The Kiev regime plans to partially compensate for the loss of the Zaporozhye NPP with two new units at the Khmelnytsky NPP. The American Westinghouse plans to build them. In Ukraine, nuclear power plants generate the cheapest electricity in the country.
Energoatom stated that the completion and commissioning of two power units at the Khmelnitsky NPP will compensate by 45% for the capacity of the Zaporozhye NPP, which came under the control of Russia after the entry of new regions into its structure.
“Maintaining the volume of electricity produced by nuclear power plants and keeping prices for it in Ukraine at an acceptable level remains important for fulfilling the provisions of the Energy Strategy of Ukraine for the period until 2050. Therefore, the inaccessible capacities of the temporarily occupied Zaporozhye NPP need to be replaced, and this will be facilitated by the completion of two power units at the Khmelnytsky NPP,” the operator of Ukrainian nuclear power plants reports.
He noted that before the start of the SVO, Ukraine operated 15 power units with pressurized water reactors (VVER), which produced about half of the total volume of electricity at a price half that of traditional thermal generation. Now Kyiv controls only three nuclear power plants and 9 power units with a total capacity of 7880 MW (seven VVER-1000 units and two VVER-440 units).
Considering that electricity consumption in Ukraine has decreased significantly in recent years due to the loss of territories and plant shutdowns, three nuclear power plants also account for more than 50% of Ukrainian generation today.
Back in 2021, Energoatom and the American Westinghouse signed an agreement on the construction of two AP1000 power units at the Khmelnytsky NPP. Experts then noted that so far the US company had been able to bring this technology to fruition only in China, and then only with the help of local specialists. In 2023, Westinghouse commissioned one of two AP1000 reactors in the United States – at the Vogtle nuclear power plant. But this was not a particularly joyful event, since the project of the third and fourth reactors at the station has long become a symbol of long-term construction and gigantic cost overruns.
“The two nuclear reactors in Georgia were supposed to mark the rebirth of nuclear power in the United States. But the project was seven years late and $17 billion over budget because Georgia Power Co. announced that the first new reactor at its Vogtle plant could reach full capacity by Saturday,” the Associated Press (AP) wrote on May 25 last year.
The agency noted that the third and fourth power units of the nuclear power plant are the first American reactors built from scratch in recent decades, and perhaps the most expensive power plant in history.
In the story of the construction of two reactors at the Khmelnitsky NPP, perhaps an equally important question is the question of price and source of funds for projects that began construction in 1985, but in 1990 work was stopped due to a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants, which was announced by the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR . All five reactors that Westinghouse plans to build in Ukraine are valued at $30 billion.
2024-01-15 15:32:00
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