On July 6, 2017, Borys Stolyarchuk, the Head of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU), presented to Yuriy Nedashkovsky, the President of the State Enterprise "NNEGC Energoatom" a license for the construction and commissioning of the Centralized Storage for spent nuclear fuel (CSSNF) at the Exclusion Zone.
From July 5 to 7, 2017, the Assembly of Contributors to the Chornobyl Fund “Shelter” and donors to the Nuclear Safety Account took place at the London Office of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
The environmental monitoring of water bodies in the Exclusion Zone cannot be considered complete without hydrochemical indicators of water quality.
A special section concerning the hydrochemical monitoring was added to the Regulations of the State Specialized Enterprise "Ecocentre" on radiation-environmental monitoring and radiation-dosimetry control on the territory of the Exclusion Zone and the zone of absolute (obligatory) resettlement for the period 2017-2021 (hereinafter - the Regulation).
The functions of organization of visiting the Exclusion Zone by official delegations, representatives of mass media, business and scientific circles, public organizations, individual domestic and foreign citizens are performed by the State Enterprise “Center for Organizational, Technical and Information Support of the Exclusion Zone” (SE “COTIS”).
The issue of reacting to fire, the readiness of the Exclusion Zone for fire hazard period in 2017 and the provision of radiation safety were announced during the briefing with the participation of Vitalii Petruk, Head of SAUEZM, and Serhiy Kireyev, Chief Executive Officer of the SSE “Ecocentre”. The event was attended by representatives of more than 20 media outlets.
The meeting of the international expert group was held within the framework of the Fourth National Coordination Meeting on the Improvement of the Prevention and Extinguishing of Forest Fires in the Exclusion Zone on July, 3-5 2017 in Chornobyl. The meeting took place with the involvement of representatives from the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management (SAUEZM), the SAUEZM management enterprises (State Enterprise COTIS, SSE "Pivnichna Pushcha", SSE "EcoCenter", SSE "CEMRW", SSE "Chornobyl Special Combine"), State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SESU), Eleventh State Firefighting Unit (Chornobyl) of the Head Department of the SESU in the Kyiv Region, the Chornobyl NPP Police Division, Regional East European Fire Monitoring Center / National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv), the Ukrainian Research Institute of Civil Protection (URICP) and US Forest Service.
The domestic scientists and the participants of the international training course «United Ukrainian-Norwegian Education Program in the field of environment radioactivity» made the working visit to the Exclusion Zone, according to cooperative project of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, June 21 - 24, 2017.
On June 19-23, the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management hosted a seminar on best practices for processing, conditioning and storage of low-level waste. The IAEA experts and Ukrainian specialists from the Ukrainian State Corporation “Radon” gathered at the capital for the exchange of scientific and technical achievements and experience in radioactive waste (RW) management. The main goal of this event is to determine the most effective methods for low-level RW management. The theoretical foundations and practical experience of European countries were considered as well. The participants of the seminar stressed on the necessity to create separate storage facilities for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste in Ukraine and the use of European experience while assessing the safety of these storage facilities.
Lyubov Zinkevych, Chief of the Chornobyl NPP Decommissioning and Radioactive Waste Management Department of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management (SAUEZM) and Yuriy Shybetskyy, the Senior Research Fellow at the National Hydrometeorological Research Center of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, visited the city of Turku (Finland) last month to take part in the regular technical meeting of the Network of Underground Research Installations for Geological Burial (URF), which works under the IAEA. Representatives from more than 20 countries of the world, including Japan, the USA, France, Canada, Switzerland, etc. took part in this meeting as well.
During the regular meeting of the supervisory board on the implementation of projects under the Instrument for Nuclear Safety Cooperation (INSC) program, held on June 21, 2017 in Brussels, the Kingdom of Belgium, the representatives of the European Commission noted the professional approach and high level of cooperation with the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management (SAUEZM) regarding the implementation of projects and expressed their readiness to contribute to project proposals.
On June 20, 2017, representatives of the Fire Safety Academy of the Institute of Physics and Security of the Kingdom of the Netherlands visited the four-day seminar initiated and organized by the employees of the State Research Center "Chornobyl Center for Nuclear Safety, Radioactive Waste and Radioecology".
Department of State specialized enterprise «Chornobyl spetskombinat» responsible for operating water conservation structures and systems take measures to ensure barrier function of exclusion zone - prevention of spreading radionuclides by water.
