OREANDA-NEWS. March 15, 2012. In the framework of the Proryv (breakthrough) project ROSATOM plans to build a complex for closing the nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) at Beloyarsk NPP by 2020. This complex is to include two new generation reactors and facilities for fuel fabrication and radioactive waste reprocessing.

“By the completion of the FTG (“Nuclear Power Technologies of the New Generation” – IF) in 2020 a fast neutron reactor complex surrounded by the on-site nuclear fuel cycle facilities (ONFC) must be built on the site of Beloyarsk NPP. These are facilities for recycling of SNF and fabrication. In other words, NFC is closed,” Vyacheslav Pershukov, deputy head of ROSATOM and Deputy Chairman of the Proryv Project Coordinating Board, said in his interview with the ROSATOM Country newspaper.

The facilities in question are 300-megawatt reactors BREST-300 with a lead-bismuth coolant and sodium-cooled BN-1200 reactors of 1200 megawatt.

V. Pershukov explained that it is necessary to build two reactors to understand what project would form the basis of the closed nuclear fuel cycle: with sodium or lead coolant. On the one hand, he said, “BN reactors have been deeper worked on in the recent decades (BN-600 has operated at Beloyarsk NPP since 1980; currently, BN-800 is under construction – IF).” On the other hand, the project has “specific problems associated with the use of sodium: its chemical corrosiveness and high activation rate by neurons.”

On the whole, the FTP “Nuclear Power Technologies of the New Generation” provides for development of three fast neutron reactor designs: reactors with lead, sodium and lead-bismuth coolants. However, the lead-bismuth reactor project is already implemented by ROSATOM jointly with Irkutskenergo (RTS: IRGZ) (part of En+ Group of Oleg Deripaska).