23.11.2007 // Information Department of Leningrad NPP

Interview with deputy chief engineer for radiation safety and ecology Alexander Yepikhin and head of environment protection department of Leningrad NPP Valentin Oleynik

Today, everybody is talking about the nuclear renaissance that followed the decline of the 1990s. But even though there was no intensive construction during the period, safety culture was being steadily developed. In the times of crisis, our nuclear power engineers were paving the way for the renaissance of people’s confidence in peaceful atom.

The deputy chief engineer for radiation safety and ecology of Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant Alexander Yepikhin and the head of the plant’s environment protection department Valentin Oleynik have told us how Leningrad NPP has become one of the ecologically safest companies of the fuel and energy complex of Russia.

— Why are nuclear power plants regarded as an ecologically safe source of energy?

— Because nuclear power plants have little effect on the environment. We do not consume oxygen, do not emit CO2 and do not contribute to the greenhouse effect. Due to its favorable situation, our plant does not even cause local heating. The excess of heat produced by our plant is released as water – just 8–10 hotter than normal — into Kopora Bay, where it gets mixed with the waters of the Gulf of Finland.

To be honest, any type of power plant has an effect on the environment. Thermal power plants burn oxygen and emit ozone-destroying matters and greenhouse gases in amounts that may well cause a global disaster already this century. Water power plants destroy ecological systems over large territories. Nuclear power plants – with their constantly developing technologies – are much friendlier to the environment.

The world community is not yet ready to develop alternative sources, such as wind or solar power plants. Besides, we can’t say that they are much safer until we know them better. Already today, we know that wind power plants produce low-frequency vibrations that are perilous for insects and birds. Solar power plants need vast territories just to make them lifeless – you won’t even find insects there!

I think we better compare nuclear and thermal power plants. Simply, we have what to compare, for example, radioactive emission. A thermal power plant working on coal emits 40 times more strontium-90 (together with cesium-137, it is the most dangerous radio-nuclide in the territory of Russia) than a nuclear power plant of the same capacity does.

Last year the emission of neutral radioactive gases by Leningrad NPP made up 17% of the admissible level. This year we launched a closed system for ventilation of the circulating tank of the control and protection system of the 3^rd and 4^th units. As you may know, the control and protection system is the key source of argon-41. As a result, in Jan-Sept 2007 the emission of neutral radioactive gases made up just 8% of the admissible level. We believe that next year we will emit even less.

Argon-41 is the key neutral radioactive gas we emit (90% of the total emission). It is a short-lived radio-nuclide having almost no negative effect on the population and the environment. Xenon and krypton have just 2% in the total emission and just 0.1% in the annual radiation dose the population gets from all sources of radiation – natural, domestic, industrial. 0.1% is so little a figure that it is not even worth mentioning. 

After all modernizations, we have reduced our radioactive effects to a minimum. When we were just building the plant, the sanitary rules allowed us to emit 500 curie of neutral radioactive gases a day per unit (2,000 curie for all four units). But, in fact, we emitted just 30–40 curie. In the late 1980s, we built inactivation systems and since then have emitted just 1 curie a day. The present-day standard is 270 curie a day from all sources.

We don’t emit liquid radio-nuclides as we have a closed service water flow system. After being processed by evaporators, the water is sent back to the water supply system, while the waste is, first, put in bitumen and, then, in cement. Now we are launching an ion exchanging system for improving the quality of the water.

We control quite a big number of hazardous chemical matters, but Leningrad NPP is not the key source of them. 90% of them are produced by the boiler of our “Kopanskoye” sanatorium and motor vehicles – however, they do not emit more than allowed.

The key source of chemical waste is rain and drain water. The point is that the territory of Leningrad NPP is encased and when it rains the waste we have failed to clean is washed directly into the Gulf of Finland instead of being absorbed into the soil through its natural filter, sand. In 2008–2010 we are planning to build local waste treatment works so as to reduce this negative effect.

