MURMANSK, September 8 (RIA Novosti, Yekaterina Kozlova) - The construction of a unique radioactive waste processing facility will be completed at the Kola nuclear power plant (NPP) in northern Russia in late 2005, said a spokesman for Rosenergoatom, a division of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency that oversees civilian nuclear power plant management.

"The deadline for commissioning the facility has been scheduled for the end of 2005," Rosenergoatom's Technical Director Nikolai Sorokin said at a news conference at the Kola NPP. "It will still take long to prepare it for operation," Sorokin said.

The new technology to be used at the facility was developed by Russian experts, he said, and applied at the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk in the Kaluga region near Moscow.

"Now it will be applied on an industrial level," Sorokin said.

He said the new technology allowed for purifying nuclear water at a higher degree, resulting in a considerable reduction of radioactive wastes.