Ihor Nasalyk, Ukraine’s Minister of Energy and Coal took the step of saying his country can survive without nuclear fuel imports from Russia, and can easily replace the supply for its Soviet-built reactors by buying fuel from other countries, the Bellona Foundation wrote in a report.
The remarks represent a major departure for Kyiv, which since 1991 has been heavily dependent on Moscow to fuel the four operating nuclear power plants built on its territory while it was still a part of the Soviet Union, Bellona reported.
The fuel shift also represents an assertion of Kyiv’s budding political independence from its hostile neighbor. As recently as three years ago, when Moscow began its military incursions into Ukraine’s east and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, Russia was still supplying 95% of Ukraine’s nuclear fuel.
Over the course of 2017, Nasalyk said in remarks late last month that the share of nuclear fuel Ukraine was importing from Russia had fallen to 60 percent.
He added that over the next year, that figure would fall even further to 45%, with 55% of the country’s nuclear fuel coming from the U.S.-based Westinghouse and a handful of other western firms.
Read alsoTender for Ukraine-EU Energy Bridge partner to be called early in 2018
However, Ukraine’s nuclear fuel dependence has not been lost on Moscow. Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s pugilistic deputy prime minister for military affairs, threatened in May of 2014 to cut off Ukraine’s supply of nuclear fuel after Moscow’s military incursions and propaganda war heated up – a freeze that would have threatened the safe operation of Ukraine’s reactors.
Read alsoBill on completion of two Khmelnytsky NPP units to be tabled in early 2018
In the meantime, Kyiv is making some attempt to wean itself off its oversized dependence on nuclear energy by opening up parts of its territory to solar energy.
Read alsoEnergoatom, Westinghouse to increase nuclear power plant capacity in Ukraine
If the investment program bears fruit, it is predicted that Chornobyl zone solar power could end up supplying half the energy that the ruined plant used to produce.