MOSCOW, May 20 (RIA Novosti) – Russia and Norway have signed contracts worth 100 million rubles ($2.9 million) to develop a system to deal with radioactive waste at the Andreeva Bay storage facility near Murmansk, the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said Tuesday.
The agreements for the further development of infrastructure to deal with spent nuclear fuel were signed in the Norwegian city of Vadso between the leadership of Finnmark and SevRao, a branch of Rosatom’s RosRao.
“Today the environmental situation has been significantly improved and sources of environmental contamination have been eliminated and acceptable conditions were created for dealing with the spent fuel and radioactive waste,” Rosatom said.
The facility, which was set up more than 50 years ago, was taken out of operation after an accident in 1982, when water was found to be leaking from the storage pool. The works at the facility resumed in late 1990s due to Norway’s financial support. International cooperation allowed to considerably speed up works to normalize the radiation environment at the site.
