Power unit # 4 with the BN-800 reactor of the Beloyarsk NPP was connected to the grid and resumed electricity production upon completion of the next scheduled preventive maintenance. To carry out the maintenance, the power unit was disconnected from the grid from January 8, 2021.

During the maintenance, for the first time nothing but MOX fuel was loaded into the reactor core. The first serial batch of 18 MOX fuel assemblies was loaded into the reactor in January 2020, and now another 160 fuel assemblies have been added to them. Thus, the BN-800 core is now one third filled with innovative fuel. Further on, only MOX fuel will be loaded into the reactor.

‘Beloyarsk NPP has become one step closer to achieving the nuclear industry strategic objective - development of a new technological platform based on a closed nuclear fuel cycle. This means that the use of MOX fuel will make it possible to involve the isotope of uranium that is not currently used in power production, so the fuel base of the nuclear industry will increase tenfold. In addition, the BN-800 reactor can reuse spent nuclear fuel from other NPPs and minimize radioactive waste volume by “afterburning” long-lived isotopes from it. With the production schedule in mind, we will be able to switch to a core with a full MOX fuel load as early as in 2022,’ said Ivan Sidorov, Director of the Beloyarsk NPP.

The fuel assemblies were manufactured at the Mining and Chemical Combine (Federal State Unitary Enterprise GKhK, Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk krai). Unlike enriched uranium, customary for nuclear industry, the raw materials for the production of MOX fuel pellets are plutonium oxide produced in power reactors and depleted uranium oxide (obtained by defluorinating depleted uranium hexafluoride - DUHF, the so-called "tailings" of the enrichment process). 

‘Alongside the loading of the BN-800 core with MOX fuel, the ROSATOM industry specialist team have been developing technologies for the production of such fuel at the Mining and Chemical Combine. For instance, the production of fresh fuel using high-background plutonium extracted from the irradiated fuel from VVER reactors has been mastered: all process stages are fully automated and are carried out without the personnel present in the immediate reactor area. The first serial batch of 20 MOX fuel assemblies with high-background fuel to be loaded in 2022 have already been manufactured and has passed required acceptance activities. Advanced technologies for nuclear reprocessing and fuel refabrication will make it possible to process irradiated fuel instead of storing it, as well as to reduce the volume of high-level waste,’ said Alexander Ugryumov, Vice-President for Research and Development at TVEL JSC.

The industrial production of MOX fuel began at the end of 2018 at the Mining and Chemical Combine site. In order to establish this unique production, different branches of nuclear industry were coordinated under the scientific leadership of the ROSATOM TVEL Fuel Division, which also acts as a supplier of MOX fuel assemblies for the Beloyarsk NPP. Initially, when the BN-800 reactor was launched, a hybrid core was formed, partly made up of the uranium fuel produced by ELEMASH JSC (Machine-Building Plant, Elektrostal, Moscow Region), and partly of the experimental MOX fuel assemblies produced by the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region).

In January, POWER, a respected North American magazine, named the loading of serial-batch MOX fuel at the Beloyarsk NPP as one of the main events of 2020 in the global energy industry.