To date, the Chornobyl nuclear power plant has accumulated about 20,000 m3 of liquid radioactive waste (LRAW), being stored in the tanks of two existing storage facilities.

The existing structure of RAW management at the SSE ChNPP provides for the reprocessing of accumulated LRAW at the Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant (LRWTP), being at the completion stage.

Preliminary estimates indicate that it will take about 29 years to reprocess all the accumulated LRAW at the LRWTP, at the same the expected number of obtained RAW packages will be more than 303,000, most of them will result from reprocessing of the evaporate concentrate (hereinafter referred to as EC). Packages with radioactive waste are to be disposed at the Engineered Near-Surface Solid Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility (hereinafter referred to as ENSDF), which is designed to accept RAW packages from LRWTP in the quantity of about 70,000. This situation associated with the lack of available space at the storage facility for RAW disposal requires searching for ways to reduce the volumes of the LRWTP final product. One of the efficient measures may be diminishing the volume of the existing LRAW subject to reprocessing at the LRWTP. 

In addition to the mentioned problems, the ChNPP is also in search of economically feasible modern methods for treatment of radioactively contaminated water. Significant amount of such water is replenished every year.

These problems related to reprocessing of radioactively contaminated water and the need to minimize LRAW stored at the ChNPP site can be solved by using alternative technologies for reprocessing of liquid radioactive waste.

In 2017, in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement”, the SSE ChNPP announced the purchase of research and development on the topic “Establishment of a pilot facility and testing of low-waste technology for LRAW reprocessing in evaporate concentrate and radioactively contaminated water of the SSE ChNPP”. Four tender proposals of LLC Meridican, Scientific Production Enterprise “EKSORB” Ltd, "Veler LIMITED" Ltd., OAO "Electropivdenmontazh-10" were obtained for open bidding. Based on the results of the electronic auction system, the winner was determined based on the main criterion for tender proposals assessment – the lowest price - "Veler  LIMITED" Ltd.

In August 2017, "Veler  LIMITED" Ltd. signed a contract for the implementation of this work. It should be noted that this work will be considered completed in case of archiving the expected results, including the acceptance criteria for radioactive waste treatment, the acceptance criteria for secondary radioactive waste for cementation, the criteria for release of purified products from regulatory control in compliance with the values specified the “Initial conditions” of the