On July 9, 2021, Energoatom (National Nuclear Energy Generating Company of Ukraine) announced the completion of the construction of a railway line from Vilcha station to Yanov station. This line connects the Centralized Storage Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel (CSFSF) in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with the railway network of Ukraine. As previously reported, the only obstacle to the full-fledged commissioning of the first launch complex of the Central Nuclear Power Plant was this section of the track, along which in the near future spent nuclear fuel (SNF) will be delivered from three nuclear power plants (Rivne, Khmelnitsky and South Ukrainian).

CSFSF is an extremely important facility for the nuclear power industry of Ukraine. Since the first days after the collapse of the USSR Kiev has been forced to send Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) from almost all Ukrainian nuclear power plants to Russia for storage and annually pay a big sum of money. The only exception was Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, where with the help of the American companies “Sierra Nuclear Corporation” and “Duke Engineering & Services” a temporary, so-called “dry storage” facility was built. And it's not just about money or depending on Russia: Russian legislation simply prohibits storing “someone else's” SNF after processing.

However, Kiev managed to temporarily reach an agreement with Moscow and postpone the deadline for the return of waste. For this reason, the Ukrainian nuclear scientists proposed to use the territory of the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and build a centralized storage of SNF for their nuclear power plants there. The technology of the American company Holtec International was chosen for this CSFSF. In August 2015 construction began, and it was promised that after the launch of the storage facility, Ukraine will save at least $200 million annually by refusing to export SNF to Russia. The launch was constantly postponed, and the choice made in favor of Holtec International is one of the reasons for this.

In the track record of Holtec International in Ukraine there is already one SNF storage facility: ISF-2 (Interim Storage Facility 2), which was built in the Chernobyl zone with using Holtec International technology for storing nuclear fuel of the closed Chernobyl NPP. The construction was financed from the Nuclear Safety Account of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and European contributors closely monitored the progress of the work. In the summer of 2018, the concerns about the activities of Holtec International and the fate of the entire ISF-2 project reached its peak. Representatives of the American company were summoned to report to the assembly of contributors of the Nuclear Safety Account, where they presented reasonable claims in an ultimatum form about the progress of construction. According to Holtec International the work was hindered by "unforeseen technical and financial difficulties", which in turn caused delays from the scheduled deadlines. The stipulation about commercial issues was not accidental. The managers of Holtec International , who came to the contributors' assembly, announced the postponement of the completion of the construction of IFS-2 for about a year and immediately demanded compensation in the amount of $55 million from European contributors. 17 million were supposed to compensate Holtec International certain military risks, and 38 million were for additional work that arose due to a shift in the schedule. Then the European contributors of the IFS-2 project demanded an audit of the financial activities of Holtec International and strict justification for any compensation claim on its part. As a result, the EBRD reduced the payment to $15 million.

But after that, the timing of the launch of the IFS-2 was disrupted more than once. The tests of the repository took place only in December 2020, and the trail of heated debates between European contributors and managers of Holtec International is still dragging on. Unfortunately, today no one in Europe is interested in controlling the financial component and quality of work in the project, which is undoubtedly important for Ukraine. And no one is interested in safe construction. Only Americans from Holtec International , who have already "distinguished themselves" in the nuclear industry of Ukraine more than once, are really interested only in easy money.

Andrey Vasiliev