Baku, Azerbaijan, August 14
By Fakhri Vakilov - Trend:
The spent fuel of the nuclear power plant (NPP), which will be built in Uzbekistan, will be processed in Russia, and radioactive waste will be stored in Uzbekistan, Trend reports citing the press service of the Uzatom agency.
"It is planned that the spent fuel will be transported to Russia for reprocessing," Uzatom reports. The press service states that during the processing all the valuable nuclear material will be extracted, and the remainder will be brought into a solid state of aggregation by evaporation and pressing, and then transferred back to Uzbekistan.
Uzatom notes that this mechanism is provided for by a number of international agreements to which Uzbekistan and Russia are parties: the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (July 1, 1968), the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (October 26, 1979), and the Joint Convention on the safety of spent fuel management and on the safety of radioactive waste management (September 5, 1997).
The agency also noted that in accordance with the intergovernmental agreement, issues in the field of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and radioactive waste (RW) management will be regulated by separate agreements and contracts.
"Each country must store its radioactive waste on its territory," reads the message.
Uzatom added that in this regard, specialists from the Uzatom agency and the Rosatom state corporation are currently working closely on the issue of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and radioactive waste (RW) management. A strategy for managing SNF and radioactive waste will be prepared and approved in the near future taking into account international experience in this direction.
In early September 2018, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the head of the Government of Uzbekistan Abdulla Aripov signed an agreement on cooperation in the construction of nuclear power plants.
Rosatom plans to build a complex of two 3+ generation units with VVER-1200 reactor units.
The site near Tuzkan Lake in the Jizzakh region was chosen as the priority site for the construction of the station. Uzatom CEO Zhurabek Mirzamakhmudov said Russia and Uzbekistan could sign a contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant by the end of 2019.
The construction of the station is scheduled to begin in 2022 with a loan from the Russian government. At the end of June, 2019, Atomstroyexport (part of Rosatom) began the second phase of engineering and survey work.
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