V.S. SHKOLNIK, T.M. ZHANTIKIN
Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan,
Almaty, Kazakhstan
Email: t.zhantikin@atom.almaty.kz
1. INTRODUCTION
Kazakhstan is one of three Eurasian countries and has a territory of 2 717 300 km2 bordering China and the central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union in the south and the Russian Federation to the north, east and west. Geographically, about 18% of Kazakhstan territory is in Europe, between the Ural and Volga Rivers. The country has a very low population, about 16 million in 2004, living in several populated areas around industrial centres.
1.1. Uranium industry
Kazakhstan has a developed uranium mining industry in the form of the National Mining Company, a company of the Kazatomprom National Atomic Company holding. The holding also operates the main shares of a joint stock company, the Ulba metallurgical plant, which has a fuel fabrication plant producing nuclear fuel pellets for Soviet designed reactors such as the water cooled, water moderated power reactor and the high power channel type reactor. The Ulba metallurgical plant is situated in Ust-Kamenogorsk, one of the industrial cities in eastern Kazakhstan close to the Altay region.
1.2. Nuclear research
The National Nuclear Centre of the Republic of Kazakhstan has two institutes operating research reactors, namely the Institute of Atomic Energy in the city of Kurchatov1, eastern Kazakhstan, which has three reactors — the IGR, a pulse graphite reactor, the IWG-1M, a modified high temperature
1 Kurchatov is the centre of the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, where most of the Soviet nuclear weapon tests were carried out.
reactor that originally was designed for a gas coolant and was later modified to use a water cooling system, and the RA, which is a high temperature hydrogen cooled reactor operated as a full scale prototype of a space propulsion nuclear engine. Now that the latter reactor has been shut down, nuclear fuel is being unloaded from the reactor core and shipped to the Russian Federation.
Near Almaty, the former capital of the country, in Alatau, the Institute of Nuclear Physics operates the pool water cooled research reactor VVR-K of 10 MW(th) power capacity, which is being used for scientific research in nuclear physics and some applications in the production of different radiation modified polymers and radiopharmaceuticals, for radiation treatment of materials and for other applications. Recently the Kazakhstan Government decided to establish a Centre of Nuclear Medicine, based on the Institute of Nuclear Physics.
All three research reactors operated in the two institutes of the National Nuclear Centre have fuel made of high enriched uranium (HEU). In addition, for some research and application programmes the institutes are using HEU bulk materials.
1.3. Nuclear energy
In western Kazakhstan is the first industrial scale fast breeder reactor, BN-350, which began operating in 1973 in Shevchenko, now renamed Aktau, in Mangistau oblast on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea. The reactor was successfully operated by the Mangyshlak Nuclear Power Company up to its shutdown in April 1999 by a decision of the Government of Kazakhstan. When the reactor was shut down its decommissioning programme was launched with the support of an international team of specialists. General coordination of the reactor decommissioning programme is carried out under the auspices of the IAEA. Included in the decommissioning of BN-350 are several important projects, for example the safe draining and further management of the sodium coolant and the safe and secure management of the reactor spent nuclear fuel.
The spent nuclear fuel assemblies and blanket assemblies contain HEU and plutonium, which gives a basis for the special arrangements for the security measures in the reactor decommissioning programme.
2. INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMES
In 1993 began the first coordinated plan of the IAEA for technical assistance to Kazakhstan in the establishment and enhancement of a State system of nuclear material accountancy and control and of physical protection
of nuclear facilities. Several donor countries and IAEA experts provided very useful and timely assistance to the newly established Kazakhstan Atomic Energy Agency (KAEA2) and to various nuclear facilities in the country to develop the basic elements of a State system of nuclear safety and security. The United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry provided direct technical assistance to the KAEA, and the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate helped to develop the first Kazakhstan regulations, norms and provisions in the field of the peaceful use of atomic energy and provided several training courses and scientific visits for personnel of Kazakhstan’s nuclear facilities and regulatory authorities. The bulk of the technical support was provided by the US Department of Energy (USDOE), the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Government of Japan.
The main focus of the IAEA coordinated plan of technical assistance was the effective application of safeguards in Kazakhstan, but much was also done in the nuclear security field. The situation in Kazakhstan at that time was complicated by the presence of a large Soviet nuclear weapons arsenal, which was later dismantled and successfully transferred to the Russian Federation.
This process was completed in 1995.
Also, there was, and still remains in some sense, the problem of the former Semipalatinsk test site. After the separation of Kazakhstan from the Soviet Union there was a remaining nuclear device on this site, which presented a unique problem in its safe and secure management on the territory of a nuclear-weapon State. As is well known, Kazakhstan declared its non-nuclear-weapon status immediately after independence and signed a set of international documents confirming its non-nuclear-weapon commitments, such as the Lisbon Protocol in 1992, the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1993, the safeguards agreement in 1994, enforced in 1995, and others.
