Energoatom to send fuel from three NPP units to central nuclear storage in 2020 – Nedashkovsky
Energoatom plans in 2020 to send fuel from three power units of nuclear power plants (NPP) to the central spent nuclear fuel storage facility, Yuriy Nedashkovsky, the president of the Ukrainian Nuclear Forum association, the ex-head of the company, has said.
"It plans to send fuel from three NPP power units to the central spent nuclear fuel storage facility next year," he told reporters.
According to him, the construction of the central spent nuclear fuel storage facility is on schedule. In the first and the beginning of the second quarter of 2020, construction and assembly work should be completed, while commissioning will be completed in summer.
As reported, the construction of the central spent nuclear fuel storage facility, which began in November 2017, will allow Energoatom to significantly reduce costs associated with spent nuclear fuel treatment, which is currently mostly exported to Russia for temporary storage and recycling. At the same time, all the remaining high-level radioactive waste after processing will return from Russia to Ukraine.
Only Zaporizhia NPP does not use the services of Russian companies for the storage of spent nuclear fuel. It is stored in the dry container-type on-site storage facility, commissioned in 2001.