointed out that the National Center for Physics and Mathematics (NCPM) also fits "absolutely optimally" into the work of the Russian nuclear industry.