On December 14, a delegation of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine headed by the First Deputy Minister Mr Oleksandr Krasnolutskiy visited the ChNPP industrial site.
Representatives of the Ministry, the managers of the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management and Exclusion Zone enterprises laid flowers at the memorial to the victims of the Chornobyl disaster established near the Administrative building of the Chornobyl NPP.
After the ceremony of honouring the liquidators of the Chornobyl accident, Mr Krasnolutskiy and Acting Head of the SAUEZM Andrii Tymchuk personally presented departmental awards to the Chornobyl NPP personnel who were on rotation today.
At the end of November, ChNPP obtained the original copy of the license entitling the enterprise to process and store the radioactive waste which exists and results from Shelter facility transformation into an environmentally safe system.
Amendments were made to the license, and they are about extension of the implementation periods for a number of activities at New Safe Confinement-Shelter facility. Particularly, they include:
1. Extension of service life period for Shelter facility unstable building structures for another 6 years — up to 2029. Unstable building structures are the Shelter facility structures whose collapse probability is very high.
2. Development of a new design for unstable structure dismantling — to 2025.
3. Completion of unstable structure dismantling — up to October 31, 2029.
On November 30, ChNPP specialists participated in Round Table “Challenges of Fuel Containing Material Management”
For information
Fuel containing materials are the nuclear fuel of Chornobyl NPP former Power Unit 4 damaged due to the beyond-design-basis accident, fuel assemblies of Power Unit 4 spent fuel pool bundles and any other materials (pieces of reactor core, mixtures, corium, solutions, chemical compounds, dust etc.) containing the appreciable amount of nuclear fuel (i.e. its concentration is ≥ 1 of weight percent).
Fuel containing materials of Shelter facility are long-lived radioactive waste. The most famous example of fuel containing material is so called “elephant foot”.
In mid-November, two emergency drills were held at ChNPP. Two different facilities were chosen as training sites: Spent Fuel Storage Facility No. 1 and the Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant.
At the storage facility, the exercise scenario stipulated a fire occurrence on the equipment with further worsening of the radiation situation. At the plant, according to the scenario, a drum with radioactive waste fell during transportation, which led to the radioactive substances and aerosols release into the facility's interior.
The purpose of such exercises is to check the readiness of the operating personnel to interact with various ChNPP units, fire and rescue and medical services, as well as to practice personnel actions in stressful emergency situations. The drills and analysis of their results help to maintain a high level of emergency preparedness at the plant, improve the system of interaction and improve the skills of operational personnel to effectively respond to such situations in real life.