CONSULTING

in Lithuania, Kozloduy units 1 to 4 in Bulgaria, Saint Petersburg units 1 to 4 in the Russian
Federation and Bohunice-V1-1 and -2 in the Slovak Republic. In 1996, Chernobyl-4 was added to
the scope. The fund contributors included the G7 countries, the EU, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the
Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Initial contributions were in excess of €285 million
(then about US$330 million). As of 2016, 45 countries and the European Community are
contributing grants for safety upgrades and decommissioning of the above nuclear power plants.
The concept included for each plant a nuclear safety assessment, the implementation of essential
short- and medium-term safety improvements and the final closure of the plants. Later on, an
additional special fund was established for the decommissioning of each unit. 257,258
The Nuclear Safety Account team was created at EBRD with the purpose of establishing the safety
assessment for each plant, identifying and designing the safety facilities to be built as well as the
decommissioning procedures, drafting grants agreements between the EBRD, Chernobyl Nuclear
Power Plant and the supplier and finalizing construction contracts. The team remains in charge of
monitoring the projects and of verifying their compliance with the contracts.
EBRD Chernobyl Decommissioning/Spent Fuel Storage Program
This program has been developed by the Nuclear Safety Account team in cooperation with the
European Commission TACIS program and following the grant agreements signed between the
Bank and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. 259 It includes the construction of an intermediate
spent fuel storage facility, liquid and solid nuclear waste treatment plants and a long-term
protection structure to cover unit 4.
An in-depth safety assessment was carried out of the local Intermediate Spent Fuel storage building
(ISF-1), which was part of the original plant, and hosted most of the spent fuel assemblies from the
four reactors prior to the 1986 accident. ISF-1 was found in poor conditions, judged unsafe and not
suitable for the long-term as well as unable to meeting today’s safety standards. Consequently, the
decision was made to build a second, intermediate dry storage facility, called ISF-2 to be located
2.5 km south east of the Chernobyl plant, 12 km north-west from Chernobyl city. A turnkey contract
to design and build the entire ISF-2 facility was signed in June 1999 between Energoatom and
Framatome ANP (now AREVA NP), jointly with French construction giants Vinci and Bouygues. The
system is based on the Transnuklear Nuhoms dry casks system. 260
ISF-2 includes a Spent Fuel Processing Facility (SFPF) and the Spent Fuel Storage Area (SFSA), made
of 232 above-ground Concrete Storage Modules (CSM). The storage employs 4,000 tons of
reinforced steel, 2,700 tons of stainless steel and 26,000 cubic meters of concrete. The structure
was designed to store dry fuel for a period of 100 years. A central geological repository for spent
fuel and high-level waste is planned to be built after 2030. This plan also envisages the
257 State Specialized Enterprise (SSE) Chernobyl NPP, “ChNPP Decommissioning Strategy”, Ministry of
Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine and State Agency of Ukraine for an Exclusion Zone, see
http://chnpp.gov.ua/en/the-main-aspects-of-decommissioning, accessed 1 July 2016.
258 EBRD, “Nuclear Safety Account”, Undated, see http://www.ebrd.com/what-we-do/sectors/nuclearsafety/chernobyl-nuclear-safety-account.html,
accessed 5 June 2016.
259 EBRD, “Nuclear Safety”, February 2011, see http://www.ebrd.com/downloads/research/factsheets/nuclear.pdf,
accessed 5 June 2016.
260 Jayant Bondre, “A Complete NUHOMS® Solution for Storage and Transport of High Burnup Spent Fuel”,
Transnuclear Inc. (AREVA Group), 14th International Symposium on the Packaging and Transportation of
Radioactive Materials (PATRAM 2004), Berlin (Germany), 20-24 September 2004, see
http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/37/088/37088556.pdf, accessed 5 June 2016.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 84 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016