Today, Leningrad NPP pays almost 200,000 RUR a year for excessive release of pollutants into the Gulf. The design and construction of waste treatment works will cost approximately 2,000,000 RUR and 20,000,000 RUR, respectively. Economically, it would be more profitable for us to sit back and do nothing, but we are ready to take such expenses because we live here.

The same is for the treatment of non-radioactive waste. The dump of Sosnovy Bor is not licensed. We have made a contract with specialized motor transport company for transfer of our waste to a licensed dump in Gatchina. We have agreed to increase our transportation expenses just to be sure that our waste is kept in a safer place. 

We have absolutely no problems with radioactive waste. Our radioactive waste treatment system is perfectly organized and closely controlled. Our goal is to prevent proliferation of radioactive matters and to minimize the radiation exposure of our personnel — when treating radioactive matters our personnel use remote control systems. The local population does not receive any radiation at all as we don’t let radiation go outside the plant.

We have an interim facility for storage of radioactive waste and we are building a big complex for treatment of solid radioactive waste. Now we are carrying out start-up operations. This complex is supposed to press, condition and burn solid radioactive waste and is expected to substantially reduce its amount. We will gradually remove our old waste, treat it and rebury it in a much degraded form. We believe that under such rate of treatment our storage facilities will be able to serve us for fifty years, at shortest.

As regards spent nuclear fuel, we use spent fuel from WWER reactors as fuel for our RBMK reactors. In RBMK fuel is burnt deeper than in WWER. So, we bring not completely spent fuel from WWER and burn it down to the end.

Our spent fuel is useless and we are building a special complex for storing it dry: putting it in capsules with neutral gas and placing the capsules in reinforced concrete containers. One such container can hold 144 capsules. The new complex is supposed to serve us for fifty years and even more if we start taking spent fuel away from the plant to places of long-term storage. We have already tested the containers as to their durability during storage and transportation.

Today, we are trying to solve the problem of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel so that our future generations have no troubles with it and could just transfer it to burial sites. 

— What is the key source of people’s fear of nuclear power plants as facilities of high radiation risk?

— The term “radiation” is used in many fields. When radiation is used in medicine or agriculture people understand that this is done for their benefit. Production of nuclear energy is also a benefit but here people are afraid of a nuclear accident.

In Sept 2007 we conducted a complex emergency response exercise: we modeled an incredible accident, evacuated some of the residents of Sosnovy Bor. Today, our safety systems are very efficient and we can be sure that no such accident will ever take place at our plant. Nevertheless, our personnel are ready for any possibility and during the exercise they proved their efficiency.

People must understand that we have a very big experience, we have a long history, we have had many mistakes and we have been constantly correcting them. Today, our safety system is very efficient. It is based on five physical barriers preventing release of radiation into the environment and five deeply echeloned protection levels.

The levels of deeply echeloned protection are related to the choice of a site for a nuclear power plant, its design, prevention of design and off-design accidents and the system of emergency response training. We have a training center, which has different simulators, particularly, the full-scale simulators of all the four units of our plant.

Everybody having anything in relation to safety is regularly trained, retrained and certified. This is all done for ensuring the safety of our plant.

There is no absolutely unsafe production. Every production has effect on the environment. Just look at dumps around – piles of rubbish! It seems that nobody is concerned about them. But when comes the time of election certain people suddenly remember the risk of nuclear energy and start actively discussing it in public. 

Any extremism – be it in ecology or politics – comes from incompetence. As soon as people learn more about something they stop being extremists and adopt moderate positions, some of them even begin to support something they earlier opposed. Simply, they begin to use their reason and to compare advantages with disadvantages. For example, if they learn more about nuclear power engineering, they will see that, yes, it has certain problems, but they can be solved more easily than the global problems related to CO2.

— Have your relations with ecologists changed in anyway in the last 10–15 years?

