36 Stefan Guth
Eastern Kazakhstan, an operation completed in 2010 at a cost of a quarter
billion USD. 136
The reactor itself was shut down in 1991. Nevertheless, even with the
HEU and the plutonium removed, decommissioning and eventual dismantling remained (and still remains) a challenging undertaking. Initial
feasibility studies, commissioned in the last years of the Soviet period, had
warned of an exceedingly difficult process, given that the reactor had been
planned and built without consideration for its eventual decommissioning. 137
In 1999, experts renewed their warnings, stating that decommissioning was
no simple legal act but required “a major industrial undertaking that can
take many years.” 138 More than 3 000 m 3 of liquid waste with a total activity of 2.66 × 10 14 Bq required treatment in a complicated multistep process
involving evaporation, filtration, ion-exchange, and cementation, while solid
radioactive wastes – roughly twice as much both in volume and activity –
needed to be fragmented, supercompacted, and cemented in a remotely handled facility. Low and medium-level wastes are earmarked for on-site storage,
while a management concept for highly active RW is vaguely described as
being developed, and may include the storage of solid waste within the reactor vessel. 139 Only after an additional 50-year period of so-called long-term
safe storage, a partial or complete dismantling of the reactor and burial of
wastes may be considered – or so it is hoped. Decommissioning is complicated by the fact that it has never before been undertaken for high-power
FBRs of a similar size, and hence, involves many firsts. 140 This is also one of
the reasons why the process is co-funded by international sponsors such as the
United States and the European Union, which, in addition to nonproliferation concerns, see the BN-350 as a testing ground for rehearsing the future
decommissioning of similar reactors in other countries – especially in the
United Kingdom, which faces similar challenges at its Sellafield site. 141
As for Shevchenko’s uranium mine and the Koshkar-Ata tailings reservoir,
a government program of the Republic of Kazakhstan eventually planned to
“conserve” and “recultivate” all of the republic’s abandoned uranium mines
within the decade of 2001–2010. However, by 2011, a state company named
Uranlikvidrudnik 142 had completed no more than a single pilot project, and
had not even started to tackle what was considered its most difficult task: the
deactivation of the tailings reservoirs in Aktau and Stepnogorsk. 143 In Aktau,
post-Soviet authorities have been quick to point out that average exposure
rates along the lake’s shore are moderate, but some hotspots reach up to
3 000 µR/h, 144 and the situation deteriorates constantly as ever larger parts
of the lake fall dry and expose radioactive and toxic sediments to wind erosion. 145 Also, the problem is bound to aggravate if an ambitious city expansion
project by the name of Aktau City will be built as planned in close proximity
to the reservoir. For the time being, worst off are the inhabitants of a shantytown in the immediate vicinity of the lake, deep within the sanitary protection zone surrounding it. The slum was built illegally in 2004–2007 by ethnic
Kazakh immigrants from neighboring central Asian republics and has been
Eastern Kazakhstan, an operation completed in 2010 at a cost of a quarter
billion USD. 136
The reactor itself was shut down in 1991. Nevertheless, even with the
HEU and the plutonium removed, decommissioning and eventual dismantling remained (and still remains) a challenging undertaking. Initial
feasibility studies, commissioned in the last years of the Soviet period, had
warned of an exceedingly difficult process, given that the reactor had been
planned and built without consideration for its eventual decommissioning. 137
In 1999, experts renewed their warnings, stating that decommissioning was
no simple legal act but required “a major industrial undertaking that can
take many years.” 138 More than 3 000 m 3 of liquid waste with a total activity of 2.66 × 10 14 Bq required treatment in a complicated multistep process
involving evaporation, filtration, ion-exchange, and cementation, while solid
radioactive wastes – roughly twice as much both in volume and activity –
needed to be fragmented, supercompacted, and cemented in a remotely handled facility. Low and medium-level wastes are earmarked for on-site storage,
while a management concept for highly active RW is vaguely described as
being developed, and may include the storage of solid waste within the reactor vessel. 139 Only after an additional 50-year period of so-called long-term
safe storage, a partial or complete dismantling of the reactor and burial of
wastes may be considered – or so it is hoped. Decommissioning is complicated by the fact that it has never before been undertaken for high-power
FBRs of a similar size, and hence, involves many firsts. 140 This is also one of
the reasons why the process is co-funded by international sponsors such as the
United States and the European Union, which, in addition to nonproliferation concerns, see the BN-350 as a testing ground for rehearsing the future
decommissioning of similar reactors in other countries – especially in the
United Kingdom, which faces similar challenges at its Sellafield site. 141
As for Shevchenko’s uranium mine and the Koshkar-Ata tailings reservoir,
a government program of the Republic of Kazakhstan eventually planned to
“conserve” and “recultivate” all of the republic’s abandoned uranium mines
within the decade of 2001–2010. However, by 2011, a state company named
Uranlikvidrudnik 142 had completed no more than a single pilot project, and
had not even started to tackle what was considered its most difficult task: the
deactivation of the tailings reservoirs in Aktau and Stepnogorsk. 143 In Aktau,
post-Soviet authorities have been quick to point out that average exposure
rates along the lake’s shore are moderate, but some hotspots reach up to
3 000 µR/h, 144 and the situation deteriorates constantly as ever larger parts
of the lake fall dry and expose radioactive and toxic sediments to wind erosion. 145 Also, the problem is bound to aggravate if an ambitious city expansion
project by the name of Aktau City will be built as planned in close proximity
to the reservoir. For the time being, worst off are the inhabitants of a shantytown in the immediate vicinity of the lake, deep within the sanitary protection zone surrounding it. The slum was built illegally in 2004–2007 by ethnic
Kazakh immigrants from neighboring central Asian republics and has been