In Lithuania, as part of the work to decommission the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP), which will last until 2038, 41% or 73 thousand tons of electrical equipment have already been dismantled, said the head of the INPP, Linas Bauzhis, informs the Lithuanian portal Delfi with reference to the ELTA agency .According to him, the closure will be aimed at transforming the INPP territory into an environmentally friendly area. "Our mission is to create a clean and sustainable environment. The most important thing is that those monsters (nuclear reactors) that were installed 40 years ago (are safely closed), so that we clean up the legacy (nuclear power plant) safely and sustainably.. .so that we do not leave it to future generations. Our goal is to clean up (the territory) as much as possible so that it becomes much more friendly,” Linas Bauzis told reporters in Visaginas. “The unique thing is that no one has dismantled such RBMK-type reactors. There are not many such reactors in the world; only Russia and Ukraine have (reactors of this type). We say that in the future we could become a center of competence, because we will “We will be the first to dismantle these old reactors,” the head of the power plant emphasized. According to the head of the INPP, 107 thousand tons of power plant equipment remain to be dismantled, and in total, about 180 thousand tons of equipment should be dismantled by the time the power plant is closed. Currently, both INPP reactor units – 1st and 2nd – are closed, and the final decommissioning of the station should be completed by 2038. According to the head of the INPP operational planning department, Valdas Ledzinskas, 190 containers of nuclear waste, which are currently stored in a temporary nuclear fuel storage facility on the territory of the power plant, will be stored here for 50 years, and then will be moved to a deep repository. About 1,600 tons of nuclear fuel are stored in the temporary storage facility – 75% of all nuclear waste generated during the operation of the power plant. The deep repository will become the final disposal site for INPP radioactive waste, where barrels of nuclear fuel will be buried underground at a depth of 270 meters to one kilometer. Such reinforced concrete structures are about 4 meters high and about 1.5 meters wide. According to Ledzinskas, this most dangerous nuclear fuel should be stored for one million years. Therefore, in a deep repository, barrels with hazardous fuel will be filled with concrete, and natural geological and installed engineering barriers will ensure that if one of them is damaged, the others will act as a protective barrier. In March of this year, the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant announced the start of consultations with 29 municipalities where such repositories could be equipped. So far, 77 such places have been planned. Geological studies of possible locations are currently being carried out, which should last approximately 20 years. Such a burial ground will require an area of about 200 hectares, and the location for it is planned to be selected by 2047.
