The conference is discussing new international approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle that are intended to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.
Experts attending the conference said the organization of an international center to handle domestic and foreign spent nuclear fuel at the mining and chemical plant in Zheleznogorsk, in Siberia, would require up to $4.7 billion in investments.
Igor Rybalchenko, a specialist in energy technologies, said an estimated $2.530 billion would have to be invested in a facility for storing Russian nuclear waste. With this level of investment, around 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel could be stored. If the centre was also to store waste from foreign nuclear power stations, $4.7 billion will have to be put in. In this case, the centre would have a storage capacity of about 700,000 metric tons.
Rybalchenko said creating an nuclear waste storage center on the grounds of the Zheleznogorsk plant was a viable idea, but that a number of studies had to be carried out first, possibly involving foreign researchers. He said Russia had enough technical capabilities to get such a center up and running.
Yevgeny Kudryavtsev, head of the nuclear technology department at Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry, told a press conference earlier today that the Zheleznogorsk plant was "the most appropriate place to process and store spent nuclear fuel." He said 16,000 metric tons of nuclear waste was currently stored in Russia.
