These plans were announced by Alexey Dub, First Deputy Director of the Private Institution "Science and Innovation," which is part of the scientific division of Rosatom State Corporation, and a professor, at the XXII Mendeleev Congress on General and Applied Chemistry. According to him, heat-resistant materials are needed in space for the development of space nuclear power, and metal-oxide composites are needed for IV generation reactors on Earth—a new generation of VVER and fast neutron reactors.
Traditional materials cannot ensure structural stability and, accordingly, resource at such high loads [such as IV generation reactors and fast neutron reactors], so it was decided to use metal-oxide composites—steel dispersed-strengthened with oxides. A production site is already being created for this, which will allow to annually produce the necessary blanks in the amount of up to 1 thousand meters of pipes. By the mid-2030s, we expect to provide structural materials for the "fast" direction, and high-strength candidate materials for VVER-S-1000 and VVER-SKD. A significant area of work is heat-resistant materials with operating temperatures from 1.5 thousand degrees for HTGR and nuclear power plants for space purposes.
In addition to creating new materials, the state corporation has another key task: a new method for processing spent nuclear fuel (SNF) for thermal neutron reactors.
The new technology is needed for a large-scale processing plant with a capacity of approximately 800 tons of heavy metal per year. Rosatom specialists intend to develop a project for such a plant by 2030.
The technology will be based on the most effective operations developed for the RT-1 industrial SNF processing plant in the Chelyabinsk region, the pilot demonstration center, and as part of the "Proryv" project direction.
Earlier, Rosatom announced that a new chromium coating developed for fuel rods with accident-tolerant ATF fuel will help develop unmanned automated production of VVER fifth-generation fuel. This means that in promising unmanned Russian reactors, not only enriched uranium, but also regenerated uranium and plutonium can be used as fuel.
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