WNN reports that Ukraine is preparing the legal document required to cancel its contract with Russia concerning the completion of two units at the Khmelnitski nuclear power plant. The move was announced yesterday by Svetlana Kulchitskaya, of the atomic energy and nuclear industry department of the Ministry of Energy and Coal.
Measures are being taken to cancel the agreement signed in 2010 with Russia. Today, an instruction was received from the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, which gives the Foreign Ministry and other relevant bodies the authority to resolve this matter as soon as possible. The document will soon be prepared and sent to Russia, Kulchitskaya said, according to Ukrainian state-run news agency Ukrinform.
Kulchitskaya said Ukraine is preparing to cancel the 2010 intergovernmental agreement owing to the Russian failure to meet its obligations under this accord. She also said that the government is considering other options for the completion of the units at Khmelnitski.
Now, the government is working out a draft legal act authorizing the definition of the legal grounds for the application of the technical characteristics of the reactor to be not a Russian product, but to offer the VVER-1000 manufactured by the Czech company Skoda JS for the new units, she said. Skoda JS says on its website that its has been working with the VVER reactor design for nearly 40 years and that so far it has manufactured a total of 21 complete reactors of the VVER 440/V-213 type and three reactors of the VVER 1000/V-320 type. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the company has focused on the upgrade and service lifetime extensions of existing reactor components and also on supplying spare parts.
Construction of the new Khmelnitski units was stopped in 1990 when they were, respectively, 75% and 28% complete. The government announced in September 2008 that construction of the units would resume in 2010 for completion in 2016 and 2017.
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