Žilvinas Jurkšus, the CEO of Ignalina NPP, said that the main topics discussed at the conference in London included nuclear fuel storage facility projects and negotiations with the Russian-owned German company Nukem, the main contractor.
"The main topics are the course of the (spent) nuclear fuel storage facility project and the solid fuel storage facility project. Also, they will discuss our overall relationship with the contractor, as well as the course of these processes and the progress achieved," he told BNS by telephone from London.
Commenting on acting Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas' recent statement that there was a probability that the Lithuanian State Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (VATESI) would not license nuclear fuel storage casks manufactured by Germany's GNS, Jurkšus said that the Ignalina plant had "a considerable number of serious questions" regarding the suitability of the casks.
Final conclusions on whether GNS' casks are fit for use are to be submitted to VATESI next February or March. The authority will then make its final decision on this issue.
The consortium of GNS and Nukem Technologies, which is controlled by Russia's energy giant Rosatom, is implementing multi-billion-litas decommissioning projects at the Ignalina plant, which are running years behind schedule. Nukem says that, by the end of August, Lithuania had paid 50 percent of the amount of money due for the casks.
The conference was organized by the Donors' Assembly of the Ignalina International Decommissioning Support Fund (IIDSF). The donors are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the European Commission.
