Technical Director Nikolai Sorokin of Rosenergoatom, a division of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency, said construction of a unique radioactive waste processing facility will be completed at the Kola nuclear power plant in northern Russia in late 2005.
RIA Novosti reported that Sorokin said, "The deadline for commissioning the facility has been scheduled for the end of 2005. It will still take long to prepare it for operation."
Rosenergoatom oversees civilian nuclear power plant management. Russian nuclear experts developed the new technology to be used at the facility. The technology was first applied at the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk in the Kaluga region near Moscow. "Now it will be applied on an industrial level," Sorokin said.
Sorokin added that the new technology allowed for a higher efficiency in processing nuclear waste water, resulting in a considerable reduction of radioactive wastes.
The Kola nuclear power plant's four reactors supply the heavy industry on the Kola Peninsula. The Kola nuclear power plant was the first Soviet nuclear power plant to be built north of the Arctic Circle. Kola provides 60 percent of its electrical output to the local heavy industry, while the remaining 40 percent is exported to Karelia, St. Petersburg and Finland.
