Russia Unveils Top-Notch 4th-Gen Nuclear Reactors
18:06 26.09.2025 (Updated: 18:15 26.09.2025)
© Sputnik / Natalia Seliverstova
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Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev broke down the details at the World Atomic Week forum in Moscow.
Russia is working to leverage the complementary nature of its thermal water-moderated and fast neutron reactors, essentially turning the latter into “nuclear fuel producers” to facilitate a closed fuel cycle.
The Proryv (lit. ‘Breakthrough’) project in Seversk, Tomsk region aims to demonstrate and commercialize this technology, with its BREST-OD-300 300MW lead-cooled fast reactor’s construction in full swing, and the next step being to build the irradiated fuel reprocessing module for closed, on-site fuel cycle .
MOX (‘Mixed-Oxide’) fuel, created from reprocessed spent nuclear fuel, is already a reality, with Russia’s new BN-800 reactor now powered entirely by MOX.
“This closed, on-site fuel cycle will have lasting scientific and technological significance and a completely clear commercial use,” Likhachev said, emphasizing that Rosatom plans to scale the project in other areas, including in the Urals and Siberia.
Russia is ready to promote its nuclear closed fuel cycle system globally.
Rosatom is interested in promoting both its WWER-series (water-water energetic reactors) and fast-neutron reactors abroad, but also has a “second path” in mind which “involves creating a distributed, worldwide system for a closed fuel cycle across different countries,” Likhachev said.
As an example, he cited the possibility of hooking Belarus’s new Ostrovets Nuclear Power Plant up to fast reactors in Russia to create a closed fuel cycle.
