In the Urals, 40 km east of Yekaterinburg, is one of the first industrial nuclear power plants in the Soviet Union. It began to be built in 1955 and was called the Beloyarsk NPP. In 1964, the first nuclear power unit AMB-100 Atomic Mirny Bolshoi gave electricity with a capacity of 100 MW. Since 1967, the second - the AMB-200. The third unit - BN-600 Fast Neutrons with a capacity of 600 MW - was launched in April 1980. Today, the power plant has three nuclear reactors. In 1981 and 1987, the first two were stopped. The third remained in the work. Specialists call fast neutron reactors "breeders", i.e. "Breeders." They were used to produce weapons-grade plutonium from uranium. For various reasons, all Western countries have stopped such reactors. And only Beloyarsk NPP has the world's last such industrial power unit. Its reliability and safety is very high.
Briefly about the reactor. Fuel assemblies — zirconium tubes — are loaded into its working area. They contain pills of nuclear fuel, usually U235 uranium. When fuel is divided in pipes, a lot of heat is released, which is removed from the hot zone (molten metal) by sodium (or lead) or water under tremendous pressure (so as not to boil). Sodium has a high radioactivity; so as not to carry it out, heat is transferred to the second circuit, in which there is also metal or water under high pressure. Here, the coolant heats the liquid of the third circuit to a boil, and steam is supplied to the turbines. Later, water designs appeared in all circuits. Metal-metal-water reactors are theoretically more dangerous than pressurized water. But they are more compact, which allows them to be used in transport. The Beloyarsk NPP in the BN-600 reactor in the first two circuits has a metal coolant. The latter is steam-water with sodium vapor superheater.
Beloyarsk NPP-2 is the second (or rather the fourth) power plant in the construction phase. Four years of operation of the BN-600 pilot unit and processing of the information received led to the decision to add two more - BN-800 and BN-1200. After the Chernobyl accident, these works were stopped, but the project continued to be adjusted. In 2007, construction was resumed.
The BN-800 block is intended for further development of the technology of “fast neutrons”, and the positive results obtained on it will allow:
- form a closed fuel cycle of nuclear power plants ;
- more than 50 times increase the processing of already spent uranium, providing fuel to the country's nuclear power plants ;
- partially dispose of nuclear waste, use non-radioactive uranium U238 from dumps;
- Put plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads into fuel circulation.
Beloyarsk NPP, taking into account new units, will have a capacity of 2600 MW by 2022. In the coming years, construction will begin on block No. 5 - BN-1200.
The launch of several BN-1200 reactors at this and other nuclear power plants and the inclusion in the cycle of enterprises producing nuclear fuel form a system for its manufacture. So Russia will provide itself and friendly countries with this fuel for hundreds of years. Beloyarsk NPP has to take its rightful place in this cycle, as on its blocks of various types, new solutions are experimentally tested in the energy of a peaceful atom.