Russia’s Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision has issued a licence to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise NO RAO (national radiological waste operator) for the placement and construction of a terminal for the final isolation of radioactive waste (RW) in the Tomsk Region near Seversk, NO RAO said on 13 July. The volume of the storage facility being built will be 150,000 cubic metres of waste of classes 3 and 4, mainly from the activities of the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC).
As part of the first stage of construction, a complex of buildings and structures for administrative purposes, transport infrastructure, access road to the site, internal and external engineering networks will be erected. According to Andrey Minin, Deputy Director General for Licensing and Permitting Activities of NO RAO, the construction of the storage facility is scheduled for the third quarter of 2021. It is planned that the contractor will be determined before the end of the first quarter of 2021.
The procedure for public discussions in Seversk and Tomsk on the construction project at the SCC took place in November 2018. As a result of public hearings, the project received a positive conclusion from state environmental experts. The facility is being constructed within the framework of the federal target programme "Ensuring nuclear and radiation safety for 2016-2020 and for the period up to 2030.
