IAEA safeguards implementation in Ukraine. Current state, problems, prospects

Full text: 1. The annual volume of nuclear fuel consumption of all units in Ukraine is more than 20 tons. Almost all fuel assemblies, which supplied from the Russian Federation, finally returned back to Russia. Ukraine ships out to the Russian reprocessing plants the spent fuel from WWER reactors. Spent fuel of RBMK reactors is stored in the Chernobyl dry storage. The burnup and the changes of the initial isotope content of uranium dioxide mass inside spent fuel rods are usually determined by calculated methods. It is quite enough for shipped out materials. But for the spent fuel, which will be stay for the long time storing at Ukraine, it is necessary to obtain more detail variable data. So, nearest time after the putting into operation of a new spent fuel dry storage in Zaporizhe NPP the each spent assembly will be tested with methods proposed IAEA, such as Fork Detector (FDET) or SFAT instruments. The prior test measurements of the WWER-440 spent assemblies at Rivno NPP gave an encouraging results and to a certain extent confirmed the adequacy of applied calculated technique. The nearest testing of the WWER-1000 are planned to carry on this June and there is expectation to get a good data as well. All results will be shown at this paper. 2. According to the Ukraine SSAC all nuclear routine activities are realized within the 24 material balance areas. 21 of them belong to Ministry of Fuel and Energy. There mainly are areas with power reactors WWER-1000, WWER-440, nuclear fuel storage and one research reactor IR-100 at the Sevastopol Nuclear Power Industry Institute. But soon such zoning will be changed. The number of MBA will be increased probably. It's bounded with a new spent fuel dry storage which is putting in operation at Zaporizhe NPP, and with completion of new two WWER units which have been constructed at Rivno and Khmelnitsky NPPs. Besides that, two or three material balance areas formation for radioactive sources accounting and control is planned by the Ukraine regulatory body. Organizational and technical procedures on IAEA Safeguards implementations at the Ukrainian NPPs today are arranged sufficiently. For this the State nuclear legislation was noticeably changed and developed, especially, since 1995 when the second version of the Agreement based on document INFCIRC 153 was signed. Some of fundamental laws were enacted. A lot of technical norms and rules were edited as well. 'The Operator's Instruction on the Safeguards Implementation', 'Rules for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials at the WWER-1000 Facility' essentially amplified the disposable set of the necessary technical manuals for the Safeguards Groups personnel and the managing staff of the NPPs. The process of legislative and regulatory basis improving is going on. So, recently very important 'Low on Physical Protection' was enacted in Ukraine. Moreover, since 1998 according to IAEA approved Subsidiary Arrangement for Ukraine the Facility Attachments have been designing for each facility. The chart of all created documents, their subordination and correlation are shown in the paper. 3. In August 2000 Ukraine signed the Protocol Additional to Agreement. Now the work on its ratification is going on in different state bodies. In this area some of problems stay not solved. It takes some efforts and time. As the Protocol Additional covers the uranium, zirconium, hafnium industries, nuclear fuel cycle scientific research investigations, which take place in Ukraine the current legislative basis of each branches shall be coordinated with all new conditions. Besides that, some questions concerning the impending circulation of the confidential information between operators, state bodies and IAEA need the additional measures. All these questions are solving now and will be reflected in the paper. (author)