Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant CIA Files - Paperless Archives

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Background
The Soviet Ministry of Nuclear Energy and Industry, which was established in the
summer of 1989, controls the sites producing defense waste. Before the Ministry's
formation, all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, all defense-related nuclear sites, and a
few power reactors were under the Minisoy of Medium Machine Building (MSM). The
remaining power reactors had been operated by the Ministry of Atomic Power since
1986. Until then, when control was shifted in response to the Chemobyl' accident, the
Ministry of Power and Electrification had owned and operated most Soviet power
reactors. Although Yevgeniy P. Velikhov urged that the MSM name be retained for
sentimental reasons, the expanded organization was renamed the Ministry of Nuclear
Energy and Industry. Although the minisoy name change. occurred almost a year ago,
discu~~ions in local papers and debates still refer to the defense nuclear sites as being run
by the MSM.
Problems with the handling and disposal of wastes at three defense sites currently
are being debated. At Chelyabinsk-40, near Kyshtym, and at Tomsk, the problems are
with stored defense waste from plutonium production. At the plutonium production site
at Krasnoyarsk, the controversy is over a plan to inject radioactive waste from a power
reactor fuel reprocessing plant into the ground.
Chelyabinsk-40
Chelyabinsk-40 is not marked on maps of the Soviet Union. Once the city bore
the name of Beria. Today, the city, and the adjacent defense enterprise, the Mayak.
(Banner) Chemical Combine, are usually called Chelyabinsk-40. It was at this site that
Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, working under Beria, built the Soviet Union's first
plutonium production reactor. Here also, Academician V. G. Khlopin and workers from
the Radium Institute completed the first chemical plant for the separation of plutonium
from irradiated uranium. ~
The first reactor, "A" reactor, was graphite moderated with 1,1158 channels. (In
comparison, the first US plutonium production reactor, B-Reactor at Hanford., has 2,004
channels.) "A" reactor, sometimes referred to as "Anna," began operation on
19 June 1948. The reprocessing plant began operation later that year. The second
reactor at Chelyabinsk-40 was heavy water moderated. Shortly after this reactor, which
was designed by Academician AbrcUIl Alikhanov, began operation, the heavy water in the
two heat exchangers froze. Yefrim Pavlovich Slavskiy, then complex chief engineer and
later Minister of Medium Machine Building, claims he had to enter the radiation area and
place his hand on one of the heat exchangers to convince the designers that the heavy
water had frozen.
A total of five graphite-moderated reactors were built at Chelyabinsk-40. The
701 reactor. a small 65-megawatt (MW) reactor with 248 channels, began operation on
22 December 1951. On 15 December 1952 the 501 reactor began operation; The "A"
reactor and the 701 reactor were decommissioned in 1987. Two other larger graphite·
moderated plutonium production reactors are located in a separate area of the complex.
One of these reactors was decommissioned on 12 August 1989. That reactor, which has
2,001 channels, is larger than the "A" reactor.
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