Ukraine has agreed an increase in supplies of nuclear
fuel with Westinghouse and building a nuclear fuel plant in Ukraine in the
future to avoid dependence on Russia, Ukrainian Energy and Coal Industry
Minister Ihor Nasalyk has said.
"We agreed to diversify supplies for almost half
of nuclear reactors and to build a nuclear fuel plant on the territory of
Ukraine," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.
The minister said that the agreements were reached
during his recent trip to the United States.
Nasalyk recalled that at present Russia supplies
almost 95% of nuclear fuel to Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs).
The minister specified that Westinghouse is ready to
discuss building of the nuclear plant in Ukraine.
"On August 18 I will fly to Kazakhstan where I
will discuss, among other issues, the completion of the nuclear fuel plant in
Ukraine. We have two sources. When we have two, it is better to work," he
said.
As reported, in order to diversify sources of nuclear
fuel supply for the country's NPPs, Energoatom jointly with Westinghouse in
2000 launched the project for the qualification of this company's fuel. In
March 2008 Energoatom and Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB (Sweden) signed a
commercial contract to ship fresh fuel to three or six reactors of Ukrainian
NPPs in 2011-2015. In April 2014, the sides prolonged the contract until 2020.
At present, the Yuzhnoukrainsk NPP's reactor three and
Zaporizhia NPP's reactor five are the only reactors that run on Westinghouse
fuel. A plan to broaden the use of upgraded Westinghouse nuclear fuel
assemblies (WR fuel assemblies) involves their use at reactor two of
Yuzhnoukrainsk NPP in December 2016.
Energoatom operates all four active NPPs in Ukraine.
It runs 15 power units equipped with pressurized water reactors with a total
installed capacity of 13.835 gigawatts.
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