Closed Lithuanian nuclear plant gets license to build waste-storage facility

The decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP), near Ignalina, Lithuania, said recently that it was granted a construction and operation license for a landfill facility that will hold low-level waste.

INPP said the facility will utilize three modules, with a storage capacity of approximately 2.1 million cubic feet of radioactive waste from the plant’s normal operations. The announcement said the facility will use barriers made of artificial and organic material that will not allow radioactive waste to interact with the surrounding environment.

INPP submitted its application to the State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate in June 2012. INPP will begin construction in mid-2016, with operations expected to begin by the end of 2018.

The plant said the first stage of the project, a B19-1 buffer storage facility was completed in 2013. The facility has been used to store waste while the regulatory and construction process for the permanent facility moves forward. Similar facilities are located in France, Spain and Sweden.

Once completed, the permanent facility will remain under regulatory supervision for approximately 100 years.

INPP, which was closed because of its structural similarities to the infamous Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, is located in Lithuania's  Visaginas municipality.