National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom plans to raise loans of $250 million from Bank of America and Merrill Lynch as part of the project to create a centralized waste nuclear fuel storage facility, Energoatom President Yuriy Nedashkovsky told reporters on Friday.

"We've entered the final straight. This week I signed a letter to the prime minister where I described all our agreements with Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and OPIC [Overseas Private Investment Corporation] so that we can receive $250 million for 25 years at a very low credit rate – less than 7%," he said.

Nedashkovsky said that the funds could be raised without government guarantees and they could be secured by OPIC, although Energoatom is to pass due diligence and Holtec is to pass an environmental impact audit.

He said that the cost of the first phase of the centralized waste nuclear fuel storage facility is $300 million which includes the cost of a large number of containers.

"We are to pay $78 million for technologies, first test batches, licensing and other things. This is the investment element," he said.

Nedashkovsky said that the rest of the sum is the cost of containers to store waste nuclear fuel. The cost of one container with alife span of 100 years is $2.2 million, while the storage of the similar volume of waste nuclear fuel in Russia costs $15 million.