EC infuses Serbian nuclear relic cleanup with critical donation

Additional $25M needed to complete fuel repatriation for aging reactor

A global effort to remove dangerous spent fuel and decommission a Soviet-designed Serbian reactor on the outskirts of Belgrade cleared the second of three major funding hurdles.

As part of the Vinca Institute Nuclear Decommissioning (VIND) Programme, the Serbian government and the IAEA recently signed an $8.63 million (EUR 5.46 million) framework agreement with the European Commission to help fund activities related to decommissioning of the aging Cold War-era nuclear reactor. The European donation is the largest in the project’s history, and the infusion of funds is vital to complete a crucial stage of the decommissioning programme.

“Thanks to the impressive contribution by the European Commission, we’re one step closer to completing this important and complex project,” said John J. Kelly, the IAEA’s Special Programme Manager for VIND. “With radioactive waste, disused sources, and leaking spent fuel that’s almost 45 years old, the Vinca site presents huge radiological challenges.”

The task at Vinca is a mammoth undertaking, and the work is split into three major projects. In the first and most expensive project, old Soviet fuel, some of which is high-enriched uranium (HEU) that could be converted to weapons-grade material, must be safely repackaged and then prepared and repatriated to Russia for reprocessing. Once completed, the VIND spent fuel shipment will comprise the largest shipment of spent research reactor fuel in the European theatre, and extra shipping casks have already been built for the project through funding received from the USA.

In the second VIND project, thousands of containers of unprocessed radioactive waste and disused sealed radioactive sources must be removed from old, degraded storage buildings, conditioned and packaged for safe, secure storage, and placed into new storage facilities, The new storage facilities are currently under construction and should be ready later this year.

The third VIND project focuses on decommissioning of the research reactor. The reactor’s draft decommissioning plan is almost finished, and plans are in place to begin some decommissioning and dismantlement activities in 2009.