MOSCOW, July 29 Specialists in the Russian nuclear industry have begun testing the steel from which it is planned to manufacture equipment for the future liquid-salt nuclear reactor (IZhSR), which is necessary for testing technologies for «burning out» highly dangerous radioactive substances.
The tests are being carried out by the Rosatom enterprise «Mining and Chemical Combine» (MCC, Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory), where the reactor will be built.
«During the experiment, several tasks will have to be accomplished: confirming the possibility of using the selected steel samples in the project; tracking changes in the impurity composition of the salt as a result of corrosion of the samples (samples will be taken during the experiment); and testing a method for purifying the fuel salt,» Rosatom said in a statement.
The steel samples will have to spend 4,000 hours in an aggressive environment: in a salt melt heated to almost 700 degrees Celsius and containing the most radiotoxic components of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) — the so-called minor actinides. 
< br />«The research reactor planned for construction at the Mining and Chemical Combine in Zheleznogorsk is an important project from an environmental point of view. It will be used to test technologies for the disposal of minor actinides — long-lived, highly radiotoxic isotopes that remain after the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from currently operating thermal reactors. In the future, only a few such reactors will be able to process the entire volume of the most dangerous elements of spent nuclear fuel produced by thermal reactors in the country,» said Vasily Tinin, Director of State Policy in the Field of Radioactive Waste, Spent Nuclear Fuel, and Decommissioning of Radiation-Hazardous Facilities at Rosatom, whose words are quoted in the report.
After the experiment is completed, the steel samples will be removed, decontaminated and the necessary measurements will be taken to determine the mechanical and corrosion properties. Based on the results obtained, a conclusion will be made as to whether this steel is suitable for the manufacture of auxiliary equipment for the IZHSR.
Minor actinides are chemical elements that form in uranium nuclear fuel (in addition to plutonium) during operation in any reactor. The isotopes of neptunium, americium and curium are especially important for nuclear scientists, since they are the ones that cause the greatest difficulties in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and handling radioactive waste. These elements are highly radioactive and toxic, emit a lot of heat, have a long half-life and are the most dangerous components of nuclear waste. All this requires special conditions for transportation, storage and final isolation.
Traditional nuclear power is aimed at long-term storage and final disposal of waste from spent nuclear fuel processing without extracting minor actinides. This method requires ensuring guaranteed safety of objects for about a million years and significant disposal costs. At present, there is no practice of deep geological disposal anywhere in the world. Including minor actinides in the fuel of fast neutron reactors will allow in the future to «burn» americium and neptunium, significantly reduce the volume of waste subject to deep disposal, and in the future to move to near-surface disposal of waste. Rosatom is simultaneously developing several technologies that allow the disposal of minor actinides. In particular, this year, at power unit No. 4 of the Beloyarsk NPP, fuel assemblies with uranium-plutonium MOX fuel, to which minor actinides were added, were loaded for the first time into the BN-800 fast neutron reactor for pilot industrial operation.