On November 30, ChNPP specialists participated in Round Table “Challenges of Fuel Containing Material Management”
For information
Fuel containing materials are the nuclear fuel of Chornobyl NPP former Power Unit 4 damaged due to the beyond-design-basis accident, fuel assemblies of Power Unit 4 spent fuel pool bundles and any other materials (pieces of reactor core, mixtures, corium, solutions, chemical compounds, dust etc.) containing the appreciable amount of nuclear fuel (i.e. its concentration is ≥ 1 of weight percent).
Fuel containing materials of Shelter facility are long-lived radioactive waste. The most famous example of fuel containing material is so called “elephant foot”.
ChNPP is a co-organizer and participant of the event. The power plant was represented at the round table by Deputy Technical Director (for infrastructure) Serhii Kondratenko, Strategic Planning Department Head Dmytro Stelmakh and Strategic Planning Department Leading Engineer Serhii Sverchkov.
Apart from ChNPP, the following institutions were involved in the event: Institute for Safety Problems of NNPs, Institute for Nuclear Research and Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of NAS of Ukraine.
The participants’ attention was focused on Shelter facility and fuel containing materials the work with which poses a great engineering and scientific challenge for ChNPP and global community. At the round table the themes were discussed as follows:
• Condition of fuel containing materials after New Safe Confinement commissioning;
• Monitoring the present state of fuel containing materials and forecasting their long-term behaviour;
• Development and implementation of Strategy for Shelter Facility fuel containing material management.
“Unfortunately, ChNPP was a location of one of the most large-scale beyond-design-basis accidents in the history. One of the consequences of this accident is hundreds of tons of fuel containing materials which were firmly fused into the destroyed power unit 4.
ChNPP, Ukraine and the entire world have only 100 years — the design service life of New Safe Confinement — for investigating these fuel containing materials, to find the options for their retrieving and, as a matter of fact, to retrieve them.
Such events as this round table are an important forum for communication of parties concerned. We are always enthusiastic to take part in them, to share our gained practices and to be aligned with colleagues from scientific world in this area. The time is limited and we should act together,” Serhii Kondratenko, the ChNPP Deputy Technical Director (for infrastructure) summarizes.
The main organizer of the round table is Regional Development Agency of Slavutych Town Council. The event took place in the cluster of events held after the annual international conference INUDECO, namely:
• Workshop “Problematic Issues of Spent Nuclear Fuel Management”;
• Radiation safety training “Radiation Safety Lab”;
• International conference “Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment: Ukrainian Context”
• International workshop “Digital Twins in Life Cycle of Nuclear Power Facilities”
• Online meeting “Post-INUDECO”.
ChNPP has been represented as a participant and one of the co-organisers at all these events.