Andreeva Bay Programme: Contributions of the European Commission

Large quantities of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and radioactive waste coming from the nuclear submarines and other nuclear powered ships have been accumulated in the former naval base at Andreeva Bay (Kola Peninsula, Murmansk Region). The Andreeva Bay site accumulating approximately 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies is currently considered the largest storage facility in North-West of Russia. Nowadays storage conditions do not meet safety requirements and prospectively pose serious environmental and proliferation issues. In the beginning of year 2000, the control over the storage site was transferred to the State Corporation for Atomic Energy “Rosatom”. It was soon realised that the engineering infrastructure was almost completely inoperable and needed restoration and replacement. In addition, most documentation of nuclear material characteristics was missing and some Spent Fuel Assemblies (SFA) are likely to be damaged to some extent. Starting in 2002 after the G8 Global Partnership summit in Kananaskis, a considerable number of international cooperation projects are running to remediate the Andreeva Bay infrastructure, aiming at the safe removal of SFA for reprocessing. The Andreeva Bay programme is supported by international donors from (a) United Kingdom Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), (b) Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership Fund (the EBRD), (c) Italy (Ministry of Economic Development of the Italian Republic), (d) Norway (Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority - NRPA and Finnmark county governor), (e) Sweden (Swedish Radiation Safety Authority - SSM) and (f) European Commission (TACIS Programme – Technical Assistance to the Community of Independent States). In agreement with all the stakeholders the European Commission identified three areas for development and funding: (i) nuclear materials automated accounting and control system (NMAA&CS), (ii) gamma scanning unit for nuclear materials characterization prior to SNF transportation and (iii) provision of canisters for the safe transportation of spent fuel assemblies. The paper starts with a brief introduction to the Andreeva Bay programme, its overall objective, organisation and contributions from all stakeholders. The paper then details the contributions and progress of the projects funded by the European Commission in the field of Nuclear Material Accountancy and Control.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit