Stockpiles of foreign nuclear waste "will exist in no case" in Ukraine, the president's office said in a statement.

Yushchenko apparently discarded the idea after he sparked a loud public outcry last week when he said the government was studying the possibility of storing foreign nuclear waste at Chernobyl, in the north of the country less than 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the capital Kiev.

He said waste from Ukraine's four working nuclear power plants -- currently primarily exported to Russia -- could also be stored there.

A 30-kilometer exclusion zone was established around the site soon after Chernobyl's number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded on April 26, 1986, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe.

The power station was completely shut down on December 15, 2000.

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