Energoatom planning to send first batches of spent fuel to Centralized Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility this year

MOSCOW. Jan 17 (Interfax) - Ukraine's Energoatom State Enterprise National Nuclear Energy Generating Company is planning to send the first batches of spent nuclear fuel to the Centralized Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility this year, Energoatom President Pyotr Kotin said.

"We are on removal schedule and are planning such a removal. It will be conducted the way that's necessary for nuclear power plants. All issues pertaining to nuclear power plants have been resolved. We will remove it this year," the Ukrainian media quoted Kotin as saying at a press briefing in Yuzhnoukrainsk, the location of the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant, on Monday.

Energoatom keeps in mind every risk of fuel transportation under the circumstances, Kotin said. "We will do everything to ensure safe transportation," he said.

Back in late April 2022, Energoatom received a special permit from the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate to commission the facility in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

The Centralized Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility is an autonomous nuclear facility for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel from the South Ukrainian, Khmelnitsky and Rovno nuclear power plants. Before 2021, the spent fuel was brought to Russia for storage and processing, which cost Ukraine about $200 million a year. The facility was supposed to start receiving spent nuclear fuel from the power plants in April 2022 but the situation prevented that from happening and the spent fuel is currently stored at the nuclear power plants. It was not taken to Russia in 2021-2022.

The construction of the facility under a contract between Energoatom and the U.S. company Holtec International began in 2017.