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Daniel BASTIEN: Engineer from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers - Formerly with the Nuclear Reactors Division of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)
INTRODUCTION
RBMK reactors (Reactor Bolshoï Moshchnosti Kalani, which stands for Reactor de forte puissance à canaux) are pressure-tube reactors cooled by ordinary boiling water. Soviet in design, they had not been exported to the satellite countries of the former USSR, and it was only following the break-up of that power in 1990 that they found themselves distributed among three independent countries: Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania.
This type of reactor was originally designed to produce plutonium for military purposes. Fuel renewal during reactor operation, justified by the large number of channels that would be too burdensome to handle during shutdown, lends itself well to this type of production. The military program was a major one, with no fewer than six reactors of this type built, four of which are still in service (Table A).
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