— Yes, they have changed drastically. After the Chernobyl accident, any questions related to nuclear energy caused tension between us. Today, we are beginning to understand each other and are jointly formulating problems and searching for solutions. Sometimes, we find common ground and jointly work to make the plant safer and better.

Dialogue and mutual interest give us deeper insight into problems and help us to solve them. For example, when in 1989–1991 we were going to replace the channel assemblies of our 1^st unit for the first time, the local ecologists questioned the safety of that project. We set up a joint commission involving nuclear power engineers and ecologists from different regions. We met with them once a week and discussed the course of the project. We even showed them how we did the work.

A couple of months later the ecologists said that there was nothing interesting for them at our plant because everything was OK. So, they went away to enterprises that had more negative effects on the environment. Representatives of Green Peace and other international ecological organizations and movements also visited our plant and also confirmed our ecological safety.

— How does the system of state and international ecological control work?

— Everything begins with our Constitution. It says that each citizen has the right to favorable ecological situation. The work of nuclear power plant as a subject of the nature management system is based on over a dozen of federal laws, particularly, the laws on the use of nuclear energy, the protection of flora and fauna, the treatment of waste, the safety of hydraulic structures as well as the laws of the water, land and forest codes.

The next level is governmental and presidential decrees. They are sent to the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy (Rosatom) and then to Rosenergoatom Concern, the operator and manager of all Russia’s nuclear power plants. There are also regional and local laws and, of course, the rules of federal and inter-department regulatory authorities.

We also have a system of internal checks, a system of internal quality management audit, a system of so-called days of safety: each month departments raise and consider some urgent problems with a view to improve their performance and to enhance the safety of the plant. 

The next stage is Rosenergoatom inspections. As a result of such inspections Rosenergoatom experts issues certificates. The last such inspection checked up our preparedness for winter. Sometimes, Rosenergoatom and Rosatom experts carry out complex inspections. We always try to be ready, but they always find some deficiencies. As a result, they draft a protocol – quite an extensive document requiring serious consideration and substantial financing. Some improvements take us years but we still make them because we want our plant to be safe.

The other level is inspections by the Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Control (Rostekhnadzor). They have a permanent expert group at our plant and also a nuclear and radiation safety group for the North-European Inter-regional Territorial District, headquartered in St.Petersburg. Rostekhnadzor’s inspections are carried out regularly.

There is also an international level. We are actively involved in the work of the World Association of Nuclear Operators: as inspectors we visit foreign nuclear power plants and as inspected receive foreign colleagues at home. The last time WANO inspectors visited our plant in 2005–2006: it was a follow-up on the large-scale inspection of 2002. Recently, we received a group of experts from Rostekhnadzor and the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland (STUK).

The key peculiarity of international inspections is that they are aimed not at detecting your violations (if you violate rules, they have nothing to do at you plant) but at searching for ways to make your work even better. They are professionals, experts of international level, so, they just say: here you have no problems, everything is excellent, but here you can make your work easier and here you can avoid unnecessary obstacles.  

The principle of optimization is one of the basic principles of radiation safety and implies improvement of work and its social and economic factors. We use some of its elements but our society and economy are not yet ready for in-depth assessment of social and economic factors. We still feel the influence of our Socialistic past – when our criteria was what we had achieved. For example, every year we try to make our radioactive emission index even lower and are happy if we succeed — and even though it is already very low, we keep searching for ways to make it lower even contrary to economic profitability.

In the West any safety measures is assessed as to its economic profitability. As WANO experts we sometimes see quite strange things there: our foreign colleagues also try to limit radioactive emission but they have much simpler approach to it – they do it within quotas. They believe that once they have set a standard, everything within it is safe.

We believe that there is one more way to ensure safety – to cultivate safety culture and education. After Chernobyl, we began regarding IAEA’s requirements as laws. In the West the law is “His Majesty” Project: if you have designed an NPP for 50 years, you will have to improve something only if the standards have changed. So, I think our control is tougher and analysis is deeper.

Olga Petrova