Nearly 30 years after Chernobyl spewed nuclear dust across Europe and sparked fears of fallout around the globe, a strapped, war-torn Ukraine is opting for "upgrades" rather than shutdowns of its fleet of Soviet-era nuclear power reactors.
By Tony Wesolowsky
Nearly 30 years
after Chernobyl spewed nuclear dust across Europe and sparked fears of fallout
around the globe, a strapped, war-torn Ukraine is opting for
"upgrades" rather than shutdowns of its fleet of Soviet-era nuclear
power reactors.
Kyiv is planning
to spend an estimated $1.7 billion to bring the facilities, many of which are
nearing the end of their planned life spans, up to current Western
standards.
Ukrainian
officials hope to further their energy independence from Moscow and potentially
export some of the resulting electricity to Western Europe as part of an
"EU-Ukraine Energy Bridge" that can further cement Kyiv's ties with
Brussels.
But can they
allay fears, in Ukraine and beyond, that the plans will put Europe at risk of
another Chernobyl?
The project has
the backing of the West, including a $600 million contribution split evenly between
the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Euratom, the
EU's nuclear agency.
"The
project we support -- ourselves, the EBRD, and Euratom -- is actually
about the country's energy independence, and essentially, survival. Because for
the country, where nuclear power plants produce over 50 percent of electricity,
this sector remains vital -- very, very important. This is a
necessity," says Anton Usov, senior adviser for Eastern Europe and
the Caucasus at the EBRD, an international institution funding projects in
Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
For Kyiv,
keeping its nuclear power stations humming makes sense given the government's
strategy to wean the country off Russian energy, namely gas. Ukraine is also
making moves to end its dependence on Russia for the fuel powering the nuclear
plants.
Nuclear power
accounts for around half of Ukrainian electricity. Enerhoatom, the state-run
nuclear energy operator, runs 15 reactors at four nuclear power plants,
including Europe's largest power plant at Zaporizhzhya, which houses five
reactors. They are all equipped with pressurized reactors known by their
Russian abbreviation, VVER, which are Russian-designed but an upgrade to the
graphite-moderated RBMK reactors found at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear
power plant.
Most of the
reactors came online in the 1980s, with the oldest -- Unit 1 at the Rivne
nuclear plant -- generating power since December 1980, three years before the
ill-fated reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl started churning out power.
That Ukraine is
opting to upgrade its nuclear power plants is not surprising, according to
Steve Thomas, a recently retired professor of energy policy at the University
of Greenwich in the United Kingdom.
"There is a
lot of pressure around the world to life-extend existing plants as it becomes
more difficult to build new ones. As a result, the utilities are wanting
to hang onto the ones they've got," Thomas tells RFE/RL. He says
Europe's biggest producer of nuclear power, France, plans to spend an estimated
80 billion euros ($89 billion) to upgrade its 58 nuclear power reactors.
The EBRD says the
program of 87 safety-measure upgrades is vital for Ukraine, especially since
the Russian-backed conflict in the east of the country has affected coal
supplies from the Donbas region.
Supplies of the
kind of high-quality black coal that the Ukrainian power sector has relied on
so heavily in the past "could no longer be a sustainable solution for its
power plants," Usov says, "because the pace of their supply from
Donbas has been erratic."
Enerhoatom says
the upgrades are being done to the highest standard, but critics have their
doubts.
They say
Ukraine's nuclear reactors should be shut down as soon as possible, noting that
one of the reactors still churning out power is older than the unit that
exploded at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. They also raise doubts over
whether the program will be carried out to the highest standards.
"One of the
reasons why the EBRD was ready to finance this program is that they said they
will have a say in what is going on in Ukraine with the reactors, and that they
will have leverage to ensure that everything is done properly,” says Iryna
Holovko, a Ukranian nuclear activist with the NGO Bankwatch. "Now we see
that it is not happening because the [Ukrainian] regulator still makes
decisions without the safety procedures done."
Usov says the
concerns raised by outside groups -- including Bankwatch -- are being
addressed.
"We've
touched on these issues numerous times with the environmental groups. They
attend our annual meetings and regular meetings of the banks. And we had a
proper panel, with the likes of Bankwatch, where we touched upon these
issues," Usov says.
