Eve Conant reported in 2012 that Russian nuclear ambitions were on full display at AtomExpo, a three-day festival of international nuclear technology and conversation hosted by Rosatom, Russian state-owned nuclear company, this past June, 2012 in Moscow. Whether it was Fukushima plant manager describing those first critical moments during the tsunami and the new thinking on extreme natural events or the myriad branches of the Rosatom empire showing off their wares at their slick booths, the message was clear - When it comes to nuclear, Russia is open for business.
The disastrous legacy of Chernobyl in Ukraine, where a Soviet-built reactor spectacularly blew up in 1986, is still a public relations problem, however. When Russia expressed interest in supplying the U.K. with 12 new reactors earlier this year, immediately there appeared some articles with the headline - Do you want another Chernobyl? Sergei Novikov, Rosatom spokesman, told Conant that the phantoms of the Soviet period appear immediately. Rosatom, though, is trying to spin the Chernobyl nightmare into a selling point - Who better to understand nuclear safety than the people who lived through the worst?
One of the biggest safety lessons of Chernobyl for Russian technology is a structure called a core-catcher, a steel vessel, water-cooled, built directly under a reactor to catch the molten reactor core in case of meltdown. The technology had been explored for years globally but had yet to be considered standard until Russia began adopting it after Chernobyl. In fact, physicist Leonid Bolshov, the man responsible for that design in those early days, has now become a leading Russian expert on nuclear safety.
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