The role of environmental policy in the nuclear industry: Rosatom’s case study

The Paris Agreement reached at COP21 in December 2015 marked a historic turning point in the global shift towards a low-carbon economy. Though not yet brought into force, the Agreement is already making shockwaves around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos, where an entire section of the agenda was dedicated to the transformation of energy.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Davos Forum, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol commented:”If we are to achieve the goals for energy efficiency and renewables that were established at COP21, at least 40% of the world’s energy needs to be generated through zero-emission technologies including nuclear power”.

Despite this statement by the head of IEA, the role and efforts of nuclear companies in securing safety and protecting the environment have been largely underestimated over the years. In fact, far from negligible, the contribution of many nuclear companies to delivering clean energy is based on a long-standing commitment to environmental causes and increasingly advanced technologies for ensuring nuclear safety.

Vladimir Grachev, Coordinator of the Environmental Policy of Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, Doctor of Technical Sciences, professor, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary member of PACE comments: “At first, I would like to show my support for Mr. Birol’s, the director of MEA, statement that nuclear energy is a zero emission energy source. Securing environmental protection and ecological safety is an integral part of the mission and development strategy of Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation. To ensure the effectiveness of ecological, nuclear and radiation safety and to reduce the environmental impact, we constantly work towards improvement on our environmental policy implementation plan and innovative development of our technological solutions."

In the course of implementing ecological programs, the nuclear industry faces numerous challenges around the world. Dealing with them requires significant effort and technical know-how. In 2014, Rosatom invested ca. 33 billion roubles (ca. USD 470 million) in environmental projects, and the figure increases every year.

Alongside this, in order to engage public organizations in the development of policy for the peaceful uses of atomic energy, environmental protection, nuclear and radiation safety, the Public Council of Rosatom State Corporation was founded in 2009. Its key objectives include improving interaction with non-governmental and environmental organizations, and citizens, increasing public awareness of the main corporate business areas, encouraging a dialogue between scientists, experts, representatives of public authorities, and representatives of non-governmental and environmental organizations and associations.

The most important thing, however, is the thoroughly planned environmental policy that has been developed by Rosatom. The environmental policy is akin to a living organism, with its two-way dialogue and concrete control measures that Rosatom has integrated into its business practices.

Within Rosatom’s system of environmental policy implementation, there is a consolidated list of environmentally oriented organizations (EOO).  Each EOO develops its own environmental policy, assumes obligations to observe the principles of Rosatom’s environmental policy and openly commits to setting and achieving specific ecological objectives aimed at continuous improvement of the ecological management system, reduction of the environmental impact, full compliance with standards and regulations of environmental, nuclear and radiation safety.

The main criterion here is the potential threat to the environment. The presence of hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials at a production facility should be considered regarding the potential negative impact, as well as the excess of norms of permissible discharges and/or maximum permissible emissions.

The EOOs’, as well as Rosatom’s, environmental policies are not just declarative documents. The EOOs develop the implementation plans for their environmental policies, which provide the basis for the implementation plans of Rosatom divisions that coordinate the EOOs’ activities. As a result of this collaboration, Rosatom’s Complex Environmental Policy Implementation Plan is developed. This plan is developed to cover a period of three years and includes general industry organizational and technical measures and all the plans of complexes and division in charge of EOOs.

The well-coordinated work of operating companies’ staff, Rosatom’s management structures and, and regulatory and supervisory authorities has resulted in excellent environmental and  all other types of safety indicators.

Rosatom’s environmental projects are being implemented across several directions, and the key one is maintaining envrionmental, nuclear and radiation safety and solving the “heritage problem". This project comprises three main stages. The first one involves not increasing the accumulated burden of environmental issues; the second one is  eliminating and cleaning up the traces of past activity; the third one is solving the problem of environmental, nuclear and radiation safety in a complex". These stages laid the foundation for Rosatom’s integrated approach and the development of the “Nuclear Radiation Safety Protection” federal purpose-oriented program. The program implemented in 2008-2015 brought considerable results. So, the most important outcome of 2015 for Rosatom in this sphere was the completion of the conservation work s on Lake Karachay in the Chelyabinsk region. Before its closure, the Lake area was about 36 hectares, and the total activity of accumulated RW exceeded 120 m Ci. Overall, since 2008, within the framework of the program, the company has reclaimed more than 270 hectares of land in different regions of Russia. After 29 years, the conservation process has been completed. Previously in 2014, all spent nuclear fuel of Russian Pacific fleet was finally removed from the Far East. 23,616 spent fuel assemblies (41 trains) with the total activity of 74 mln Ci were sent for processing. Thus, the Russian Far East has been completely released from spent nuclear fuel. Disposal of decommissioned nuclear submarines is also in progress. Currently, 195 submarines (ie, 97%) were dismantled of 201 decommissioned submarines.

Rosatom pays great attention to the improvement of industry automated system of radiation control (ASRC) as the main way of informing the public about the radiation environment in the areas of location of enterprises of nuclear energy and the fuel cycle. Today the system includes 32 regional and departmental ARMS and 502 sensors. Territories with nuclear radiation hazardous objects are covered by ARMS system by 100%. Background radiation sensors operate in automatic mode, measurements are taken every minute, every hour, and the average result is transmitted to a central control ARMS, located at each facility. All information is fed to the Rosatom Crisis Management Center, and provided to the local authorities, ministries and departments concerned. This information is also available to all Internet users.

This is only part of the results that have been achieved over the 8 years of the program. The modernization of existing repositories of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, as well as the construction of modern long-term storage is another important direction of the work aimed at minimizing the impact of spent fuel and radioactive waste on the environment.

Currently, the Russian government introduced a new federal purpose-oriented program called Nuclear and Radiation Safety for 2016-2020 and until 2030". The purpose and objective of the program is to ensure integrated nuclear and radiation safety in the Russian Federation by solving top-priority issues of nuclear heritage and creating infrastructure facilities to handle spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste that is required for transitioning nuclear heritage into a safe nuclear and radiation state and their subsequent elimination.

A global vector of Rosatom’s operations is perfecting nuclear technologies that are designed to create a situation in which remedial measures are made redeundant. In particular, the solution of the legacy issues helped lay the groundwork for the creation of new closed fuel cycle. This configuration allows for safe and cost-effective storage of spent nuclear fuel, reprocessing of spent fuel of 3+ generation without formation of liquid radioactive waste and fabrication of MOX fuel for fast reactors, including those from reclaimed materials.

In this context, the successful connection of Beloyarsk NPP with the BN-800 fast breeder reactor to the grid in December 2015 became a significant event in a series of technological breakthroughs of the nuclear industry, and another milestone in the creation of complex configuration by closing the nuclear fuel cycle.

With the commissioning of this NPP, referring to nuclear energy as a renewable energy source is now a short-term reality.