New service ship for spent nuclear fuel
The Italian Fincantieri shipbuilding group has started the construction of a specialized vessel for transport of spent nuclear fuel in the Barents Sea.
The new vessel is built by Fincantieri’s yard in Muggiano and the construction period is estimated to 30 months, MBnews.ru reports. A contract on the project was signed in July 2008.
The vessel will have two storage rooms both with a 720 ton capacity. They are designed for transport of all kinds of containers with spent fuel, the Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom informs.
The shuttle route of the ship will be between Gremikha, the Andreeva Bay, the Saida Bay, Severodvinsk and other naval bases in the Kola Peninsula. By far most of the spent nuclear fuel in the region stems from nuclear-powered submarines.
Russia has a major challenge with dealing with major amounts of spent nuclear fuel from the Northern Fleet. The biggest storage site for the dangerous substances is in the Andreeva Bay, west of Murmansk city. As reported recently by BarentsObserver, a first shipment of the spent fuel was transported from the site in early June. It was then the old rebuilt vessel “Serebryanka” which shipped the load of spent nuclear fuel. Norwegian authorities were not informed about the shipment before after the vessel arrived in Murmansk.
