Yury Adno

F

or a long time the Krasnoyarsk integrated mining-and-chemical plant (MChP) was a leading enterprise of Russia’s nuclear industry. Just a while ago it was one of the most secret plants, the so-called ‘mail box No.815’ or Krasnoyarsk-26, that was set up to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Even today the enterprise has no match by its technological specifics and structure.

During the Cold War the Soviet Government decided to put the plant’s key divisions, the reactor and radiochemical works, in rock shafts up to 200 meters deep. The idea was to save them from destruction in case a possible nuclear air strike. Besides, in scientists’ opinion, an underground location reduced to a minimum the impact of cosmic rays on their specific production and research processes in the plant’s laboratories.
The first nuclear reactor AD put in operation 1958 was designed exclusively for producing weapons’ plutonium. Later on, it was recognized as necessary to make double-purpose reactors so as to produce plutonium and generate electrical energy. The reactor ADE-2 commissioned in 1964 was the world’s first of this kind. Then, MChP made a system to safely supply thermal and electric energy to large towns with the use of nuclear reactors.
In the early 1980s the country entered a new stage in developing nuclear energy on the basis of reactors of the next generation, the so-called VVAR-1000. In order to accumulate and effectively reprocess spent fuel (SF) the RT-2 works was set up within MChP. In 1985 a "wet" storage of SF was built at this works, where irradiated fuel assemblies were kept under water. The design capacity of the storage amounted to 6 000 tons of uranium. Today the storage is occupied for 60%.
The start of market reforms changed the plant’s state for the worse. The adaptation of the science and capital intensive military industrial enterprise to free market was very hard. The state financing went down sharply. The reduction of nuclear arms programs led to a drastic fall in the need for nuclear weapons’ plutonium. One of the country’s most successful enterprises got in a lot of pain trying to find a place in the new economic system. In order to separate the non-specialized production units from the main structure it is necessary to set up a joint-stock company and start selling shares but this is forbidden in the nuclear industry.
The necessity to stop the specialized production of nuclear weapons’ plutonium made the plant seek new spheres of activity. One of the first steps in this direction was the conversion program developed at the plant in the early 1990s. Under this program the reactors AD and ADE were stopped, only the reactor that provided the town of Zheleznogorsk with electric energy was kept in operation.
At present, MChP’s main conversion activity comes to receiving SF for storing, servicing the "wet" storage of the RT-2 works, building a new "dry" SF storage and producing semiconductor silicon.
By its composition spent fuel is a 95% mixture of uranium and power-generating plutonium, which is good for reprocessing it into a high-quality fuel used in energy-generating reactors. The regeneration of SF is a rather energy-consuming task and it requires special technologies as well as costly facilities. In the opinion of Vasily Zhydkov, the general director of the Krasnoyarsk integrated mining-and-chemical plant, a mass reprocessing of the accumulated SF reserves will become economically profitable no sooner than in 10 to 15 years. By estimates, the territory of MChP can accommodate capacities for regenerating 400 to 800 tons of SF a year.
The conversion program’s second largest project provides for building a works to produce semiconductor silicon. It was developed as far back as the 1980s but, then, due to some, mainly financial, reasons, the project was suspended. Under the project, the annual capacity of a monocrystal-producing works should amount to 3,000 tons. In the future this will allow this works to become one of the world’s largest producers of monocrystals. After commissioning the first-group facilities with the total capacity of 200,000 tpy in 2005 the plant will be capable of supplying the market with different modifications of silicon products like, for example, a single-crystalline silicon, which is widely used in many electronic instruments. Besides, this product is the key element of solar batteries and it is in high demand on the international market.
The base of the single-crystalline silicon production is a polysilicon, which is also a very promising product. It is already being produced today by the plant’s development shop.
Like most similar enterprises, the Krasnoyarsk integrated mining-and-chemical plant is a typical town-building company, which, in addition to funds from the state budget, actually financed and supported the quite expensive social sphere of the 100,000-citizen town of Zheleznogorsk, which had the status of a closed administrative territorial formation (CATF). This status makes it possible to have investment allowances inside CATF and large budgetary subsidies. For example, these subsidies to Zheleznogorsk amount to about 800 million rubles a year. But in 2006 the CATF status is to be cancelled and, thus, financing of the town’s social sphere should be done through its own means. This is closely connected to activity of another town-building enterprise, the Research-and-Production Association of Applied Mechanics, which makes hi-tech products for space vehicles. Earlier this enterprise was a division of MChP and now it is a separate entity.
In order to solve existing problems in complex, the leaders of MChP have put forward a proposal to set up a technopark on the plant’s basis. In their opinion, this would allow to use the plant’s science intensive potential most efficiently.