The symposium was the venue of several “breaking news items.”
Ukraine National Nuclear Energy Company “Energoatom” is poised to begin moving used fuel from the nation’s operating reactors to its newly built Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility starting in 2022.
After an extensive battery of pre- commissioning and commissioning tests, Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate has authorized the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant to load used fuel from the Chornobyl three reactors with immediate effect.
The year 2020 marked many milestones for Holtec, in spite of a global pandemic that has challenged us all.
A historic milestone was reached on December 14, 2020 at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, when Holtec-trained technicians loaded the second double-walled canister with RBMK reactor spent nuclear fuel into the site’s Interim Storage Facility (ISF-2).
We are pleased to observe that the mounting demand for clean and reliable base load energy generation is fueling strong interest from many countries that view our inherently safe and economically viable SMR-160 small modular reactor (SMR) as the solution for reducing their carbon footprint.
On September 7, 2020, State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) issued the License Permit to Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP), the Owner, to start commissioning the Chornobyl Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility (ISF-2) which, upon loading, will be the world’s largest dry storage installation.
We bid a fond goodbye to 2019 which will stand out in our company’s annals as a watershed year when we began the implementation of several new ambitious initiatives that will shape our endeavors for decades to come.
Project Cheetah, quietly rolled out in 2004, has produced some transformative technologies such as underground canister storage, double wall canister and forced gas dehydration that have made dry storage implementation increasingly more efficient with the storage systems evolving into vanishingly small dose emitters and impregnable fortresses of security.
Success at last! On August 29, 2019, Holtec’s Project team completed the comprehensive pre-commissioning program (also called Cold Tests) for the Chernobyl Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility (ISF-2) - the world’s largest dry storage installation.