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The Mayak complex today
It is an integrated complex of interrelated manufactures that are made into production plants and areas. The military nuclear function, for the sake of which the enterprise was founded, remains one of the top priority activity areas. Therefore, the social, economical and political crises that took place in the country had a special negative impact both on Mayak's and Ozersk's well-being. The change in Russia's geo-political concept caused a considerable reduction of the governmental defense order and redundancy. Mayak remains the centre of nuclear technology in Russia, which is now mainly focused on spent-nuclear fuel (SNF) processing and the manufacture of isotopes for civilian use. It has the only SNF processing plant (RT-1) in the whole of the former USSR. This plant went into operation in 1977, producing WWER-440 fuel for the Novovoronezhskaand Kursk atomic stations, BN-600 fuel for Beloyersk atomic power station, and fuel assemblies for propulsion and research reactors. PA "Mayak" was selected as a storage site for fissile materials recovered from dismantled nuclear weapons. The storage facility, which is currently being constructed with U.S. assistance, is located between Lake Kyzyltash and Reservoir 10 on the south side of the river Techa and east of the plutonium production complex. The plutonium products of the radiochemical facilities were transferred to the chemical and metallurgical Plant V (the Tatysh plant), which was built in 1948-49 to produce plutonium metal and to manufacture warhead components. The second line of Plant V was designed to manufacture HEU weapons components. The Tatysh complex, located 20 km south-west of the plutonium manufacturing complex, has continued to process fissile materials and to manufacture weapons components. In 1997, the plant became involved in blending down HEU from dismantled weapons under a US-Russian HEU blend down agreement. Fuel processing will make it possible to recycle the fuel for use in high-power channel reactors. In this process, precious transuranium elements are extracted, and transferred into unclaimed radio-nuclides into a special phase for long-time storage. For a long time Mayak has processed fuel produced in Russia, shipping it to Eastern Europe and Finland. It has also built up a working relationship with the Ukraine and However, currently only a quarter of RT-1's capacity is being utilised. In 1984, the Soviet Union began construction of three BN-800 fast breeder reactors and an industrial-scale MOX fuel fabrication facility. The construction of the partially-built facilities was stopped in 1989 because of the lack of funding and public opposition. Although discussions have been held on resuming the work, it is likely to be some time before all the issues involved are resolved. | |
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