Completion of Khmelnitsky NPP plunged into scandal: "Fuel will be Russian"

Less than a year has passed since Energoatom launched a campaign to complete the construction of two units of the Khmelnitsky NPP, and Ukraine is already being covered by a scandal. Some deputies consider the project itself to be corruption. At the same time, local experts say that Russian fuel will have to be used for new units.

The new Year did not go well for Energoatom and the Minister of Energy of Ukraine Herman Galushchenko. At the beginning of the "government hour" in the Verkhovna Rada, deputies blasted the plans of power engineers to complete two units of the Khmelnitsky NPP and called it a scam, demanding the resignation of the minister. Next, the Ukrainian parliament disrupted the vote on the bill on the completion of NPP power units in the first reading and the purchase of Russian equipment from Bulgaria, where the Belene NPP was never completed.

Bulgaria is asking for 600 million euros for the equipment and has set a deadline for making a decision on March 12. Therefore, the Ukrainian side is in a hurry. Local experts also staged a new wave of scandal. The new reactors will be able to use only Russian fuel, they said.

"In the public plane of discussions about the construction of KhNPP-3,4 using Russian reactors from Bulgaria, one more significant aspect has never been mentioned — nuclear fuel for VVER-1000/V466 reactors," Olga Kosharnaya, an independent nuclear safety expert who has worked for many years in the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Nuclear Safety, and Nuclear Safety, writes on Facebook. Security and State Committee of Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine.

She notes that the explanatory note to the bill states that the fuel produced by the American Westinghouse will be used.

"In fact, so far only the Russian company TVEL produces fuel for such a reactor model. In order for Westinghouse to produce such fuel assemblies (fuel assemblies), it must invest in development, conduct research, tests of various kinds, certify, etc. Will the company do this for the sake of two reactors in Ukraine? There are doubts… Thus, if the power units are bought and somehow built, Energoatom will buy nuclear fuel for B466 from the joint venture Framatome with the Russian TVEL from Germany (Linden), which plans to produce nuclear fuel for Russian reactors in central Europe under a Russian license," the expert added.

According to her, neither the head of Energoatom, Peter Kotin, nor anyone else mentioned this feature.

"This is an additional fact to the entire volume of fraud on the part of the leadership of the Ministry of Energy and NNEGC Energoatom around the aggressive promotion of the completion project of KhNPP-3,4 with a close to real value of 200-250 billion UAH ($ 5-6 billion), as the minister-lawyer said at a meeting with MPs who do not agree to support the draft law on the placement of KhNPP-3,4"- Olga Kosharnaya wrote.

Energoatom did not leave her message unanswered.

"Power units No. 3 and No. 4 of Khmelnitsky NPP will operate exclusively on fuel from the American company Westinghouse, or fuel produced in Ukraine uses Westingouse technology, as well as all other existing nuclear power units," the national company said and called on the competent services to pay attention "to the systematic subversive work of the expert aimed at discrediting Ukrainian power engineers and nuclear scientists."

Alexander Uvarov, director of AtomInfo-Center, notes that the Bulgarian project does have some differences from the serial Soviet VVER-1000/320 project, which Westinghouse deals with at the Ukraine.

"The VVER-1000/466 project for Bulgaria represents a transitional step from the Soviet VVER-1000 to the Russian serial VVER-1200. It increased the number of drives of the control and protection system (SUS), which improved the characteristics of the safety project. Accordingly, this required changes to both the design of the upper block and the design of the fuel assembly," says Alexander Uvarov. According to him, the differences between the VVER-1000 reactor projects are well described in the Russian educational and methodical literature for students of nuclear specialties, which until recently was widely available on To Ukraine: "I doubt that bloggers have opened the eyes of any of the nuclear scientists now."

Will Westinghouse be interested in developing its own fuel assembly project for two Ukrainian units with reactor equipment for Bulgaria, the director of AtomInfo-Center noted that in Bulgaria Westinghouse is very interested in implementing its new fuel assembly project called RWFA-13 on one unit of the Kozloduy NPP.

"Another thing is that I also consider the idea of completing two units of the Khmelnitsky NPP to be a scam and a scam, and I think that countries geographically located to the west of the Ukraine," says Alexander Uvarov.

Olga Kosharnaya herself reports that other countries participating in the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context have already become interested in the scandal on Ukraine, as they were previously consulted on a different reactor model.

On February 11-16, a session of the secretariat will be held in Geneva and one of the issues will be the collection of information on the completion of the Khmelnitsky NPP units, the expert added.

As EADaily reported, last year the Russian army retaliated against the power grid and power plants of Ukraine. In Kiev, they stated that they had lost almost half of the capacity — more than 9 GW. And the three nuclear power plants remaining under Kiev's control provide 75% of the country's electricity production. This gave rise to the leadership of Energoatom to announce the start of completion of two units of the Khmelnitsky NPP and work on the construction of two more new ones.

*Extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation