Kozloduy used fuel store opens

Monday, 16 May 2011

A used nuclear fuel store has been officially opened at Bulgaria’s Kozloduy nuclear power plant. The facility will store all the old fuel from the six reactors at the site, four of which have already shut down.

 

A ceremony was held on 12 May to mark the opening of the new Dry Spent Fuel Storage Facility (DSFSF), designed to hold used fuel for at least 50 years. During the ceremony, a ribbon was cut by Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov, minister of economy and energy Traycho Traykov and the executive director of the Kozloduy plant Kostadin Dimitrov.

 

The official opening of the new Kozloduy used fuel storage facility (Image: KNPP)

 

A contract for the DSFSF was signed in May 2004 by the Kozloduy plant and a German consortium comprising Nukem Technologies and GNS (Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service). Under the contract, Nukem designed and built the storage building and supplied all auxiliary handling and transport equipment for the casks while GNS provided the casks and equipment to load them within the existing storage pool facility.

 

Construction work began in July 2008. The first stage in the store's development will see 2800 used nuclear fuel assemblies from the first and second VVER-440 reactors placed into 34 CONSTOR casks. The facility currently has the capacity to store 5256 fuel assemblies in some 72 casks. However, in January 2010, the contract was amended to extend the facility to provide space for a further 38 CONSTOR casks (3192 fuel assemblies). Ultimately the facility will store 8000 VVER-440 fuel assemblies from units 1 to 4, as well as 2500 VVER-1000 assemblies from units 5 and 6.

 

The facility is expected to enter into operation by mid-2012, after a licence to operate the storage facility has been issued by the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency.

 

The €50 million ($71 million) project to construct the facility is funded by the Kozloduy International Decommissioning Support Fund, made up of donations from the European Commission as well as other Western countries and administered by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

 

The Kozloduy site plays host to four VVER-440 reactors, all of which have been permanently shut down as part of the agreements Bulgaria made in order to join the European Union. Units 1 and 2 shut down at the end of 2002; units 3 and 4 at the end of 2006. The two later VVER-1000 units at the site are still in operation. Used fuel at the site is currently kept in a pool-type storage facility.

 

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News