KRASNOYARSK, November 9 - A special train with 48 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from the Kozlodui nuclear power plant in Bulgaria has arrived at the mining and chemical integrated plant in the city of Zheleznogorsk, Russia`s Krasnoyarsk territory. The plant`s sources told Itar-Tass on Wednesday specialists have begun to unload the nuclear fuel.

The transportation of the spent fuel by train was proceeding normally without any incidents. Special forces of the Russian Interior Troops guarded the train round the clock. Specialists of the mining and chemical plant also accompanied the train. They were monitoring parameters of the special containers.

A storage facility for spent nuclear fuel with a capacity of 6,000 tonnes is located in Zheleznogorsk. The second nuclear reactor of the plant has been for almost 40 years working as an underground nuclear power plant providing the city with a population of 100,000 with heat and electricity. The ADE-2 nuclear reactor was put into operation in 1964 and is the main source of heat supply for Zheleznogorsk. A new facility for "dry" long-term storage and processing of 38,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel will be put into operation here in 2009. The first stage of the facility with the storage and processing capacity of up to 10,000 of spent nuclear fuel will be put into operation in 2008.

Spent nuclear fuel is brought to Zheleznogorsk from nuclear power plants of Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. The first train with spent nuclear fuel arrived at the mining and chemical plant in 1985. A total of 500 trains with the fuel have arrived there since then.
sections: Economics, Accidents, Region News
areas: Siberian region