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Rosatom’s woes before and beyond the war: implications of Russia’s embattled nuclear industry

 Pinar Demircan: Rosatom’s woes before and beyond the war: implications of Russia’s embattled nuclear industry.

Russia had a nuclear waste recycling agreement with Ukraine. According to this arrangement, Ukraine
would send the waste from its 15 nuclear reactors operating within its borders to Russia at the cost of 200 million dollars every year.

However, in 2005, Ukraine’s then Minister of Energy, Yuriy Nedashkovsky concluded a new agreement with the US-based company Holtec to establish a storage facility promising 100 years of protection in the Chernobyl plant site for 250 million dollars, thus, bringing to an end the earlier deal with Russia.
The dry-storage facility, built by Holtec with the financial loan support of the US-based Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which committed to offering protection for a maximum of 100 years, was to be put into operation on November 6, 2021, with trial tests at the end of 16 years.

Although there are currently 4,000 cubic meters of waste, this warehouse is now the key facility where nuclear waste from 15 nuclear reactors, which produce 51 percent of Ukraine’s energy needs, will be stored. Thus, Ukraine was spared from paying $200 million every year to Russia for the
removal of nuclear waste, and had to bear only a one-time expense of 250 million dollars under the new agreement. In other words, with theconstruction of this warehouse by the US corporate, Russia had lost both the supply of nuclear waste for nuclear fuel production and an income of
200 million dollars per year.

Moreover, the Russian-origin nuclear fuelcompany TVEL, which has been operating since 1991, had invested hundreds ofmillions of dollars to produce fuel from nuclear waste and had even starteda new facility in Moscow.

 DiaNuke 6th March 2022

March 8, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, Uranium