Support to the State Nuclear Regulatory Committee of Ukraine

The project UK/TS/26 was follow-up of the UK/TS 20, which was aimed at providing an effective technical assistance for the licensing activity related to EC and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) financed decommissioning facilities within the process of decommissioning of Chernobyl NPP units 1, 2 and 3 to the SNRCU – State Nuclear Regulatory Committee of Ukraine.

The main objective of the project was to provide technical support to SNRCU in the framework of the licensing of the following facilities on the Chernobyl site:

- The ISF-2 (Interim Spent fuel Storage Facility);
- The LRTP (Liquid Radioactive waste Treatment Plant);
- The three Lots of the ICSRM (Industrial Complex for Solid Waste Management:

the LILWPF (Processing Facility for Low Level and Intermediate Level Solid Waste),
the LILWR (Retrieval Facility for Low Level and Intermediate Level Solid Waste)
LILWSF (Low and Intermediate Level Waste Engineered Near Surface Disposal Facility).
An associated objective was to strengthen the capabilities of SNRCU and of its local technical safety organization SSTC by transfer of know how.

Work mainly concerned the evaluation of the Preliminary Safety Assessment Report (PSAR) Rev. 2 and Rev. 3 for all 3 Lots of ICSRM (Industrial Complex for Solid Waste Management). Some specific issues are coming from the evaluation of the PSAR Rev. 4.

Recurring comments could be found through the assessments of all the PSARs:

- Insufficient characterisation of the incoming liquid radioactive waste.

- Insufficient characterisation of the final product (solidified liquid waste by cementation with the selected process).

- Radiation protection issues during the construction, maintenance and operation
of the LRTP.

The assessment works performed by EU experts were not positive for the facilities concerned and led to several vital recommendations which were used by SNRCU in their decisions.

In addition, the problem of Waste Acceptance Criteria in association with ICSRM Lot 3 was not solved. The safety justifications were not detailed enough to allow SNRCU to deliver a commissioning permit for this facility.

There is no official commissioning stage for the ICSRM Lots 1&2 and LRTP.

Some other work was conducted for the review of the Action Plan for Spent Nuclear Fuel Management and Radioactive Waste Treatment of the NPP operator, Ukrainian SE NNECG “Energoatom”.

Comments (Quality of the results, Lesson learnt, Recommendations for follow-up)

Safety issues still remained unsolved at various degrees of importance, which could mean postponing solutions to the time of operating licenses, which is generally too late to manage them satisfactorily.