On the 12-th of September, the delegation of the French Republic Senate visited the Chornobyl NPP site. The objective of the visit was the discussion of ecological issues and conditions for activities of French companies.

The delegation consisted of managers of the France – Ukraine friendship group of the France Senate, representatives of the Senate apparatus, and the Embassy of French Republic in Ukraine. The Ukrainian side was represented by deputies and administrative representatives of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management. 

The first place of visit at the site was the observation pavilion of the New Safe Confinement, where the delegation familiarized with the history and current activities at the facility. Subsequently David Coulet, Director of the NOVARKA Consortium, provided a familiarization tour for the delegation members at the construction site of the New Safe Confinement.

After that the delegation conducted negotiations of Ihor Gramotkin, General Director of the Chornobyl NPP.

It should be recalled that the French Consortium Novarka has been working at the Chornobyl NPP site since 2007. The Consortium consists of two French construction corporations: Vinci Construction Grands Projets and Bouygues. The Consortium is the main Contactor for construction of the New Safe Confinement. 

To date, the Chornobyl nuclear power plant has accumulated about 20,000 m3 of liquid radioactive waste (LRAW), being stored in the tanks of two existing storage facilities.

The existing structure of RAW management at the SSE ChNPP provides for the reprocessing of accumulated LRAW at the Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant (LRWTP), being at the completion stage.

Preliminary estimates indicate that it will take about 29 years to reprocess all the accumulated LRAW at the LRWTP, at the same the expected number of obtained RAW packages will be more than 303,000, most of them will result from reprocessing of the evaporate concentrate (hereinafter referred to as EC). Packages with radioactive waste are to be disposed at the Engineered Near-Surface Solid Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility (hereinafter referred to as ENSDF), which is designed to accept RAW packages from LRWTP in the quantity of about 70,000. This situation associated with the lack of available space at the storage facility for RAW disposal requires searching for ways to reduce the volumes of the LRWTP final product. One of the efficient measures may be diminishing the volume of the existing LRAW subject to reprocessing at the LRWTP. 

In addition to the mentioned problems, the ChNPP is also in search of economically feasible modern methods for treatment of radioactively contaminated water. Significant amount of such water is replenished every year.

On August 24, on parade on the occasion of the Independence Day in Kiev, military units and formations which demonstrated courage and heroism and proved themselves in military operations in eastern Ukraine, were conferred with honorary titles and awarded with Colours. One of 30 Colours the commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, Lieutenant-General Yuriy Allerov, handed to the commander of the military unit 3041, securing and protecting strategically important facility - Chornobyl NPP. It should be noted that among all the military units, securing nuclear power plants in Ukraine, the honor of receiving the Colour was awarded only to our unit (3041).

The Colours of the military unit is an honorary symbol, demonstrating specificity of its military mission, history and merits and testifies about the identity of the military unit to the Defence Establishment of Ukraine.

The ceremony in honor of the Colours arrival was held on August 28, on the parade ground of the military unit 3041 in Slavutych.

The ceremony was attended by the head of the unit, Colonel Andriy Frolov, Mayor of Slavutich Yuriy Fomichev, ChNPP Deputy Director General for Personnel and Physical protection Yevgen Katunin, head of the Slavutych Police Department, Prior of St. Iliya Church and others.

To maintain a reliable fire-prevention regime during construction and installation work at Chornobyl NPP site, at different facilities, emergency response groups constantly perform inspections and briefings for the personnel.

On August 8, 2017, specialists from Chornobyl NPP Emergency Management Department of the 11th State Fire and Rescue Unit (Chernobyl town) controlled implementation of temporary fire works in the electric devices building in SSE ChNPP, which is under construction as part of New Safe Confinement (NSC) construction project.

Inspection established that fire works are carried out in compliance with the requirements of the Fire Safety Rules of Ukraine, Guidelines for fire works safe performance at fire and explosion-hazardous and explosive facilities, as well as facility-based instruction on organization of fire works safe performance at SSE "Chornobyl NPP" facilities.

In order to improve the fire safety level at the enterprise, additional fire safety briefings were carried out for personnel and specialists of contractors performing construction and installation work.

In the framework of implementing the project relating to construction of the Liquid Radwaste Treatment Plant (LRTP) at Chernobyl NPP, on August 7, 2017, according to the results of open tendering, a contract was concluded with CC “Ukrbudmontazh” to perform activities associated with its completion and bringing the fire systems in compliance with effective regulatory structure.

Construction of LRTP was carried out at the expense of international technical assistance from Nuclear Safety Account funds and was suspended due to depletion of the allocated budget. Resumption and completion of LRTP from national budget of Ukraine became available after the approval of the updated project.

Work performance under the contract with CC “Ukrbudmontazh” will enable to commission the facility and commence treatment of liquid RAW on SSE ChNPP site. Completion of works under the contract is scheduled for May 2018.

For more details about Liquid Radwaste Treatment Plant, please click here.