24 Apr (NucNet): Ukraine’s government has approved a decree allocating land in the Chernobyl exclusion zone to build a centralised store for spent nuclear fuel from the country’s Russian-built VVER reactors, state nuclear operator Energoatom has said.
Completion of the storage facility is scheduled for the end of 2017. The facility will hold up to 17,000 spent nuclear fuel elements from three nuclear power stations: Khmelnitski, Rovno and South Ukraine. The Khmelnitski nuclear station has two commercially operational reactors and two under construction. Rovno has four reactors and South Ukraine three.
Ukraine’s fourth commercial nuclear station, the six-unit Zaporozhye, has its own spent fuel storage facility, commissioned in 2001.
All 15 commercial nuclear reactors in Ukraine are Russian-built VVER units.
The government decided in 2012 to build the spent fuel store, but Energoatom said until recently it had not been able to acquire the land, which totals 45.2 hectares.
In 2009, the government said the facility could be built in 36 months at a cost of about 1.2 billion Ukrainian hryvnas (about 77 million euros, 106 million US dollars).
Energoatom said the facility will allow Ukraine to “significantly reduce” the costs associated with spent nuclear fuel, which is currently transported to Russia for temporary storage and processing.
