In this blog, I alternate posts between general and timely topics involving radioactivity. Today, I am going to blog about the situation in Ukraine. Ukraine uses nuclear power generation. The question I am interested in is what happened with the nuclear reactors during the recent political turbulence.
Ukraine has fifteen reactors at four locations, all operated by Energoatom. Energoatom's full name is the National Nuclear Energy Generating Company of Ukraine. It is a Ukraine state enterprise. Ukraine is seventh in the world in terms of nuclear power generation with almost half of their electricity being generated by the four nuclear power stations.
All of the Ukrainian reactors are based on the Russian VVER design with most of the units generating a gigawatt of electricity. Twelve of the fifteen reactors are currently operating with the other three shut down for scheduled maintenance. During the recent political upheaval, the reactors have continued to operate normally but security has been upgraded at all four nuclear power stations.
Energoatom says that they have enough fuel in house or scheduled for delivery to operated for March and April. However, although their purchase of fuel for coming months has been paid for, TVEL, the Russian nuclear fuel company, may not be able to deliver the fuel because of a new ban on transport of nuclear fuel across Ukraine. TVEL says that European nations that depend on Russian nuclear fuel will still be supplied but alternate travel routes that exclude Ukraine will have to be found.
A partnership consisting of Energoatom and TVEL is in the process of constructing a fuel cycle plant in central Ukraine near the village of Smoline. It will supply fuel to the Ukrainian reactors. The first stage of production will be completed in 2015 if the political issues between Russia and Ukraine do not interfere with the project. The first phase facility will be able to produce eight hundred fuel assemblies per year.
Westinghouse supplied fuel assemblies to Ukraine for tests between 2005 and 2009. Unfortunately for Ukraine's need to have energy independence from Russia, the tests were considered a failure. Ukraine said that the defects in the fuel assemblies led to a long shutdown of one of their reactors. Westinghouse countered with the claim that the Ukrainians created problems because they did not load the fuel correctly. That seems hard to believe given that they have been loading fuel into their reactors for decades without major outages.
Most of the recent focus with respect to energy in Ukraine has been on natural gas. The Russians supply large amounts of natural gas to Ukraine and most of the gas that Russian ships to Eastern and Western Europe goes through Ukraine pipelines. If there is further decline in relations between Ukraine and Russia, other European countries could suffer a reduction in natural gas supplies from Russia. In addition, there is also a concern about the supply of electricity from nuclear power in Ukraine if nuclear fuel shipments to Ukraine are halted. As with natural gas, if Russia maintains its ban on shipping nuclear fuel across Ukraine to European countries, some European countries may experience shortfalls in their production of electricity from nuclear power. It is in the interest of the whole world that Ukraine and Russia find a peaceful resolution to their political conflict.
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