Enerhoatom vowed
through a spokesman that "Ukraine has some of the most demanding
conditions for extending" the life of its nuclear reactors.
"For
example, in Ukraine, a nuclear power unit with a 30-year lifeline can be granted
a 10-year extension after a safety assessment," spokeswoman Ilona Zaets
said in an e-mailed response to RFE/RL. "In the United States, reactors
are given a 30-year extension right away -- and this number could rise. The
[Ukrainian] Nuclear Regulatory Commission is discussing the possibility of
raising the extension period to 80 years."
The upgrade work
is just part of a bold plan to make Ukraine a major energy player in Europe
beyond its decades-long role as a major transit country. In a state energy strategy
document released in 2006 and covering the sector until 2030, Kyiv foresaw the
construction of 11 new nuclear units.
Ukraine's
current financial straits could put such bold plans on hold. However, Kyiv
appears to be moving ahead with intentions to make Ukraine part of the European
power grid by 2017, a target set out by President Petro Poroshenko
after he took office in mid-2014.
In March,
Ukrainian energy distributor Ukrenergo signed a deal to export electricity to
its Polish counterpart as part of the Ukraine-EU energy bridge. The proposal
envisages a 750-kilowatt transmission cable from Khmelnitskyy, in Ukraine, to
Rzeszow, in Poland, that will also carry electricity from a coal-fired energy
plant at Burshtyn, in Ukraine's far west. Under the project, the Khmelnitskyy
Unit 2 reactor will then be disconnected from the Ukraine grid and plugged into
the European one.
But the project
hinges on completion of two reactors at the Khmelnitskyy plant -- Units 3 and
4 -- whose construction was halted in 1990. Critics have questioned
whether finishing reactors that have been mothballed for 15 years makes
economic sense.
"They
clearly do have to modernize their generation, but completing half-built
nuclear power plants could still be a much more expensive option than building
renewables, gas-fired plants, or whatever," Thomas says. "I don't
think nuclear is necessarily the cheapest option."
In a sign that
Kyiv is working to cut its nuclear ties with Moscow, Poroshenko in October
ripped up an agreement with the Russian atomic energy giant Rosatom to complete
construction at Khmelnitskyy.
Aleksandr
Nikitin, chairman of the Environmental Rights Center Bellona, said at the time
that the decision made it clear that Ukraine and Russian "are breaking all
ties."
"The two
countries essentially are in a state of war, and therefore there can't be any
discussion of joint construction of such a huge project as a nuclear power
plant," Nikitin said of the formerly close partners whose relations soured
dramatically when unrest unseated pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych in February 2014.
Enerhoatom has
insisted money for the reactor work will be no problem. Spokeswoman Zaets
said Enerhoatom had an offer from a Polish company to finance the construction,
and "therefore the current financial problems do not affect the
project."
Ukraine is also
opening other doors with Western nuclear partners.
In November,
Enerhoatom signed an agreement with the French engineering firm Areva "for
safety upgrades of existing and future nuclear power plants in Ukraine,
lifetime extension, and performance optimization."
U.S.-based
Westinghouse, which has been operating in Ukraine since 2003, signed a
deal with Kyiv in December 2014 "to significantly increase" nuclear
fuel deliveries to Ukraine until 2020.
Russia's Foreign
Ministry reacted to the deal between Westinghouse and Kyiv by calling it
"a dangerous experiment."
Ukraine still
depends on TVEL, a nuclear-fuel subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, for fuel at 13
of its 15 reactors, highlighting Russia's continuing sway over Ukraine's
nuclear program.
Westinghouse has
been challenging TVEL for a bigger cut of the nuclear-fuel market in Eastern
and Central Europe, where Russian-designed reactors are the norm.
The U.S.
Export-Import Bank has offered significant loans for several Westinghouse
projects in the region, and U.S. officials have lobbied governments to
diversify away from dependence on TVEL, according to Statfor, a U.S.-based analytical
center.
It is unclear
whether Ukraine's nuclear gamble will pay off. But the stakes are high, and
Holovko suggests that Kyiv has left itself few other options.
"For now,
we have a situation where we have no Plan B," Holovko says.
Copyright (c)
2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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