The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry of Ukraine intend to implement a project aimed at improving nuclear safety at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in 2013.
According to the ministry's press service, Ukraine's Ecology and Natural Resources Minister Oleh Proskuriakov and Vince Novak, director of EBRD's nuclear safety department, discussed the safety of the nuclear power plant's generating units during a working meeting in Kyiv on February 14.
Novak said that the project to improve nuclear safety at Chornobyl NPP would be the first big joint project implemented by the sides in 2013.
"The sides expressed hope that cooperation between the ministry and the EBRD will continue in future and will be effective," reads the ministry's statement.
The officials also discussed the implementation of the projects that are funded by the Chernobyl Shelter Fund and the Nuclear Safety Account. They praised significant progress that could be seen in 2012, in particular a project of the completion of the construction of a spent fuel storage facility was approved, tenders were conducted and contracts were signed on all packages of works on the construction project of a liquid radioactive waste treatment facility.
On February 12, 2013, several concrete slabs fell off the ceiling in a turbine room at Chornobyl NPP. The site of the accident was an area of 600 square meters. As can be seen from pictures released by the Emergencies Service of Ukraine, the collapse occurred in the turbine room of Generating Unit No. 4, which was badly damaged in the 1986 disaster.
The radiation levels did not change on the territory of the Chornobyl NPP and in the Exclusion Zone around it. No one was injured by the collapsed slabs.
On February 13, French builders working on the construction of the new safe confinement at the Chornobyl NPP temporarily left Chornobyl to make sure themselves that it was safe to continue building work at the NPP.
The personnel of the nuclear power plant works according to a normal schedule today.
"The accident that occurred in the turbine room of the fourth nuclear reactor poses no danger to the environment. The joint venture of the Chornobyl NPP, in turn, announced there were no changes in the radiation levels associated with this event," Head of the State Agency for the Management of the Exclusion Zone Volodymyr Holosha said.
