Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center - Facilities

Facilities

The major installations include all aspects of a Magnox nuclear reactor fuel cycle, based on the use of natural uranium fuel:

• a fuel fabrication plant,
• a 5 MWe experimental reactor producing power and district heating,
• a short-term spent fuel storage facility,
• a fuel reprocessing facility that recovers uranium and plutonium from spent fuel using the PUREX process.

Magnox spent fuel is not designed for long-term storage as both the casing and uranium metal core react with water, it is designed to be reprocessed within a few years of removal from a reactor. As a carbon dioxide cooled, graphite moderated Magnox reactor does not require difficult-to-produce enriched uranium fuel or heavy water moderator it is an attractive choice for a wholly indigenous nuclear reactor development.

The Magnox facilities were disabled in 2007 in accord with the six-party talks agreement, but following the breakdown of that agreement were partially re-enabled in 2009 to reprocess existing stocks of spent fuel.

The center also has an IRT-2000 pool-type research reactor, supplied by the Soviet Union in 1963, operational since 1965. The reactor fuel is IRT-2M type assemblies of 36% and 80% highly enriched uranium. As the center has not received fresh fuel since Soviet times, this reactor is now only run occasionally to produce Iodine-131 for thyroid cancer radiation therapy.

In 2009 the building of a small indigenous experimental light water reactor and the uranium enrichment technology to provide its nuclear fuel started, with a target operation date for the reactor of 2012.