Lithuania’s Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant sought buyers for its unused nuclear fuel as it advances plans for a deep geological repository for radioactive waste, but efforts to transfer the material to France and Russia have failed, officials told lawmakers Wednesday.
Patricija Ceiko, an adviser in the Energy Ministry’s Nuclear Energy Policy Group, said the plant offered to sell the fuel for reprocessing to a French company, which declined because Ignalina’s fuel assemblies were incompatible with its technology.
“The French were very clear – they refused to take this fuel, as it is too expensive for them to reprocess fuel made to a nuclear plant’s specific recipe,” Ceiko told the parliament’s Committee on Audit. She said the composition used at Ignalina was unsuitable for reprocessing in France.
The nuclear plant’s CEO Linas Baužys told BNS that if France had accepted the material, it would have used the reprocessed fuel itself, while returning any remaining radioactive waste to Lithuania.
Ceiko said Lithuania also held talks with Russia, initially to sell the fuel and later to transfer it free of charge. Negotiations collapsed after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We were coordinating the logistics for transporting this unused nuclear fuel to Russian territory,” she said, noting that Latvia had been involved because an armed escort would be required. “Everything came to a halt when the war in Ukraine began.”
Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant spokeswoman Jolita Mažeikienė said the plant holds 2,400 tons of spent fuel and eight tons of unused fuel.
Baužys said any sale would require approval from Russia, which supplied the fuel, and that successful transfer would eliminate the need to place the unused fuel in a future repository.
Michail Demčenko, head of the State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate, said reprocessing the fuel would not be worthwhile because its enrichment level is too low.
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