According to world experience, waste uranium hexafluoride is not
commercially profitable. This is why the United States, for
example, start considering depleted uranium as radioactive waste to
be disposed [1].
If consider the WUH not as raw materials which can be used in
the near future it needs to be stored somewhere. There is a
technology on transfer WUH in the safe form for long storage [3].
Remains question - where to store.
Unfortunately, some West European companies (including French)
use waste transportation to Russia on an irrevocable basis as in
the way of WUH recycling.
Series of contracts between the "Rosatom" and the West European
companies (in particular, French) on delivery of the depleted
uranium is not that other, as attempt to get rid of stocks of the
depleted uranium and the expenses connected with its recycling.
In compliance with the contract with the French company AREVA
(previously Cogema) #54-02/60006, regenerated uranium was to be
imported for enrichment at the Siberian Chemical Plant (Tomsk-7) in
1992-1993 in the form of uranium protoxide at the amount 150 tons
per year, from 1994 and further on in the form of hexafluoride - up
to 500 tons per year. The contract expired in 2000 [4]. According
to [5] by 1995 the Siberian Chemical Plant received 759 tons of
uranium in the form of oxides and 100 tons in the form of
hexafluoride from the company.
Part of depleted uranium is being enriched to the level of
natural uranium (0.7%) or to the level sufficient to produce fresh
uranium fuel -3.5-4.95%. During the reenrichment the most of
imported WUH is transformed to even more depleted uranium (0,2 %) -
hexafluoride [2].
The enriched uranium comes back in the country of origin WUH -
to France, and depleted, in quantity to 98 % from weight of
initially imported uranium, remains on the territory of the Russian
Federation.
In all about 140 thousand tons of imported WUH have been stored
in Russia. Part of this WUH is used for internal purposes, but 125
thousand tons WUH having 0.1% enrichment as an economically
unvaluable materials have been stored.
As storage grounds the territories of four Rosatom's plants are
used:
• FGUP « Ural Electrochemical Plant » (Sverdlovsk-44);
• FGUP «Siberian Chemical Plant »(Tomsk-7);
• FGUP «Angarsk electrolysis Chemical Plant » (Angarsk);
• FGUP "PO" Electrochemical Plant »(Krasnoyarsk-45); (the
reference to a card).
WUH is stored in cylindrical steel containers (in everyone -
more than 10 tons) on the open-air industrial platforms. Thus
covers of containers are exposed to corrosion which leads to their
destruction [6]. According to the data of Federal supervision of
nuclear and radiating safety of Russia, storage of capacities with
WUH on such industrial platforms as above, are unqualified to
modern safety requirements [7];
In the nuclear industry of the USSR failures with WUH emission
in which result 3 persons [6] were lost took place.