ST. PETERSBURG. April 21 (Interfax-AVN) - Britain has pledged 16 million pounds ($30.52 million) for the construction of a long-term container storage facility for spent nuclear fuel on the territory of Atomflot (Murmansk region), Jonathan Holloway, a naval attache at the British embassy in Russia, told Interfax.
Taking part in the project are Crown Agents company on the British side, and Murmansk Shipping Company and Atomflot federal state unitary enterprise on the Russian side.
The full contract for the construction of the facility's buildings with a total value of 4.6 million pounds ($8.78 million) is already signed at Atomflot. A contract for the supplies of non-standard equipment worth 2.6 million pounds ($4.96 million) was concluded earlier.
According to the project, the facility is to be commissioned in April 2006.
The construction of a nuclear waste storage facility in Murmansk is part of the Global Partnership program, which was approved at the G-8 summit in 2000, when the leaders of the world's most industrially developed nations agreed to set aside $20 billion for preventing the spread of nuclear fission materials, bolstering nuclear safety and solving ecological problems on the post-Soviet space.