Photo from UNIAN
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt expects that U.S.-based Westinghouse, which is majority-owned by Japan's Toshiba, will boost nuclear fuel shipments to Ukraine to help Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs) reduce dependence on Russian fuel, the Ambassador said at the 13th International Forum "Fuel and Energy Complex of Ukraine: the Present and the Future."
"We hope that Westinghouse will be able to increase the amounts they propose to Ukraine," he said.
The U.S. Ambassador said that boosting nuclear fuel shipments by Westinghouse to Ukraine is not intended to oust Russian suppliers from the Ukrainian market.
As UNIAN reported earlier, to diversify nuclear fuel purchases for Ukrainian NPPs, Ukraine plans to buy more than a third of fuel from Westinghouse in 2016, while this year Ukraine has been purchasing almost the entire amount from Russia.
In March 2015, Yuzhnoukrainsk NPP successfully completed loading of the upgraded TBC-WR nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. giant into its third reactor. In April, this NPP connected this reactor to the country's power grid.
In 2016, Zaporizhia NPP plans to load the first batch of Westinghouse fuel into its fifth reactor.
UNIAN memo. Cooperation between Ukraine's Energoatom and Westinghouse was initiated in the framework of an intergovernmental agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine dated the year 2000 on the Ukraine Nuclear Fuel Qualification Project, and was carried on under a commercial contract, signed in 2008. Energoatom has been developing cooperation with Westinghouse to diversify its nuclear fuel supplies for Ukrainian NPPs.