A leaked document points to doubts among experts over the safety of controversial nuclear fuel supplied to Ukraine by international company Westinghouse Electric Company.
The German document was leaked to Internet site versii.com. It was confirmed as authentic by its authors, the renowned German technical certification agency TUEV.
This agency says that fuel assemblies supplied by Westinghouse had not been proven fit for use by a nuclear power plant in Mykolayiv in southern Ukraine. The document was dated Feb. 2. The fuel assemblies were installed April 8 and were supposed to go live by April 26, according to Ukraine’s nuclear power operator Energoatom.
Past malfunctions at involving fuel supplied by Westinghouse caused contamination of cooling water and a reactor shutdown at a reactor in the Czech Republic.
Aside from the safety issues, the problems could hurt Ukraine’s attempt to diversify its source of nuclear fuel supplies and break the current Russian monopoly. Russian state-owned company TVEL supplies 100 percent of Ukraine’s fuel needs, but Ukraine’s national energy strategy calls for taking fuel from non-Russian suppliers when it becomes available. And some see geopolitical dimensions between the safety concerns being raised and Russia’s near-monopoly status as nuclear fuel supplier to Ukraine’s 15 reactors at four power plants, which generate nearly half of the nation’s electricity.
Russia is opposed to Ukraine’s flirtation with Westinghouse and has been accused of spreading media slanders, exaggerating the problems that the company experienced and spreading rumors of “Chornobyl 2,” a follow-up disaster to the one in Chornobyl that exploded with deadly consequences on April 26, 1986.
The U.S. government has strongly backed the 10-year old plan for Westinghouse to supply some of Ukraine’s nuclear fuel needs. U.S. President Barack Obama specifically endorsed the effort in the framework of his high-profile meeting with President Viktor Yanukovych on April 12 during the nuclear security summit in Washington D.C.
While former President Viktor Yushchenko also supported Westinghouse’s efforts to manufacture fuel for Soviet-era reactors, it is thought that the new Yanukovych administration will prefer to stick with Russia’s TVEL, whose prices are lower.
Yanukovych has shifted Ukraine’s foreign policy in a much more pro-Russian direction. He has recently made a series of concessions to Russia in exchange for a lower gas price, including prolonging the lease for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet naval base in Ukraine’s port of Sevastopol.
Ukraine accounts for around 25 percent of TVEL’s annual revenue, worth $300-$500 million, according to analyst Anna Kuprianova of Moscow brokerage UralSib.
The anticipated retreat from diversification may have prompted Yushchenko-era appointees to commission industrial trials of Westinghouse fuel, despite negative recommendations from experts.
The assessment by renowned German technical certification agency TUEV reveals that Ukraine’s State Technical-Scientific Center for Nuclear and Radiation Safety told Ukraine’s nuclear industry chiefs that the fuel assemblies should not be used without further testing and documentation. But nuclear power operator Energoatom did not agree with the recommendation, according to Energoatom spokeswoman Natalia Kozlova.
The German assessment confirms an earlier recommendation against commissioning the fuel assemblies, and points to additional problems with the Westinghouse fuel assemblies that the Ukrainian experts missed.
“The statement that Westinghouse specialists have done this sort of work before is not sufficient to prove that requirements for nuclear and radioactive safety have been met,” according to the German assessment.
“On the basis of the materials presented, it is indeed quite difficult to draw the conclusion that the use of the TVS-W (Westinghouse fuel assemblies) in the third reactor of the south Ukraine nuclear power plant is safe.”
The most serious criticism made by both Ukrainian and German experts is that the 42 fuel assemblies that have entered trial industrial use are not identical in design to the six pilot fuel assemblies successfully tested in the reactor. The experts thus argue that “the link between the material presented, and proving the nuclear-radioactive safety” of using the Westinghouse fuel assemblies “is not always obvious and understandable.”
The German and Ukrainian experts also criticized the failure to use modern 3-D technologies for modeling heat exchange in the reactor core, the failure to specify programming codes used and a range of missing or inaccurate documentation, making it impossible to assess compliance with safety standards.
Westinghouse representatives called the leaked German assessment “outdated,” but said they were looking into the matter. Dr. Hannes Wimmer, who led the German research team and has extensive experience of VVER-type reactors, said that it would “in principle” be possible for Westinghouse to remedy the faults. Dr. Vladislav Inyushev, who headed the Ukrainian expert team, refused to comment.
Controversy has long dogged Westinghouse’s attempts to develop fuel for Soviet reactors. In 2006, deformations were discovered in Westinghouse fuel assemblies at Czech Republic’s Temelin nuclear plant, causing reactor shutdowns after radioactive leaks contaminated cooling water.
Temelin operator CEZ subsequently did not renew the Westinghouse contract, which expires this year, but claimed that this was for commercial reasons. In 2009 CEZ announced it would not use up its remaining stocked Westinghouse fuel, but switch back to Russian fuel as supplies became available.
The Temelin plant has VVER-1000 reactors of the same type as at South Ukraine plant. Finland’s Loviisa VVER plant has also terminated use of Westinghouse in favour of Russian fuel, although for commercial rather than safety reasons, according to operator Fortum.
According to Steve Kidd, director of research at World Nuclear, an industry lobby organization, Westinghouse is the only Western company to have attempted to manufacture fuel for Soviet reactors. While Western-built reactors share design features and can take fuel from a range of Western manufacturers, ensuring competition, the design specifics of Soviet reactors have discouraged most Western manufacturers from trying to compete with the Russian fuel producers.
A decision is expected this year on whether Ukraine will award Westinghouse a four-year contract. The Yushchenko administration intended for Westinghouse to supply fuel to three of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors starting 2011.
Westinghouse Electric Company, originally a U.S. company, is 70 percent owned by Japan’s Toshiba group as of 2006. Kazakhstan state-owned nuclear power company Kazatomprom also holds a 10 percent stake in Westinghouse.
Kyiv Post staff writer Graham Stack can be reached at [email protected]
