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    November 1-st two-day visit of TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Incorporated) representatives delegation was held at ChNPP.

    The purpose of the visit was to get acquainted with Chernobyl NPP’s experience in the accident consequences overcoming.

    "Our accident [at Fukushima NPP — Ed.] occurred six and a half years ago, and Chornobyl NPP has already thirty years of experience. One of the impressions is that decontamination measures were very successful at your site, as many workers present at the site haven’t special protection. And you have significantly improved working conditions around Unit 4 and New Safe Confinement" — said Takafumi Anegawa, one of the delegates, TEPCO Senior Nuclear Adviser.

    Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine Ostap Semerak visited the Chernobyl NPP site within the frame of a working visit to the Exclusion Zone on October 24.

    Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility No.2 (ISF-2) was the first object visited by the Minister. The storage facility is designed for receiving, processing for storage and storage of spent nuclear fuel accumulated during the Chernobyl NPP operation. Here representatives of top management of the ChNPP and Building Contractor told about the facility construction progress, future works and implementation periods.

    Workshop “Chernobyl NPP Cooling Pond at Decommissioning Stage: Ecosystem and Radioecological Research”, which was held on 12-13 October at the premises of Institute for Hydrobiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, has been summarized. 

    The Workshop was attended by representatives of ChNPP, IAEA, as well as Fukushima University (Institute of Environmental Radioactivity – IER) and University of Tsukuba (Center for Research in Isotopes and Environmental Dynamics – CRiED), and other organizations involved into implementation of the ChNPP cooling pond decommissioning project.

    The Workshop’s objective is to analyze the current state of the ChNPP cooling pond with reference to the forecasts made at the stage of the development of the Feasibility Study (FS) for the pond decommissioning project.

    From June till September this year personnel of the radiation safety shop (hereinafter referred to as the RSS) have been involved in the measurements of gamma radiation exposure in the near zone of the New Safe Confinement (hereinafter referred to as the NSC).

    The objective of the measurements was to analyze how much the level of gamma radiation has been reduced in the work area after sliding the NSC over the Shelter Object.

    To accomplish this task, employees of the RSS performed measurements in three vertical plane surfaces; each of them had 9 control points at the height of 30, 60 and 90 meters above the ground. The plane surfaces are located at the distance of 120, 256 and 355 meters from the Shelter Object, covering the whole work area.

    The measurements were performed with the use of electronic dose meter DMC 2000S manufactured by MGPI mounted on the drone.

    Gamma radiation levels in the control points were determined after processing the readings of dose meters with the use of the DOSIMASS program.

     

    Similar measurements have already been performed in the past - in 2003-2004 - by personnel of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants at the stage of development of design documentation for the NSC construction. The efficiency of the NSC arch radiation protection has been measured in comparison with these data.

    On October 11, the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of United States of America in Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch visited Chornobyl NPP with an informal visit. The main purpose of the visit was to obtain information about the state of New Safe Confinement (NSC) and Dry type Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility (ISF-2) construction projects implementation.

    During the visit Marie Yovanovitch visited the NSC's observation pavilion, showing the great interest to the details of the Chornobyl disaster and overcoming the accident consequences at the Unit four. Deputy Chief Engineer of Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant Mr Alexander Novikov and SIP Project Management Unit Director Mr Oscar McNeil answered numerous questions from Mrs Ambassador.

    1. ISF-2 Project Top Management meeting was held at Chornobyl NPP
    2. Representatives of the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association (WENRA) visited Chornobyl NPP
    3. Training in robot-manipulator BROKK-180 handling
    4. Works on New Safe Confinement project are running on a scheduled basis

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