Joint EC-IAEA-Ukraine Project

Waste and Decommissioning review of Nuclear Power Plants in South Ukraine: Joint EC-IAEA-Ukraine project

The Waste and Environmental Safety Section of the IAEA will commence an evaluation of radioactive waste and decommissioning safety at Ukraine’s operating nuclear power station commencing with a review at the South Ukraine NPP in early February 2009. The review will continue throughout the year and will cover all the operating power stations at the four sites in Ukraine namely Rovno, Khmelnitsky and Zaporozhe, in addition to South Ukraine.

The reviews are part of a larger project being undertaken by the IAEA on behalf of the European Union in support of the implementation of the Roadmap for Nuclear Safety of the Memorandum of Understanding on Co-operation in the Field of Energy between the EU and Ukraine. The project is dealing with all aspects of nuclear safety and is being undertaken in four discrete but linked tasks: design safety, operational safety, regulatory and the waste and decommissioning task.

The basis for the review tasks are the IAEA Safety Standards, while the waste and decommissioning task is based on the latest Safety Requirements in these two topical areas, namely, Predisposal Management of Radioactive Waste (GS-R-5, which will be published soon) and Decommissioning of Facilities Using Radioactive Material (WS-R-5).

Scope

The project will specifically consider:

Decommissioning plans

The review process entails the operating company EnergoAtom of Ukraine carrying out a self assessment using questionnaires developed form the Safety Requirements documents. The self assessment is subsequently evaluated by external experts recruited from around the world, and following review of the self assessment by the experts a site review meeting takes place. The entire process will identify the degree of compliance with each safety requirements and will identify what, if anything that has to be done in order to become fully compliant with the Safety Requirements. The process will be fully documented and a report compiled on the review of each of the power station sites for integration of a common report on the project. The combined report will be delivered to the European Union in 2010.

For further information please contact P. Metcalf


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