Railway works completed in Chernobyl – 43 km of new tracks

On July 9, NNEGC Energoatom completed the construction of a railway line from Vilcha station to Yanov station with a length of 43 km, which connected the Centralized Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel (CSFSF) with the railway network of Ukraine.

According to the press service of the company, two brigades of railway workers were simultaneously laying the track: one from the Vilcha station, the other from the Yanov station.

On February 3, the Cabinet of Ministers transferred the Vilcha – Yanov railway track (exclusion zone, Ivankovsky district of the Kiev region) to the balance of NNEGC Energoatom.

“After the transfer, Energoatom promptly negotiated with Ukrzaliznytsia JSC, which acted as the contractor for laying the railway track, signed a contract and financed the work. Now, work is being completed to collect and remove the remains of plants and shrubs from which the path was cleared,” – said Nikolay Bozhko, General Director of Atomproektzhiniring OP.

According to him, by July 20, the first trial special train will be run at the CSFSF with a simulator of a container with spent nuclear fuel.

In turn, and.about. Petr Kotin, President of NNEGC “Energoatom”, noted that for three years the construction of this access remained the only obstacle to the full-fledged commissioning of the first start-up complex of the CSFSF. But in the near future, spent nuclear fuel will be delivered there from three nuclear power plants – Rivne, Khmelnytsky and South-Ukrainian, – which will be stored there for the next hundred years.

Let us remind you that in December 2020 Energoatom completed the construction of the first stage of the CSFSF worth about UAH 2 billion. However, for the full-fledged commissioning of the first start-up complex, it was necessary to complete a section of the Vilcha – Yanov railway line in the ChNPP Exclusion Zone with a length of 43 km.

Works on the construction of ISF-2 were financed from the international nuclear safety account of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, of which Ukraine is a donor. The project cost is 448.2 million euros.

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