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