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    Following the Order of the President of Ukraine No.87/2020 on prevention of the COVID-19 spreading and pursuant to the Protocol of the extraordinary meeting of the Slavutych Permanent Commission on Technogenic-Environmental Safety and Emergencies No.15 dated 29.10.2020, the ChNPP Administration made a decision to switch the plant staff to a special working time pattern from November 2 till November 15, 2020.

    Only operational personnel who provides the nuclear and radiation safety of the site and security of its facilities, and the personnel associated with life-support of SSE ChNPP facilities, will remain at their workplaces.

    In addition, the Chornobyl NPP restricts the information visits of people from all over the world to the ChNPP site at least until November 30, 2020.

    Moreover the ChNPP Administration will restrict international business trips of its staff and technical visits of international specialists to the ChNPP site.

    On 29th of October, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to Ukraine, Mr. Etienne de Poncins, and Economic Attaché, Ms. Mathilde Arjakovsky, made an official visit to Chornobyl NPP.

    During this visit, Mr. Etienne de Poncins held a meeting with the ChNPP management and visited the New Safe Confinement (NSC) – a facility which was designed and constructed under the leadership of JV NOVARKA, i.e. Consortium of two French engineering giants – Vinci Construction Grand Projects and Bouygues Travaux Publics.

    Mr. Ambassador expressed excitement about the hugeness and scale of the NSC, as well as about strength of spirit and professionalism of all those who were involved into its design and construction.

    The SSE ChNPP First Deputy Director General, Mr. Valeriy Seyda, thanked the Ambassador of France to Ukraine for many years of efficient support of Ukraine in overcoming the consequences of the Chornobyl accident and the transformation of the Shelter Object into an environmentally safe system. He also expressed his hope for further fruitful cooperation.

    On October 22, Chornobyl NPP was visited by engineers of the University of Bristol. Their task was to test the remotely controlled robots under the Exclusion Zone conditions, and one of such robots was a world famous Spot, a robot-dog, developed by the Boston Dynamics.

    Unique features of Spot are that it can move in complex terrain (such as stones or debris), get over obstacles, walk up sloping surfaces and stairs, as well as get on its feet after turning over onto its back. Availability on its “back” of a special platform for installing the equipment potentially allows using the robot for remote radiation survey.

    The visit to the ChNPP is commented by David Megson-Smith, a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher in the University of Bristol involved in the development of novel and new sensors for deployment of robotic platforms, which can be used in the nuclear industry:

    “We came to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone to use the robotic platforms for mapping the distribution of radiation, test our robotic platforms and build new networks of people. We’ve worked a lot with the nuclear organizations in the United Kingdom but we haven’t ever worked in the environment as difficult as here at the ChNPP.


    ChNPP will cooperate with the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) in field of radioactively contaminated materials decontamination.

    The corresponding Agreement was recently signed by Chornobyl NPP.

    According to Oleksandr Skomarokhov, Deputy Technical Director (for Radioactive Waste Management), within the framework of this Agreement ChNPP representatives using KAERI developed technologies and procedures agreed with KAERI will decontaminate fragments of concrete and metal contaminated with a wide range of radioactive elements.

    “This is a mutually beneficial cooperation. KAERI has technical developments aimed at decontamination of contaminated surfaces, but is incapable to test these technologies on real rather than artificially contaminated surfaces, because such contamination does not exist in Korea at the moment. At the same time, Chornobyl NPP in process of decommissioning is looking all the time for tools and technologies that will allow, on the one hand, high-quality decontamination of materials, and on the other — significantly reduce the volume of RAW generated in this process. Thus, ChNPP site is a kind of laboratory test site for testing the technology proposed by KAERI specialists”.

    PREDIS Project (Pre-disposal management of radioactive waste) is aimed to develop and improve methods and processes for safer processing and conditioning of waste for which suitable or industrially mature solutions aren’t available at the moment.

    This is a four-year project with the total budget 24 million euros, of which EC contribution is 14 million euros. The project is implemented by a consortium of 47 leading institutes and organizations from 17 European countries, including Ukraine - (participants: the National Science Center “Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology” (KIPT) and the Institute of Environmental Geochemistry of the NASU). The Project initiator is VTT Technical Research Center of Finland.

    Prerequisites for such a large-scale project is the current situation, when more and more historical sites became subject to clean up, NPP’s fleet in Europe is moving towards decommissioning, and increasing amount of radioactive waste should be pre-processed before its final geological disposal.

    During four years the project participants will consider and study innovative and state-of-art technologies to improve low- and intermediate level radioactive waste management, with an emphasis on processing of the metal materials, liquid organic waste and solid organic waste, which can be generated as a result of NPPs operation and decommissioning, as well as other production processes.

    1. Step toward addressing the ChNPP radioactive water issues
    2. Cooperation with Korea Continues
    3. Chornobyl NPP takes part in WANO working meeting
    4. Operation of the Facility for Materials Release from Regulatory Control

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