Wednesday, March 20 2019 14:18

ArmInfo. The project on the export of spent nuclear fuel from Armenia is still "raw" this is just an opportunity. On March 20 in an interview with the ArmInfo  correspondent Artem Petrosyan, Head of Nuclear Energy Unit of Energy  Department of RA Ministry for Energy Infrastructures and Natural  Resources said.

According to him, in the implementation of this program it is  necessary to determine its technical feasibility, but most  importantly, to agree with the Government of Georgia. The head of the  department noted that spent nuclear fuel can be stored in a dry  storage facility for 50 years, although according to the latest  assessment of American specialists, this period can be extended for  all 100 years. "But again, this is not a solution to the issue,"  Artem Petrosyan stated.

He noted that the issue could be resolved either by expanding the  storage of SNF or building a burial ground in deep formations. For  this, it is necessary to conduct research in order to assess the  possibilities for building such burial grounds. "Canada, for example,  invested about 12.5 billion Canadian dollars in construction of  burial grounds. In Armenia, there are no such funds. For this reason,  we can either count on international assistance or start transporting  SNF to the Russian Federation, which would be an ideal solution for  such a small countries like Armenia, " Artyom Petrosyan said.

To recall, on March 12, at the meeting of the Joint Armenian-Russian  Coordinating Committee on the modernization and extension of the  service life of the second power unit of the Armenian NPP, it was  decided to prepare a pilot project for the removal and reprocessing  of the SNF batch. According to the official website of the State  Committee on Regulation of Nuclear Safety of the Armenian Government,  the dry storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) of the Armenian  NPP is operational until 2020. On August 1, 2000, Gosatomnadzor of  the Republic issued a license to the Armenian NPP to operate the  storage facility for a period of 20 years. Storage type NUHOMS-56  consists of 11 horizontal modules with 616 insulating containers. In  2005, the Armenian parliament decided to expand the storage facility,  which will make it possible to store up to 1,890 containers for at  least 50 years.