Report - UNDP Russia

Japan (100, 63 and 47 GW respectively). The numberof new nuclear power stations currently underconstruction is quite modest, but plans for futureconstruction are ambitious. Nuclear stations in Chinacurrently have total capacity of 9 GW, but this shouldincrease to at least 40 GW by 2020 and possibly to amuch higher level of 70 GW.Bad heritage problemsSome of the problems the industry has todeal with today have to do with the past rather thanthe future. The principal nuclear powers, particularlythe US and Russia, are burdened with a negativenuclear heritage from the Cold War arms race, whilethe heritage problem for atomic power generation assuch concerns handling of spent nuclear fuel andradioactive waste. In practice, until the late 1980s, thenuclear industry put off resolution of this issue: spentfuel and radioactive waste was allowed to accumulatewithout organisational, technical or economicsolutions for permanent storage.In recent years many nations have passedappropriate laws, introduced necessary financialmechanisms and begun implementing programmesto build facilities for recycling spent nuclear fuel andradioactive waste. Today these issues are being giventop priority, and not only by national legislation: onSeptember 5, 1997 a diplomatic conference of theInternational Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna sealedthe Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent FuelManagement and on the Safety of Radioactive WasteManagement, which imposes a number of obligationson the nations that ratified it. Russia ratified thisConvention in 2005.Russia is taking practical steps to deal with itsnuclear heritage as part of the federal targetprogramme, ‘Ensuring nuclear and radioactive safetyin 2008 and the period until 2015’. The programmecalls for creation of infrastructure for handling spentnuclear fuel and radioactive waste from thermalreactors, and appropriate legislation is also beingdeveloped, most importantly a new federal law onhandling of radioactive waste, a draft version of whichhas already been prepared. The main goal of this lawis to create financial mechanisms for handlingradioactive waste on a long-term basis and to takeinventory of waste that has accumulated so far, whereit is stored, and the conditions of storage, so thatdecisions can be made about what to do with it in thefuture.Long-term challengesThe design of modern reactors anticipatesvery long service lives, of 50-60 years. However, whathas to be taken into account is not only the period,during which a reactor will be in use, but also itsdecommissioning, construction of facilities for safedisposal of radioactive waste, creation of a closed fuelloop and a financial system to support all theseactivities for years to come.Nuclear power is a knowledge-intensiveand high technology industry. Generating electricityusing reactors running on thermal neutrons is nowa standardized industrial technique and in thissense it is an ‘old’ technology, even though it can beclassed as high-tech. Further refinement of thistechnology, primarily to optimize its economic andphysical parameters, has its limits. The fuel reservefor thermal-neutron reactors is restricted by limitedreserves of Uranium 235. Such reactors only use 1%of the uranium and as a consequence they byproducesignificant quantities of underused nuclearfuel. The handling of spent nuclear fuel significantlyincrease the cost of the fuel cycle of a nuclear powerstation.While looking for solutions to its mediumtermproblems, the nuclear power industry must alsothink about its long-term prospects. Developmentand adoption of a new technology in the nuclearindustry takes a very long time, sometimes severaldecades. In effect, therefore, the introduction of newnuclear technology can span several generations,making it impossible to tell which of the new ideasproposed today will be in demand in decades tocome.Set to growFor Russia to sustain its current level of powergeneration, it has to launch new capacity to replacethe power stations that are going offline. At present40% of the country’s total power generating capacity118 National Human Development Report in the Russian Federation 2009