KIEV, August 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine has begun the construction of a central nuclear fuel storage facility in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on Tuesday, the press service of the Energoatom company reported on Tuesday.

Taking part in the ceremony launching the project was head of Energoatom Yuri Nedashkovsky and President of the Holtec International contractor company Kris Singh.

The facility on an area of 18 hectares is to be built by late 2017. Its capacity is 16,530 of spent fuel assemblies, including 12,010 fuel assemblies from VVER-1000 nuclear reactors and 4,520 from VVER-440 units.

The spent fuel will be delivered from the Khmelnitsky, Rovensky and Yuzhno-Ukrainsky nuclear power plants. Ukraine's Zaporozhsky NPP has operated its own storage facility since 2001.

The feasibility study estimated the price of the new fuel storage facility at about 1.23 billion hryvnias in 2008 prices (about 90 million dollars at the current hryvnia rate).