Spent fuel of decommissioned nuclear submarines: Questions to be addressed

Since the first ARW on nuclear submarines in 95, management of the spent fuel coming from decommissioned nuclear submarines has become a growing preoccupation. Spent fuel represents in the same time a valuable resource, a major radioactive hazard for nearby populations and a possible threat if stolen by terrorist organizations. The Russian Federation has a closed fuel cycle policy which asks for all the spent fuel to be sent to the Mayak reprocessing plant. Nevertheless implementing this policy proves to be difficult due to many factors: lack of infrastructure for handling and transportation, degraded status of many fuel elements, variety of types of fuel, not all of them being reprocessible, lack of financial resources, etc. It is then necessary to establish an overall strategy addressing all the questions, hierarchizing the problems and recommending intermediate or temporary solutions when and if needed. This paper will make a review of communications on spent fuel management made during previous ARW (95, 97 & 02) and give a general frame to the reflections that will be presented during the oncoming workshop.