The ceremony of the new facility launch took place today with participation of Director General of Rosatom Alexey Likhachevand President of TVEL Natalia Nikipelova.
Until now, ChMP, the sole Russian enterprise manufacturing zirconium goods, has only used fluoride technology for production of electrolytic zirconium powder.
In the common global practice, structural materials of nuclear fuel are made of zirconium sponge.
Compared to the fluoride technology, the new sponge production contains half the number of technological operations, has lower consumption of raw materials and energy, the volume of waste is also significantly reduced, while ensuring the high purity of zirconium (in terms of hafnium content).
Natalya Nikipelova commented:
- Mastering zirconium sponge is a major landmark for zirconium production in Rosatom
- Development of our own technology from scratch and construction of the new industrial facility is a huge achievement of our researchers and engineers, an important contribution to our global competitiveness
- Zirconium sponge can be widely applied in fabrication of nuclear fuel for all major types of power reactors, both of Russian and foreign design
In process, more than 100 new technical solutions were developed, 17 inventions and patents were registered.
The most important part of the project was development of the last one – the 12th technological conversion (stage), which was the rectification separation of zirconium and hafnium chlorides.
A unique for the Russian industry facility was built and launched at the ChMP site – the installation for separating zirconium and hafnium chlorides:
- the height of the facility is over 80 m
- it includes 147 units of equipment
- more than 2000 sensors of the control and automation system
- more than 2000 m of heated pipelines
