The work was funded through the Bohunice International Decommissioning Support Fund (BIDSF) supported by the European commission together with Austria, Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK and managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
As of mid-2018 more than €650m ($664m) had been contributed to the BIDSF, according to the EBRD.
The EBRD said this is the first time reactors of this type have been decommissioned and disassembled directly on site.
Both Bohunice units were closed in line with commitments made by Slovakia when it joined the EU in May 2004. According to the EBRD, experts from the Western European Nuclear Regulatory Association, a nuclear safety group, identified safety concerns regarding both units at the station, 2.5 km from the village of Jaslovské Bohunice in the Trnava District in western Slovakia.
Bohunice-1 was shut down in December 2006 and Bohunice-2 in December 2008. Both units were 408-MW pressurised water reactors supplied by Russia.
“The work was completed on schedule and within budget and will provide valuable experience and expertise for other decommissioning work around the world”, the EBRD said.
Work at the site to take apart and process the remaining equipment and systems will be completed by 2025. Civil structures and power plant buildings will then be demolished, and the area made safe for redevelopment by 2027.
Slovakia has four Rusia-supplied VVER nuclear plants in commercial operation – two at Bohunice and two at Mochovce – providing about 52% of its electricity generation. It also has two Russia-supplied VVER units under construction at Mochovce.
An older unit, the Czech-designed Bohunice A1, was permanently shut down in 1977. It was the first nuclear power plant in what was then Czechoslovakia. It had one experimental reactor, the KS-150.
