July 30 Prime Minister Vladimir Putin approved a concept of the federal target program “Nuclear Power Technologies of New Generation for 2010-2015 and until 2020”.

According to the directive by the Head of the Government, SC Rosatom determined the state customer for the program, which federal budget financing will amount to RUB110.428bn.

SC Rosatom has been charged to draft the program and submit it for the governmental review.

The concept lists main problems of the Russian nuclear power, including large and continuously growing amount of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, ineffective utilization of natural uranium reserves, as well as potential drop of scientific priority of the Russian nuclear power and competitiveness of nuclear products in the world market.

“The consolidation of efforts on the development of nuclear power technologies of new generation basing on fast neutron reactors and closed nuclear fuel cycle will ensure solving the said problems,” the document says.

At the first stage (2010-2014) it is expected to develop designs of fast neutron reactors with lead, lead-bismuth and sodium coolants and start up process complexes to fabricate uranium-plutonium oxide fuel for fast neutron reactors.

It is planned that in this period a detailed construction design will be developed of a multi-purpose fast neutron research reactor along with a neutrino detector for reactor core diagnostics and a facility to produce dispersed composite materials for reactor applications.

At the second stage (2015-2020) it is planned to build pilot demonstration lead- and lead-bismuth-cooled fast neutron reactors, as well as a multi-purpose fast neutron research reactor MBIR (to replace existing research reactors which have exhausted their service lives).

Also, it is planned to commission an industrial complex for fabrication of dense fuel for fast neutron reactors. In addition, it is expected to complete the construction of a pilot demonstration complex to test closed fuel cycle technologies. This period also includes upgrades at controlled nuclear fusion research facilities and construction a thermonuclear complex Baikal.

A limit (projected) amount of the program financing in 2010-2015 and until 2020 will be RUB128.3bn, the document says.

Of this amount, RUB110.4bn will be allocated by the federal budget with RUB51bn to be spent for research and development and RUB59.4bn for capital investments.

Extrabudgetary sources are expected to raise RUB17.9bn.

RIA Novosti