The Novosibirsk plant of chemical concentrates is one of the world leading producers of nuclear fuel for atomic power plants and research reactors of Russia and other countries. It’s also the only producer of lithium metal.
Roof of the production building
Shop where nuclear elements and fuel air compositions for research reactors are made.
Uranium dioxide powder production by the method of high temperature pyrohydrolysis.
Loading containers
Operating room. From here they control the process of uranium dioxide powder production. It is finally used for making fuel pellets.
Uranium pellets production area.
Pellets of nuclear ceramic fuel are about to be sent for burning.
The pellets are burnt at the temperature not less than 1750 C in the hydrogen reducing environment during more than 20 hours.
Production and technical control of nuclear ceramic fuel.
Special gloves are used for work inside boxes.
Unloading capacities with the pellets.
Nuclear elements and fuel air compositions are produced here.
Automated line making nuclear elements
Filling of zirconium pipes with uranium dioxide pellets. Ready nuclear elements are 4 m long.
They serve for making nuclear fuel.
Transportation of ready nuclear elements
Fuel rod arrays assembly
Fixing the fuel rod arrays in the feed mechanism.
Frame making. One frame is used for 312 fuel rod arrays.
Frame technical control
Spacer grids
Automated stands for fuel elements
Assembly of a bundle of fuel elements
Technical control of fuel rod arrays
Nuclear elements with bar codes. Thanks to the bar codes all production process can be retraced.
Control and packing stands
There must be equal space between fuel elements
Ready nuclear fuel element
Double-tube containers for transportation of the fuel rod arrays. Nuclear fuel for atomic power stations is used in Russia and sent to Ukraine, Bulgaria, China, India, Iran.
Location: Novosibirsk
via gelio-nsk
I would so like to understand all that nuclear….?.?. magic.?
Tough job. The protection of the workers seems very basic to me. I wonder if the mortality of the workers is higher then of the general public.
Most likely higher, but statistically impossible to measure because of small sample. Nuclear power plants don’t use very radioactive material, also it becomes dangerous only in big amounts.
Thnq,for showing this,very informative.
IT looks obvious to me that there is little danger in the processes applied to make these fuel rods, and also there must also be minimal effect on the health of the people employed here as they wear next to no protection for radiation contamination. This then must mean that the fuel rods do nothing bad until they go into a reactor core along with a catalyst to start the nuclear reaction, which once started is not easy to stop. The name for the core, “reactor” tells it all, it allowes different elements to react to create the energy required to heat the water to run the generators and produce electricity.
Looks can be deceiving! The visible side of the process has almost no radiation (.07% of source material emits radiation). Only after the pellet production, machining and loading is the raw U238 ‘enriched’ to U235 for use as fuel. The total amount enriched may not exceed 5% to prevent a meltdown. The type of reactor governs how the pellets are treated. Inside the reactor, the pellets are used to generate heat, which is the REAL usable energy from the nuclear cycle!
There is no significant radiation risk from fuel in this form. Toxic and particulate protection is all that is needed. So relax, mortality for these workers would be as if they are making chocolate bars.
Yes, because U-235 LEU (~5%) emits only alfa particels (before loading into reactor) that can’t piers the skin, only if digested into lungs or stomach can cause illness.
Real danger is only in the production line of uranium dioxide powder, were is potencial treath that some U02 from production line could get into the air and then to the organism of workers, of course if the production line in this stage has some leakage points. But on the pictures there was no details of the UO2 powder production line, so we can’t say that this is real danger.
Any way that was a stupid thing to show in public pictures of this secured places, it causes danger to the general public, in the age of global terrism, remember that this picture could be useful for such grups in planing the attack at such places, and like life showed many times no country and even Russia is not immune to this threats, especially when on Russia territory lives huge minorities of muslim radicals. So plans and pictures of such places should not be made public.
Paranoid detected!
If some real terrorist would be planning to do damage, I think they won’t rely on pictures from a website, that have no precise location info or security info. Looking at these pictures, I can’t say even where the front door of the building is!
Mr.vasil u can not say muslims are terrarist.why some of u guys r just being so narrow minded.u must know a proper muslim can not do such things and 2ndly u r calling muslims terrarists bcz the media is totally being unfair.Why media doesnt show the killing of innocent childrens ladies old people by Amercians why.No body has the courage to say.but be reall Boss
N 2ndly Do u really think that some can be that stupid uploading such pictures like that no it can not happen So use ur brain widley rather than pointing at someone.thanx