OREANDA-NEWS. October 18, 2012.   The so-called Nuclear Island - Atomflot's storage facilities for spent fuel - will start operating ashore the Kola Bay in 2013.

Construction of the facilities started back in 2005 and will be completed next year, said the Atomflot's deputy general on deployment and special production Konstantin Knyazevsky, Tuesday, at the public council session on nuclear safety in Murmansk.

Atomflot built its first radioactive waste storage in 1986 which got fully loaded by 2005. The decision was eventually taken to raise extra storage facilities.

The new 'nuclear island' will host a technological complex and a container-type storage site. In the meantime, Atomflot is reconstructing its terminal #5 that will later allow anchorage of ice-breakers to have their nuclear fuel recharged.

"We are now finishing a transshipment building which has been equipped with its own ventilation system and sluices to prevent nuclear contamination", said Knyazevsky.

According to Kontantin Knyazevsky, the nuclear island is a place to store spent reactor wastes and contaminated equipment, and to transship the wastes from Gremikha and Andreeva Bay.

"The new complex will let us concentrate on smaller area and focus our control on this storage site", said the first deputy director of Atomflot Mustafa Kashka. "Besides, we will keep less people employed who may potentially encounter radiation risks".

Construction of the waste storage site is funded by Russian and foreign contributors.

Atomflot's main mission is "exploitation of nuclear ice-breakers fleet in the interests of Russia's security and national policy in the Arctic". To handle the spent reactor fuel is an integral part of the Atomflot's job.