ROOPPUR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT Draft agreement on spent nuclear fuel removal approved

The cabinet on Monday endorsed a draft agreement on ‘Cooperation Concerning Return of Spent Nuclear Fuel from Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant to the Russian Federation’ for signing with Russia. 
The science and technology ministry placed the draft agreement in the weekly cabinet meeting in parliament building. 
‘As per the agreement, Russia will take away the spent nuclear fuel from the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant being constructed in Pabna,’ cabinet secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam said at a briefing after the meeting. 
The cabinet also approved another proposal of the same ministry for ratification of the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and Nuclear Facilities proposed by International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure peaceful use of nuclear energy, he said. 
Dhaka and Moscow recently finalised the draft deal under which Russia would take 
away used nuclear fuel from the Rooppur nuclear power plant.
The intergovernmental agreement between the science and technology ministry and Russia’s state atomic energy corporation ROSATOM would be signed in Moscow 
by July, science and technology minister Yeafesh Osman told New Age earlier.
In 2011, the two countries signed the first intergovernmental agreement on development of nuclear infrastructures in Bangladesh. The agreement said that a separate 
agreement would be required to remove spent fuel from the nuclear power plant and take it back to Russia.
Under two separate supplier’s credit agreements of $13.21 billion the Atomic Energy Commission is implementing the nuclear power project.
The first unit of 2,400MW power plant is scheduled to be commissioned in 2022 and the second unit in 2023 while the shipment of spent fuel would not mature before 2030, said the officials.
The beginning of the construction of the first unit of the power plant is scheduled for August 2017. 

 

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