Deep Well Injection of Liquid Radioactive Waste at Krasnoyarsk-26: Analysis of Hypothetical Scenarios. Volume II

The Mining and Chemical Combine (MCC), located approximately 60 km north of the city of Krasnoyarsk,is one of two major sites in the Russian Federation where liquid radioactive wastes (LRW) are disposed of by deep well injection. Disposal of LRW at the MCC through the use of deep well injectio started in 1967. The Severny ("Northern") site, approximately 15 km north of the MCC, was launched after the completion of special geological surveys and explorations performed by istitutions of the Ministry of Geology and Russian Academy of Sciences. The site was designed by Mintom institutions. As of 1995, 5 million cubic meters (m3) of LRW had been injected into two deep aquifers at the site. The waste includes both radioactive fission products and nonradioactive chemicas used in reprocessing of spent fuel. The total activity, decay corrected to 1995, is approximately 250 million Curies (Ci). Detailed information about radioactive waste disposal at the Severny site is presented in Volume I of this report (Compton et al., 2000), which includes an evaluation of the safety of the site under normal post-operational conditions. For further information on the background data contained in Chapter 2 of that report, see Appendix I. The subject of the current report is the likelihood and consequence of hypothetical accidents and extreme natural events after site decommissioning, including a brief overview of the factors involved in the development of decommissioning plans at the site.