Urgent nuclear waste problem in Ukraine

Ukraine badly needs waste nuclear fuel storage facility, says Emergencies Ministry Interfax, 17 Aug 12, Ukraine needs to give a serious thought to building a centralized storage facility for waste nuclear fuel since waste fuel from Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs), which is temporary stored in the Russian Federation will start to come back from 2013, the Emergencies Ministry said.

“Starting from 2013, Ukraine should be taking the processed waste
nuclear fuel back from Russia. To date, there is no repository where
it could be safely stored in Ukraine. We need to speed up the
construction of such facility at the Vector site,” Acting Head of the
State Agency for Exclusion Zone Management Dmytro Bobrov said at a
press conference in Kyiv on Friday.

He recalled that almost all waste nuclear fuel from Ukrainian nuclear
power plants (with the exception of Zaporizhia NPP, which has a waste
nuclear fuel storage facility) is currently sent for temporary storage
to Russia. In line with Russian legislation, after recycling the waste
fuel should be returned to the country of origin.

“The problem has not been solved. We have a repository for high-level
radioactive waste at Chornobyl NPP, whose specifications allow it to
be used temporarily for the purpose, but it is not intended for this
it terms of capacity and design. We can keep it (waste nuclear fuel)
for some time there, but unless we principally solve this year the
issue of the construction of a special storage facility, then the
problem will become acute, starting with, say, 2015. And the
Energoatom National Electricity Generating Company will have to pay
Russia extra money for storing this waste in Russia,” Bobro said…..
http://www.interfax.com.ua/eng/main/114609/

August 18, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, wastes