Russia makes progress with radwaste data management

Russia has introduced an automated system for the accounting and control of its radioactive substances and waste that encompasses more than 2000 organizations. The system follows an order by state nuclear corporation Rosatom, 113 subsidiaries of which account for 96% of the country's radioactive substances and waste.

The system automates the collection and monitoring of the availability, production, transmission, receipt, processing, conditioning, siting and deregistration of radioactive substances and waste, as well as their changes in status, properties and location.

The next step will be to move the system to a modern IT platform, Rosatom said. Work on this is actively underway and the corporation has decided to put the new platform into trial operation at 12 organizations. These trials will determine how the system is spread out to the rest of Rosatom and other Russian entities.

Such an improved system consists of two parts, Rosatom said. The first is autonomous, with the possibility of local and network data processing, and the second is central, implemented as an integrated multi-user solution. The system features advanced functions for referencing and analysing data.

Full implementation of the system is scheduled for late 2015.

Oleg Kryukov, Rosatom's director of public policy for radioactive waste, used nuclear fuel and decommissioning of nuclear and radioactive facilities, said in a statement on 19 February that the system is needed for the implementation of a Russian government decree on the procedure for state registration and control of radioactive waste.

"The new solution enables a high level of quality control in the movement of radioactive substances and waste and provides complete data for assessment of the financial responsibility for handling them," Kryukov said. "Even now - though the project has not yet been completed - the efficiency, the level of detail and the reliability of the accounting data on the movement of radioactive waste, and the measurement of financial liabilities and the expansion of reporting, including the waste generated at the registry and cadastre radioactive waste storage points, have all been improved."

In June 2011, the Russian legislature passed the Radioactive Waste Management Law developing a unified state radioactive waste management system that brought Russia into compliance with the United Nations Joint Convention on the Safe Management of Spent Nuclear Fuel. In April 2012, the state-run national operator for radioactive waste, NO RAO, was created to manage this process.

Plans for disposal of low- and intermediate-level wastes are to be in place by 2018. It is expected to establish repositories for 300,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste, and an underground research laboratory in Nizhnekansky granitoid massif at Zheleznogorsk near Krasnoyarsk for study into the feasibility of disposal of solid high-level radioactive waste and solid medium-level long-lived wastes by 2021. A decision on final high-level radioactive waste repository is expected by 2025.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News