The construction of unit 5 at Russia’s Beloyarsk NPP with a BN-1200 reactor will begin in 2027. It will be the world’s largest sodium-cooled fast reactor. A model of the reactor was presented at an exhibition in the Sverdlovsk Federation Council, the Sverdlovsk Department of Information Policy reported. Ivan Sidorov, Director of the Beloyarsk NPP, presented the future fast BN-1200M reactor to the Federation Council.
Beloyarsk NPP Director Ivan Sidorov told the Federation Council about the strategic importance of this reactor for the future nuclear energy of Russia. “The construction at Beloyarsk NPP of the lead unit for serial construction of BN-1200 reactors will make it possible to take another important step towards a two-component system of nuclear energy and fully realize the environmental and economic benefits of the closed nuclear fuel cycle,” he said. The system will involve reusing used fuel from conventional reactors in fast reactors.
The benefits include:
- reuse of used nuclear fuel (by extracting used plutonium-239 and partly used uranium to be recycled as fresh fuel);
- providing nuclear fuel for many hundreds of years due to the use of stockpiled reserves of the uranium-238 remaining after enrichment of natural uranium (uranium tailings);
- minimisation of radioactive waste due to the burning of minor actinides (medium and long-lived isotopes of americium, curium and neptunium) which are contained used fuel, complicating its processing and requiring long-term expensive storage.
