Shipments of nuclear fuel, produced by U.S.-Japanese Westinghouse, from Sweden to Ukraine accounted for 41.6% of the fuel elements required by Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the first six months of 2016, while the share of supplies from Russia`s TVEL was 58.4%, according to the State Statistics Service.
Fuel elements imported from Russia weighed 98.7 tonnes and cost US$136.9 million, while 70.5 tonnes were imported from Sweden to the tune of $67 million.
In 2014, Ukraine bought nuclear fuel worth $628.2 million. Shipments from Russia were estimated at $588.8 million, from Sweden at $39.3 million.
In 2015, Ukrainian NPPs bought nuclear fuel to the tune of $610.9 million from Russia and worth $32.7 million from Sweden.
In 2016, Ukraine planned to buy over a third of its nuclear fuel from Westinghouse under a program for the diversification of fuel element supplies for the NPPs.
Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick earlier said his company was ready to provide fuel to all Ukrainian plants. Ukraine`s energy ministry, in turn, announced it planned to use Westinghouse fuel in three out of the 15 operating reactors in 2016.
In 2018, Ukraine nuclear energy giant Energoatom plans to fill the active zone of one of the reactors with Westinghouse fuel alone, completely replacing TVEL.
UNIAN memo. Ukraine ranks seventh in the world in terms of the installed capacity of its nuclear reactors. All its reactors are Water-Water Energetic Reactors, or VVER type. Ukraine operates four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors. Zaporizhia NPP, with six reactors whose total capacity is 6 GW, is Europe`s largest.
