Tuesday, December 3, 2024
The third phase (18 months) of testing the innovative REMIX fuel has begun at the first unit of Russia’s Barakavo nuclear power plant. The purpose is to allow the VVER reactor to complete its fuel cycle.
Instead of standard enriched natural uranium, REMIX fuel assemblies contain pellets of a mixture of enriched uranium and recycled uranium and plutonium obtained from the spent nuclear fuel of the VVER reactor.
Six fuel assemblies of TVS-2M design with pilot fuel elements were loaded on Barakabo 1 in 2021. They have undergone a standard operating cycle of VVER-1000 reactor fuel consisting of three campaigns of 18 months. Following the first two of these three operating cycles, experts from TVEL, Rosatom’s fuel division, conducted a video inspection of the TVS-2M’s fuel and structural elements and identified any obstacles to proceed to the final stage. It wasn’t.
The third round of the 18-month operational campaign is currently underway, with REMIX fuel scheduled to be offloaded into the spent fuel pool in 2026 before being closely examined.
Alexander Ugrimov, said TVEL’s Senior Vice President of Science and Technology Activities.After completing the REMIX fuel pilot program and post-reactor studies, Rosatom will have sufficient justification to bring to market the new product of the balanced fuel cycle concept. The next stage will be the gradual introduction of such fuel in one of the large-capacity VVER power units. ”
The REMIX fuel cycle reprocesses spent fuel assemblies so that the uranium and plutonium can be recycled as an unseparated mixture. The newly enriched uranium is replenished to become new fuel and used again. This cycle can be repeated up to five times, each time removing unwanted fission products and vitrifying them in glass for permanent geological disposal. In theory, with three fuel loads cycling, a reactor could operate for 60 years using the same fuel, refilling the LEU and removing waste with each cycle.
Compared to uranium-plutonium fuels for fast reactors such as MOX fuel, REMIX has up to 5% lower plutonium content and the fuel performs within the same parameters as fuel made only from fresh, low-enriched uranium. Masu. This means you don’t need to modify your reactor to start using REMIX.
“In the future, with the introduction of uranium-plutonium fuel, not only fast neutron reactors, but also classical light water thermal reactors, which form the basis of modern nuclear energy, will participate in the closed nuclear fuel cycle,” Rosatom said. It will be possible,” he said. This makes it possible to expand the raw material base for nuclear energy many times over by completing the nuclear fuel cycle and reusing irradiated fuel instead of storing it. ”
