You're reading: Will Russia really build Ukraine its own nuclear fuel plant? Not all think so

The deal was signed and hailed as part of a visit to Kyiv by none other than Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. But some fear Ukraine is far from certain of getting its own source of nuclear fuel and thus lessening its energy dependence on Moscow.

And the reason for such fears, according to critics of the Oct. 27 signing, is that Moscow has no interest in breaking the monopoly it has long held on deliveries of Russian made nuclear fuel to Ukraine’s four nuclear power stations.

Defenders of the bilateral agreement, which entails Russian state-controlled TVEL building Ukraine’s first nuclear fuel plant, emphasize Ukraine’s future as an exporter of nuclear fuel to Europe.

Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, at Chornobyl (Chernobyl) in 1986, still depends on atomic energy to produce nearly half of the country’s electricity.

It was on the 24th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, April 26, that Putin voiced a controversial and unexpected proposal to unite the two countries’ nuclear industries.

More recently, on Oct. 27, Putin returned to Ukraine for the 7th Russian-Ukrainian intergovernmental committee on economic cooperation, where he and his Sovietesque Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Azarov moved toward implementing this proposal.

Critics of the deal have pointed out that Ukraine, which has its own uranium (to make the fuel) and a substance called zirconium (to make the nuclear fuel assemblies) could have broken free of the Russian monopoly, which also extends to deliveries of natural gas and oil to Ukraine.

But that opportunity passed when the American company Westinghouse lost out in its bid to build Ukraine’s first nuclear fuel plant to TVEL, a subsidiary of Russia’s nuclear power holding, Rosatom.

If Ukraine has the plant, then we are guaranteed the opportunity to make our own fuel and we have secured our energy dependence. But what if we suddenly get a chance to make fuel for export to Europe?”

– Yuriy Nedashkovsky, head of Eneroatom.

Oleksandr Hudyma, an opposition lawmaker and specialist in nuclear energy, told the Kyiv Post that the Russians have no interest or intention of ever building the plant.

“They aren’t planning to build anything at all,” he said. If the plant were built, according to Hudyma, Ukraine would still be contractually obliged to keep buying nuclear fuel from Russia for the lifespan of its existing 15 nuclear reactors.

Hudyma said he is still trying to get copies of contracts of these sale contracts as well as the details of the Oct. 27 agreement. “But as far as I know, there are only a couple of reactors in former East Bloc countries that could use the kind of fuel that the Russian-made plant will produce,” he said.

Yuriy Nedashkovsky, the head of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company Energoatom, said that modifications of the Russian made fuel assemblies would be applicable to European reactors. In an interview to the Kyiv Post on Nov. 3, he said Ukraine would “never” stop importing nuclear fuel from Russia.

The Oct. 27 agreement signed between Russian state-owned TVEL and Ukraine’s Nuclear Fuel Company envisions the construction of a plant in Ukraine with a capacity to process 400 metric tons of uranium per year – enough to meet all Ukraine’s domestic needs, experts say.

TVEL’s press service said the plant could be put into operation as early as 2013, but only if Ukraine moved “quickly” to approve a site.

Oleg Grigoriev, TVEL’s executive director for the CIS and Eastern Europe, told the Kyiv Post that Ukraine will own a controlling (50 percent +1 share) stake in the plant, which his company won the right to build fair and square.

The results of the competitive evaluation to select the builder of the plant were announced by the Ukrainian Cabinet on Sep. 22.

However, a source close to the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the competition was non-transparent and accompanied by a black PR campaign against Westinghouse, which was supported in its bid by the U.S. government.

Russia could indeed delay building of the fuel plant indefinitely, the anonymous source said, as it did for more than a decade already. TVEL first won a tender to build a plant in Ukraine way back in 1996, but nothing materialized.

The idea to hold another competition, a competitive evaluation instead of a tender, only resurfaced after the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko became Ukraine’s president in 2005. But the process dragged on until this year’s win by TVEL.

Kyiv Post Staff Writer John Marone can be contacted at [email protected]