Lithuania’s Ignalina nuclear power plant, which has been closed for ten years and is undergoing decommissioning, on 28 March announced a tender to select a contractor for the construction of a storage facility for radioactive waste.
According to information on the Central Portal of Competitive Procurement, the purchase price is €73.16 million ($80m) including VAT. Offers will be accepted until 30 June.
The winner of the competition will have until 2023 to build the entire infrastructure, and two of the three planned reinforced concrete modules at a site near the plant. The modules will be used for the placement of some 70,000 cubic metres of waste packed in concrete containers. A third module will be built if necessary.
Waste will be place in the repository until 2038 (the deadline for the complete decommissioning of the station). The repository will monitored for at least 100 years after closure, with use of the repository area restricted for a further 200 years.
In June 2017, Lithuania’s State Inspectorate for Physical Planning and Construction at the Ministry of the Environment issued a building permit for project B25 to build near-surface repository for low-level and intermediate-level short-lived radioactive waste.
In March 2019, Ignalina launched a tender worth approximately €100 million to select a contractor for construction of the repository. However, in August 2019 the tender was cancelled. The Public Procurement Commission decided to terminate the process based on analysis of the questions raised by the tenderers and the complexity of amendments to the terms and conditions.
Ignalina NPP was the only nuclear power plant in the world with two RBMK-1500 reactors, which at the time were considered the most powerful in the world.
Ignalina 1 was shut down in 2004 and unit 2 in 2009 as a condition for Lithuania’s accession to the European Union.
Photo: The B5-2 project involves the construction of a near-surface repository for Ignalina nuclear power plant (Photo: INPP)
