Not so long ago the Verkhovna Rada endorsed the bill No. 8795 “On the handling of spent nuclear fuel, placement, design, and construction of a centralized repository for spent nuclear fuel from WWER reactors of domestic nuclear power plants,” and by doing this it gave the nod to building a site for the disposal of nuclear fuel from all over Ukraine in the Chornobyl zone.
Centralized Repository of Spent Nuclear Fuel (CRSNF) is planned to be located in the area of the villages of Stara Krasnytsia, Buriakivka, Chystohalivka, and Stechanka in Kyiv oblast – in the restricted zone. It is expected that the nuclear fuel will be stored in this repository only “temporarily,” however, the document does not specify how much time that will be and what will be further done with it.
As noted by independent experts, the construction of the repository in the Chornobyl zone is dangerous not only for residents of the surrounding areas but also for people living in Chernihiv and Kyiv region, as well as for Belarus. The Dnipro River, which is the main source of water for 70 percent of Ukraine’s population, will be under the permanent threat of pollution. According to experts, the new nuclear facility will be a part of the state special enterprise Chornobyl NPP, that is, it will be under the responsibility of the Ministry of Emergency.
Artur DENYSENKO, coordinator of the energy program of the National Ecological Center of Ukraine:
“Ukraine’s deputies propose to create a new facility in the Chornobyl zone territory. There will be at least three routs to it from three nuclear power plants of Ukraine. Those routs will be used for transportation of nuclear fuel from all over the country: from Rivne, Khmelnytsky, and Pivdennoukrainska NPPs. Transportation is very dangerous for the environment and people. There have been cases in Germany when the vehicles that transported the waste got into an accident. Secondly, we have a good example of exploitation of spent fuel at the Zaporizhia NPP: in 2000 the staff of the plant made a decision not to take the fuel to Russia, as it is done nowadays, but to make a site for reprocessing the spent fuel on the territory of the plant. The spent fuel was kept for several years in the cooling pools and then was exported to Russia. It was further processed there and we received back nuclear waste. The motive expressed by the deputies was: why should we pay Russians for this if we could cope with this on our own. This decision is economically justified but is absolutely not motivated from a strategic point of view. The responsibility for the new facility will be rested with the Ministry of Emergency, which neither has any experience, nor any specialists for such work. If a decision was made to store the fuel on the territory of the existing plants it would be under close supervision of the experts from Energoatom – structure that knows how to work with it.
“The main thing is that Ukrainian citizens have to know what is being done to this fuel. If the repository will begin operating in the restricted zone, where no one is allowed, then the public will not be able to control what happens to the spent nuclear fuel.”
