A Discussion, Written Before the War, of the Properties of Ukrainian Used Nuclear Fuel in a Russian Journal.

[NNadir]

I've been writing some ideas down for my son to exploit the energy value of the higher transplutonium actinides and I came across this paper which I was sourcing to understand the neutron fluxes from spontaneous fission in a system I'm envisioning that I'd like to share with him before I die.

It's this one: Zalyubovskii, I.I., Pismenetskii, S.A., Rudychev, V.G. et al. External radiation of a container used for dry storage of spent VVER-1000 nuclear fuel from the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant. Atomic Energy 109, 396–403 (2011). The paper was translated from Russian as described in this note:

Translated from Atomnaya Énergiya, Vol. 109, No. 6, pp. 324–329

So I'm reading along happily to provide a reference, and suddenly I realized that one of the authors was writing the reactor in question from which the used fuel was obtained (a Russian VVER) that's been in the news because of concerns it would be shelled by the Russians. It's the Zaporozhie Nuclear Power Plant, Energodar, Ukraine. The authors of the paper are Ukrainian, not Russian.

I didn't notice, I was so caught up in the technical issues.

Ukraine has a strong commitment to nuclear energy, but all of the reactors therein, including the closed Chornobyl RBMKs are of Russian design. (The modern VVER, the latest edition, irrespective of the criminality of the Putin regime, is a beautiful high quality reactor being exported around the world. I'm not sure entirely which version of the VVER the Zaporozhie reactor is.) The Ukrainian commitment to nuclear energy is even stronger to eliminate the need to buy gas from the Russian enemy. (The Ukrainians are certainly not like the Germans. They wish to do away with fossil fuels, not nuclear.)

The abstract is as follows:

The program MCNP (Monte Carlo Modeling of radiation transfer) is used to calculate the characteristics of external neutron and γ radiation from a ventilated dry-storage container for spent nuclear fuel. Data are obtained on the spatial, energy, and angular distribution of the neutron and γ-ray flux outside the container and the dependence of the dose rate on the storage time of the spent fuel is determined. It is shown that γ-rays make the main contribution to the dose rate on the side surface of the container and neutrons do on the cover. The computed dose rate is 1.4 times higher than the measured value on an individual loaded container at the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant.

It turns out that the measured radiation flux is lower than the calculated value.

In any case, it does seem that the dry storage containers emit more radiation than Western dry casks do, at least from a cursory expectation on my part.

I actually think, the safety implications aside, there is value in irradiating air, since doing so eliminates some very problematic greenhouse gases, the famous (and still present) CFC's, as well as HFC's, N₂O and SF₆. I hope to hand off some approaches to this to my son before I kick off. If it were up to me, I would encourage the irradiation of the air and I do encourage the irradiation of the air; many of my ideas at the end of my life focus on ways to do this.

In any case, it's very sad that this fine reactor has been placed in a war zone; the war sucks.