Rossendorf research reactor

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Rossendorf research reactor
Inauguration of the Rossendorf research reactor in 1957

Inauguration of the Rossendorf research reactor in 1957

location
Rossendorf Research Reactor (Saxony)
Rossendorf research reactor
Coordinates 51 ° 3 '30 "  N , 13 ° 57' 18"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 3 '30 "  N , 13 ° 57' 18"  E
country Germany
Data
owner Free State of Saxony
operator Central Institute for Nuclear Research
start of building 1956
Installation December 16, 1957
Shutdown June 27, 1991
Reactor type Tank / WWR-SM
Thermal performance 1957-1965 : 2 MW
1965-1967 : 5 MW
1967-1991 : 10 MW
Neutron flux density 1.2 × 10 14  n / (cm 2 s)
was standing February 5, 2009

The Rossendorfer Research Reactor ( RFR ) was a research reactor that was operated from 1957 to 1991 at what was then the Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Dresden-Rossendorf . It was the first nuclear reactor in the GDR and with an output of 10  MW it was also the most powerful research reactor in the country. The dismantling was carried out by VKTA - Radiation Protection, Analysis & Disposal .

history

Planning for the construction of the Rossendorf research reactor began in 1956. On December 16, 1957, the reactor reached its first criticality and was inaugurated in the presence of high-ranking politicians, including Johannes Dieckmann , Otto Grotewohl and Fritz Selbmann . This made it the first nuclear reactor in the GDR and, after the Munich research reactor , which had been commissioned only six weeks earlier, the second in Germany as a whole .

The Rossendorf research reactor was the first of three nuclear facilities at the Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf, followed five years later by the Rossendorf ring-zone reactor , and twelve years later by the Rossendorf arrangement for critical experiments . With the help of new fuel rods, the reactor output was increased from initially 2 MW to 5 MW in 1965, and two years later there was a further increase in output to 10 MW. Between 1987 and 1989 the reactor was overhauled.

After more than 33 years of operation and more than 100,000 operating hours, the reactor was finally shut down on June 27, 1991 - in the same year as the two other research reactors - because it did not meet the safety requirements of the Federal Republic of Germany and the funds for the necessary conversion were not approved were. On January 30, 1998, the first partial license to shut down the plant was granted by the Saxon State Ministry for the Environment and Regional Development . The Association for Nuclear Process Engineering and Analysis Rossendorf (since 2014: VKTA - Radiation Protection, Analysis & Disposal) was commissioned by the Free State of Saxony with the decommissioning and dismantling .

The spent fuel elements with a total weight of 385 kg were accommodated between 1999 and 2000 for their removal in 18 Castor casks of the type MTR 2 in a specially built transport preparation hall. After months of legal dispute, the fuel elements, which actually came from the Soviet Union , were transported to the Ahaus transport cask storage facility from the end of May 2005 to mid-June 2005 in three separate truck transports with six casks each. There were strong protests by opponents of nuclear power along the 600 km long transport route and in Ahaus , but according to police statements there were no incidents worth mentioning during the transport.

On December 18, 2006, 200 kg of highly enriched and 100 kg of weakly enriched uranium in the form of unused fuel rods and pellets were flown from Dresden Airport to the Rosatom interim storage facility in Podolsk in Russia. The transport date was kept secret for security reasons. There are still around 4.5 tons of radioactive waste in Rossendorf, mainly natural uranium, but also depleted uranium, thorium and plutonium .

The dismantling of the reactor plant began in January 2001. By the end of 2011, all concrete structures in the hot chambers had been demolished and individual points of contamination removed in other areas. In 2012, the gutting and fine decontamination of the inner shell of the reactor building began. The reactor building was demolished in 2015/2016. On September 19, 2019, the dismantling was completed with the release from the Atomic Energy Act. The area of ​​the reactor is available again as a green meadow for free use by the research site.

construction

The Rossendorf research reactor was a light water reactor of the Soviet design of the type WWR-SM. Almost identical research reactors have also been made in the Czech Řež (in operation since 1957), Polish Otwock (Operation: 1958-1995) and Hungarian Budapest built (operating since 1958). The Rossendorf research reactor used highly enriched uranium , with 951 relatively small fuel elements in use. The critical mass was 4.3 kg of uranium, of which 1.55 kg was uranium-235. With a thermal output of 10 MW, it was the most powerful research reactor in the GDR. The maximum thermal neutron flux was 1.2 × 10 14 n / cm 2 s, the neutrons thereby by Beryllium - reflectors bundled.

research

The research reactor was mainly used as a neutron source for research in human medicine, biology, agriculture and materials science. The neutrons generated were used, among other things, in the fields of application

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The history of the research location Dresden-Rossendorf , Research Center Dresden-Rossendorf
  2. ↑ a b Closure of Rossendorfer research reactor  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Press release of the Saxon State Ministry for Environment and Agriculture, January 30, 1998@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.medienservice.sachsen.de  
  3. ↑ New Castor transports to Ahaus  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Information from the Society for Nuclear Service, February 16, 2004@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.gns.de  
  4. ^ Tumults in front of the Ahaus interim storage facility , Spiegel-Online from June 14, 2005
  5. ↑ Radiant air freight ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Eurasian magazine of December 28, 2006 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eurasischesmagazin.de
  6. ^ [1] Annual report 2015 of the VKTA - Radiation Protection, Analytics & Disposal Rossendorf e. V. , accessed February 7, 2017
  7. ↑ https://www.radiodresden.de/beitrag/rueckbau-des-rossendorfer-forschungsreaktors-beendet-604926/
  8. ↑ https://www.atommuellreport.de/daten/forschungsreaktor-rossendorf.html
  9. ↑ https://www.vkta.de/festveranstaltung-zum-schluss-des-rueckbaus-am-19-09-2019/
  10. ↑ https://www.bnc.hu/?q=node/6
  11. ^ Nuclear Research Reactors in the World , International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA