Energoatom boss dismissed
The Ukrainian cabinet has removed Yuri Nedashkovskaya from his position as president of Energoatom. The abrupt move comes shortly after an operational issue at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant.
The Ukrainian cabinet has removed Yuri Nedashkovskaya from his position as president of Energoatom. The abrupt move comes shortly after an operational issue at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant.
A cabinet decision issued on 20 August simply said that Nedashkovskaya had failed to 'fulfil his contractual obligations' but elaborated no further. The manager of South Ukraine nuclear power plant, Vissarion Kim, will oversee Energoatom's work for an interim period. The state-owned company operates 15 reactors across four plant sites to provide around half of the country's electricity.
Fuelling issues
The abrupt cabinet move comes shortly after an operational issue at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant.
As part of a longstanding US-sponsored initiative for energy independence, the plant's second and third reactors had been using a number of nuclear fuel assemblies manufactured by Westinghouse in addition to a majority from default supplier, Rosatom. South Ukraine's third unit began using six test assemblies supplied by Westinghouse in 2005 and a further reload batch of 42 fuel assemblies was provided in mid-2009. These were for a three-year trial in commercial operation at the plant's second unit subject to regular monitoring and reporting.
Local media reported in May this year that the entire core loads of units 2 and 3 were removed in a lengthy unscheduled outage which was blamed on problems with the Westinghouse fuel. Westinghouse vice president for external relations and strategy Mike Kirst told RIA Novosti that errors had been made during fuel loading, while Energoatom claimed manufacturing defects were the cause.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
