Energy, Lithuania, Nuclear power plant

The Ignalina NPP had planned to call the tender for a contactor of the repository, were radioactive waste would be stored for 300 years, in the fall of 2018 following the selection of the supervision engineer. But it has so far failed to select one, and Ignalina's head Audrius Kamienas says the tenders will be separated and the contractor tender will be called separately without selecting the supervision engineer.

"They (the engineer and repository tenders) cannot be not related, as they are about the same object, but we are now trying to "unbind" them," Kamienas told.

Nevertheless, he hopes, the supervision engineer will take part in the selection of the main contractor.

In his words, the repository contractor tender will be called after all documents are harmonized with the Central Project Management Agency. Under the plan, the repository's construction would take three years, and the future contractor would have to be approved by the Lithuanian government.

The repository would be situated close to the Ignalina NPP and waste would be taken there until 2038 when the nuclear power plant's decommissioning is set to be finished.

The repository tender important in terms of national security, and the future contractor must be approved by the government to avoid the repetition of a situation when Germany's Nukem won large-value Ignalina NPP decommissioning tenders and then became a company controlled by Atomstrojeksport which is part of Russian nuclear energy construction giant Rosatom.