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April 21, 2022 SE Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) has completed the management of spent nuclear fuel at the power units and transported it from both units to the interim spent fuel storage facility.

„The important phase in the decommissioning of the INPP has been reached and all spent nuclear fuel has already been transported to storage facilities. The equipment that will no longer be considered as safety-relevant, after appropriate safety justifications and with appropriate permits, will now be possible to dismantle”, – says Lithuanian State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate Head Michail Demčenko.

The second spent fuel storage facility (SFSF-2) was put into operation in 2017. Spent nuclear fuel in this facility is stored in a containers CONSTOR RBMK-1500/М2. Each of them is 4.5 m height and 2.6 m in diameter and approximately 118 tons of weight. 190 containers with 15 555 spent fuel assemblies will be stored in the facility for up to 50 years. After interim storage period, all spent fuel will have to be disposed of in a deep geological repository.

In Lithuania, spent nuclear fuel is not reprocessed, so after unloading it from the Ignalina NPP it was stored for several years in the cooling pools near the reactor and after it was transported in two storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel (SNFSF-1 and SNFSF-2) near the nuclear power plant. Both storage facilities are of the dry-type and the spent fuel is stored in the same containers in which are transported to the storage facilities.