Russia Announces Successful Decommissioning Of El-2 LWGR

28 Sep (NucNet): Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom has for the first time decommissioned an industrial-size light-water cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor (LWGR), a statement said. Rosatom’s Experimental Demonstration Centre in Moscow successfully decommissioned the El-2 reactor, which was put into service as Russia’s first industrial nuclear power station in Siberia’s Tomsk-7 restricted zone in 1958. Rosatom said the decommissioning work was supported by research centres affiliated to the Russian Academy of Sciences, which together developed “unique technologies” for decommissioning LWGRs. El-2 was shut down in 1990, followed by the closure of a number of other LWGRs. Consequently, several reactors of this type in Russia are in the process of being decommissioned. The El-2 was of the ADN type, a pre-cursor of the RBMK. It was optimised for plutonium production, but was also the first industrial-scale nuclear power reactor delivering electricity and heat in the Soviet Union.