Mr. Ozharovsky said that in a while Belarus would face the necessity of construction of its own storage for nuclear wastes which would require additional significant financial resources. In particular, it would become necessary to reconstruct the temporary storage every 30 years, given that a technology of the construction of the permanent storage for the nuclear wastes was not yet elaborated anywhere in the world. “The problem of safe treatment of the nuclear wastes has not been resolved by any country in the world. There are countries trying to work on this problem, for instance, Scandinavian countries and the USA, however no technology exists”, said the expert.

Mr. Vladimir Slivniak, the Co-Chairman of the International Group “Ecoprotection”, pointed out that an opportunity to process the nuclear wastes in another country would only for a while allow for putting off the solution of the issue. In case of the Belarusian NPP being built by the experts from Russia, the nuclear wastes would be processed in the Russian territory in compliance with the Russian legislation. The fuel would not be utilized in the process of treatment but exposed to chemical processing in order to excrete plutonium. The radioactive waste obtained as a result would occupy a hundred times larger volume compared to the volume of the fuel used. In accordance with the legislation, after glazing it would be returned back to Belarus, the origin of the fuel. The expert underlined that for the time being no country leaved processed wastes in its own territory.

The issue of the nuclear wastes treatment should become one of the most important issues for discussion while planning the construction of the Nuclear Power Plant, believe experts Ozharovsky and Slivniak.

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