Ukraine intends to abandon a joint project with Russia for construction of a nuclear fuel plant. Ukraine’s Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Volodymyr Demchyshyn announced this on Wednesday, 29 April, the TASS news agency reports.
"We will denounce this agreement. It will most likely be [done through] a law," he said.
According to him, the agreement was "simply drafted poorly, there are contentions that certain parties will not fulfill their obligations." "The project is indeed interesting. So far, there is no decision on how to implement it. We are discussing this with other potential participants," said Demchyshyn.
The head of Rusatom International Network, the official representative of Russia’s Rosatom state corporation in Ukraine, Alexander Merten, recently told reporters that Rosatom was expecting a statement from Ukraine on further implementation of the joint project for construction of the plant.
According to him, the project for the plant is completely ready, the initial work on the construction site has been performed, and the relevant equipment, which was manufactured entirely with Russian funding, is ready at an enterprise in Novosibirsk.
The plant for production of nuclear fuel was expected to be built in the village of Smolino (Kirovograd region of Ukraine). This project was one of the largest areas of Ukrainian-Russian cooperation in the nuclear energy industry.
The shareholders of the joint venture that was supposed to engage construct the facility are the Russian fuel company TVEL (50% minus 1 share) and Ukraine’s state Nuclear Fuel corporation (50% plus 1 share). The two sides were expected to invest about USD 120 million in equal parts in the project and obtain the remaining funds from Sberbank (Russia). The first phase of the plant, with a capacity of 400 tons of uranium per year, was planned for commissioning this year.
