VLADIVOSTOK, September 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s nuclear energy state-run corporation, Rosatom, will organise in the Maritime Territory a centre for conditioning and long-term storage of radioactive waste.

The project’s budget is 2.5 billion roubles ($65 million), the corporation’s head Sergei Kiriyenko said on Friday.

The waste will be processed, pressed and packed into containers to be stored at special repositories, he told a meeting on radioactive security in the Far East, headed by Deputy Prime Minister, presidential envoy to the Far East Yuri Trutnev. By 2020, all potentially hazardous waste will be taken from the Far East, and less hazardous will be isolated at the centre for conditioning and long-term storage in the Maritime Territory.

He said that only the waste produced by local facilities will remain In the Primorye Territory.

Removal of most hazardous waste - spent nuclear fuel from the Pacific Fleet’s dismantled nuclear submarines - is due to be over this October, the official said. By 2016, the corporation will remove the Pacific Fleet’s beacons which used nuclear fuel. By 2020, all reactor sections of utilised submarines will be stored at a special facility.

“Our primary task was to cope with most hazardous wastes. They make almost 21,000 cubic metres, or 84 Ci,” he said. “In October, we shall remove the last used fuel, and then we shall be dealing only with the reactor sections, which are not hazardous. As submarines’ terms expire, we shall be removing them immediately from the region.