Licence granted for Lithuanian waste facility

Wednesday, 23 December 2015

A licence for the construction and operation of a very low-level radioactive waste disposal facility near the Ignalina nuclear power plant has been issued by the Lithuanian nuclear regulator.

Lithuanian state enterprise Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant announced today that the State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate (Vatesi) had granted it a licence for the landfill-type facility, known as the B19-2 project. The plant applied for a licence to build and operate the facility in June 2012.

The repository will consist of three modules, each able to store 20,000 cubic metres of very low-level radioactive waste from the operation and decommissioning of the Ignalina plant.

The Ignalina plant project company plans to start construction of the facility in mid-2016, with operation scheduled to begin by the end of 2018. Once in operation, waste will be emplaced within the modules over a 20-year period. The modules will then be sealed with natural and artificial barriers and actively monitored for the following 100 years.

In June, the Ignalina plant applied for a licence to construct and operate a surface storage facility for low- and intermediate-level short-lived waste, known as the B25 project. The first phase of the project is to start in 2021.

That repository is intended for the final disposal of 100,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste both from the operation of the plant and generated during its decommissioning. The waste is to be stored by 2030, following the dismantling of the Ignalina plant and the reprocessing of its waste.

In 2009, Vatesi issued the Ignalina plant with a licence to construct an interim storage facility for used fuel from units 1 and 2. It also granted Ignalina a licence to build solid radioactive waste treatment and storage facilities at the site.

Lithuania agreed to shut down Ignalina 1 and 2 – both Soviet-design RBMK reactors - as a condition of its accession to the European Union. Unit 1 was shut down in 2004 and unit 2 in 2009. The two light-water, graphite-moderated reactors came on line in 1983 and 1987, respectively.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News