By KYIV. Dec 15 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Thirteen containers with spent nuclear fuel have already been placed into the Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility (CSFSF), the pilot operation of which began in 2023, acting Chairman of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) Oleh Korikov has said.
“In 2023, the operating organization National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom has actually worked out routes for delivering fuel to the CSFSF, trips have already been made from three nuclear power plants, and today 13 containers with spent fuel are stored at its site,” he said during a briefing at the Media Center in Kyiv.
Korikov added that this breaks the Russian monopoly on receiving spent nuclear fuel and makes its handling safer through the use of more modern double-barrier packaging during transportation and storage, and also leads to economic advantages, since there is no need to pay to the aggressor country.
According to him, the next stage is the transfer of the CSFSF from pilot to commercial operation. He explained that the permit for pilot operation is valid for three years from the moment the first batch of spent fuel is loaded, and now Energoatom has more than two and a half years “to develop all elements of the technology that should be performed at the pilot operation stage, and accordingly, prepare a safety analysis and file an application with the regulator to switch to commercial operation.”
The head of SNRIU recalled that the regulator issued a separate license for the startup stage of the CSFSF back in 2022.
As reported, the Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility is an autonomous nuclear facility designed for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel from the Pivdennoukrainska, Khmelnytsky and Rivne nuclear power plants, which before 2021 was exported for storage and reprocessing to Russia. It cost Ukraine about $200 million annually. The CSFSF was supposed to accept fuel from these nuclear power plants from April 2022, but the war changed these plans, and the fuel was stored at the plants until 2023. In 2021-2022, it was not exported to the Russian Federation.
The construction of the central storage facility, for which Energoatom signed a contract with the U.S. Holtec International, started in 2017.
