No to nuclear waste container at Chernobyl

The Ministry for Environmental Protection has turned down plans for building a radioactive waste storage site in the Chernobyl zone.  The Ministry has issued a negative assessment for the plans which envisaged a centralized storage container for spent nuclear waste. The conclusions of the State environmental impact assessment are posted on the Ministry’s site.

The assessment states that the location of such a site in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone would be in violation of the law on the legal regime for territory contaminated as a result of the Chernobyl Disaster. This law prohibits any activity in the zone except that directly aimed at ensuring safety from radiation. The functioning of a waste container taking spent waste from other nuclear power plans would in no way contribute to improving the environmental state of the zone.

As already reported, environmental groups are recommending that containers be built for spent nuclear waste near each reactor. This would minimize the danger to the population with nuclear waste being transported around the country.

Dmytro Khmara of the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine comments:

“Having created the Chernobyl Zone following the disaster at the nuclear power plant, nuclear industry officials supposedly “resolved” all their problems with radioactive waste. It was again being proposed to organize yet another radioactive wasteland in the zone that future generations will have to deal with. We can predict that “Energoatom” will now try to rewrite Ukrainian laws for their own needs. However the Chernobyl Zone is not the place for such containers – spent waste must be stored at the power plants under the control of specialists.”

The National Ecological Centre of Ukraine