Ukraine expects to start building four new nuclear reactors this year to compensate for lost energy capacity due to full-scale war with Russia.
Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko informed the Reuters news agency about this.
The two units are expected to be based on Russian-made equipment, which Ukraine wants to import from Bulgaria. While the other two are based on Western technologies of the power equipment manufacturer Westinghouse. All four reactors will be built at the Khmelnytskyi NPP, Galushchenko added.
As the Minister of Energy noted, construction is planned to begin in the summer-autumn of this year.
The construction of the third and fourth reactors of the Khmelnytsky NPP began in the 1980s, but it was frozen.
After gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine built three new nuclear reactors — one each at the Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi, and Rivne NPPs.
Today, all three nuclear power plants in the Ukrainian-controlled territory provide more than 55% of the countryʼs electricity needs, but Kyiv wants to expand this sector to compensate for the temporary loss of the Zaporizhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
In December, NAEK "Energoatom" and Westinghouse signed an agreement on the purchase of equipment for the fifth power unit of the Khmelnytsky NPP.
- From March 4, 2022, the Zaporizhia NPP and the satellite city of the Energodar NPP are under the occupation of Russian troops. Six nuclear reactors of the ZNPP are actually idle now.