On 9 November, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Kistion visited the main facilities of the Chornobyl NPP. Igor Gramotkin, Director General of the SSE ChNPP, accompanied him at the site.
The delegation inspected the former Arch erection site. The Director General briefly informed on feasible plans for its use. According to the Director General, the site could be the location for the Centralized Storage Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel (CSFSNF) or serve as a reserve site in case of exhaustion of the main storage facility.
The site has all the necessary communications and a specially prepared foundation, which withstood the load of a 36,000-ton Arch. Therefore this location of the CSFSNF could significantly reduce the costs of its construction and operation.
The delegation visited the turbine hall of the ChNPP I Generation (Units 1, 2), where Igor Gramotkin familiarized the Vice Prime Minister with the progress in the creation of the storage facility for radioactive waste (RAW) produced as a result of the plant decommissioning.
According to preliminary plans, the storage facility will be located in the box of turbine generator No. 1 and can contain 16000 (3200 cubic meters) of drums with the capacity of 200 liters with high, low-intermediate level long-lived waste. In addition, the storage facility provides for a full cycle of waste management, namely: areas of dosimetry control, sorting, fragmentation, decontamination, packaging, processing and storage itself.
The General Director assured the Vice Prime Minister that, if required, similar storage facilities for location of Ukrainian RAW can be created in other boxes of turbine generators of the ChNPP turbine hall.
The last facility in the visit program of Mr. Kistion was the Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility No. 2 (ISF-2) — the facility constructed to prepare for storage and provide storage for spent nuclear fuel resulting from the operation of the ChNPP (more than 21,000 spent fuel assemblies).
Accompanied by the management of SSE ChNPP and Holtec Company — the main Contractor for construction — the Vice Prime Minister got acquainted with the progress of "cold" tests, visited the key premises of ISF-2: premise for preparation of canisters with spent fuel for storage, "hot chamber" and premise for reception of wagon-containers.
