Delay in building nuclear fuel storage blamed on foreign firms
ISAR-TASS
January 31, 2007
(For personal use only)

Chiefs of the Russian and Ukrainian supervisory organizations are equally critical of the way the project for the construction of a storage for spent nuclear fuel in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, financed by the European Union, is being implemented. This is seen from the press release transmitted to Itar-Tass following the talks in Kiev between the head of the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Supervision, Konstantin Pulikovsky, and the head of Ukraine’s State Committee for Nuclear Regulation, Yelena Mikolaichuk.

The delay in the construction of the second section of the spent nuclear fuel storage in the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were discussed, among other things, says the document. Pulikovsky believes there should be no other such construction project, either in Ukraine or in Russia. “This is another example showing that not everything foreign companies offer should be taken at face value,” he said. Meanwhile, “both Russia and Ukraine have technologies and highly qualified specialists to implement such projects on their own,” Pulikovsky said.

Mikolaichuk, in her turn, said that Ukraine would make no more such errors, as with the construction of the storage at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Ukraine’s State Committee for Nuclear Regulation tightened control over contactor organizations working in nuclear energy, also at the stage of choosing the contractor. During the negotiations, Mikolaichuk said most contracts with foreign companies in that area had failed. She said the contracts had not been fulfilled as foreign partners do not keep the schedule and raise the costs of their services. The storage for spent nuclear fuel should have gone into operation in 2003, then its opening was postponed to 2005, and it has not yet gone into operation. We are faced with the problem of changing the project, overhauling it, she said.

Pulikovsky remarked that Russia, too, had similar bitter experience, Sakhalin-2 project. The foreign companies participating in the project started rapidly increasing expenditures for its implementation.

Ukraine’s Minister for Emergency Situations Nestor Shufrich said the other day only fuel from reactors of the Chernobyl plant would be contained in the storages being built on the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. He said the construction of the storage is financed by the Donor Assembly of the Nuclear Safety Account with the participation of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) that provides funds for the programmes to clear the after-effects of the Chernobyl disaster. Ukraine’s State Committee for Nuclear Regulation reported last year that the storage for spent nuclear fuel at Chernobyl would be put to use not earlier than in 2010. It is the French contractor, Framatome consortium, and the designer, the US Holtee lnt., that are to blame for this delay.