Holtec International said Monday it has completed construction and testing of the interim storage facility for spent fuel from three reactors at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
This effectively ends the New Jersey energy technology company’s role in the project. The state-owned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) enterprise must now receive a license from Ukraine’s nuclear regulator to commission the facility and begin loading used fuel, according to a Holtec press release.
More than 21,000 used fuel assemblies will have to each be cut into three pieces – two fuel bundles and an activated connecting rod – within a hot cell before being moved into storage, Holtec said. It did not provide an estimated timeline for that operation.
The new storage facility was completed “not a day too soon,” Sergiy Tarakanov, Holtec Ukraine general manager and program manager for ISF-2, said in the release. “Chernobyl’s wet storage facility where the entire massive inventory of used fuel is presently stored, is living beyond its design life. It is critical that this enormous inventory of fuel be moved to dry storage in the fastest possible time.”
Holtec in 2011 assumed construction of the partially built storage facility, which had been started in 1998 by French nuclear firm AREVA (now Orano). Following completion of construction and repairs on the facility, cold testing began in May. That covered all systems, structures, and components of the facility, in areas including standard operations, emergency response, and systems to prevent worker exposure and contamination spread, the release says.
Cold testing, completed on Aug. 29 and confirmed by the state regulator on Sept. 6, identified no significant challenges to licensing, according to Holtec.
A power surge in 1986 famously destroyed reactor Unit 4 at the facility in what was then the Soviet Union. The three other reactors at Chernobyl remained operational, respectively closing in 1991, 1996, and 1999.
