A consortium comprising Westinghouse Electric Spain, US-based engineering company Jacobs and the Lithuanian Energy Institute has been chosen to plan dismantling and waste management at the Ignalina nuclear power station in Lithuania.
Soviet-designed Ignalina could be the first graphite-moderated reactor facility to be dismantled, making it an important test bed for methodologies that could be used to decommission the UK’s Magnox and advanced gas-cooled reactors, which also have graphite cores.
Ignalina’s two Soviet-era RBMK units were shut down permanently in 2004 and 2009 in line with requirements for Lithuania’s membership of the EU.
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