In 1995 practically all remaining problems were solved. The nuclear device on the test site was eliminated, destroyed by conventional explosives without the possibility to recover any material or information on the device’s design. All nuclear warheads were dismantled and shipped to the Russian Federation, and missiles and launcher silos were destroyed. About 600 kg of HEU was transferred from the Ulba metallurgical plant to the USA for safe
2 The KAEA was established as an independent agency under the direct control of the Government of Kazakhstan. Later the KAEA was included into the administrative structure of the Ministry of Science and New Technologies and recently into the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. The KAEA has been renamed the Kazakhstan Atomic Energy Committee (KAEC).
and secure storage in Operation Sapphire. Nuclear HEU fuel from the RA reactor, together with some HEU material, was shipped to the Russian Federal Nuclear Centres from the Institute of Atomic Energy.
Later there were several projects related to nuclear security and safeguards; for example, volumetric and seal control systems were designed and constructed for the Ulba metallurgical plant under the TACIS programme, and the USDOE supported the development of an internal compliance system for this facility under its nuclear export control assistance programme.
Assistance is being provided to Kazakhstan in several areas, including the development and upgrading of a legal and regulatory basis, training of personnel of nuclear and other facilities having nuclear activities, strengthening of the infrastructure of the State system for control of nuclear material, and organization and implementation of training exercises in nuclear security. The control of nuclear material includes accountancy systems at the facility and State level, State control of nuclear exports and imports, and systems for combating the illicit trafficking of nuclear material.
3. CONTROL OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL AND SOURCES It should be mentioned that the KAEA has from the very beginning given consideration to the control of radioactive material, owing to its danger to the population and the environment. The State system for nuclear control therefore includes aspects not only related to nuclear material but to radioactive material in general. More focus has sometimes been given to radioactive material, since historically this was less controlled than nuclear material.
One of the problems that the KAEA faced was the problem of orphan sources. During the transition period in the early 1990s there was a gap in the registration of sources, which was previously performed by the sanitary and epidemiology services of the Ministry of Health together with special departments of the Ministry of Interior Affairs. Also, many organizations that had radioactive sources in their inventories disappeared. Some organizations did not report their sources to the Kazakhstan authorities, since during the Soviet era they were under so called ‘union level operation’. All these problems led to the decision of the government to define the KAEC as the authority responsible for the control of radioactive sources.
With support from the IAEA and several donor organizations, the KAEC began a programme for recovering information on lost sources. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission supported the development of software and regulations for the National Registry of Sources of Ionizing Radiation, the
USDOE provided technical assistance in enhancing the physical protection of strong sources used in medical organizations, the IAEA–USA–Russian Federation trilateral initiative has in Kazakhstan the task of securing the storage of two strong irradiators at the National University, and the USDOE together with the Department of Defence are planning training courses in searching for and recovery of lost sources. With support of the IAEA and donor countries the KAEC has developed a national strategy for the recovery of regulatory control of orphan sources.
The USDOE is also supporting the development of technical measures for radiation control at the borders of Kazakhstan. An agreement has been signed between the USDOE and the Customs Committee of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Finances on a programme for the supply of equipment and training of the customs officers foreseen to use this equipment. These measures of the second line of defence should markedly enhance the effectiveness of the State system for combating illicit trafficking of radioactive material, including nuclear material.
4. DEVELOPMENT OF PROGRAMMES
In general, the assistance programmes are developing from ad hoc solutions to the urgent problems of newly established systems of State control of nuclear activities in the country to systematic assistance on building a State nuclear security infrastructure. In this process, coordination of international assistance programmes is becoming the most important part of the work, providing effective and efficient assistance and excluding possible duplication of the projects of different donors and the State itself.
It is also very useful to have periodically an independent assessment of a State’s nuclear security system and of the infrastructure in general or of its parts, with development of detailed reports on the system status and recommendations on further upgrades. This work can be done under the auspices of the IAEA through its system of services in nuclear security.
The experience of Kazakhstan shows that international assistance programmes and international cooperation are very useful for a country developing its nuclear security system, especially in the early stages of this work, since effective use of the experience and knowledge of developed countries substantially speeds up development of a State system of nuclear security, and strengthens its effectiveness and efficiency.
5. CONCLUSION
International assistance programmes have provided an effective and rapid development of the national nuclear security system in Kazakhstan.
Valuable experience has been transferred in organization, methodology, legal and regulatory infrastructure and personnel training, and there has been direct technical assistance in the supply of equipment and in other hardware upgrading.