Modernisation work complete at Ukrainian plants

Thursday, 11 November 2010

Ukraine's nuclear operator Energoatom has announced the completion of a modernisation program at the Khmelnistky 2 and Rovno 4 nuclear power plants - with enough money left over for extra measures to improve security. 
 

Khmelnitsky 1 and 2 (Image: Khmelnitsky NPP)

 

The implementation of the post-commissioning modernisation program to bring the two units up to world-class safety standards has been officially reported to the State Nuclear Regulation Committee of Ukraine (SRNCU). The program included some 80 separate measures at Khmelnitsky 2 and 81 at Rovno 4, all carried out since their start-up in 2004.

Energoatom has managed to complete the modernisation without consuming the full amount of the $125 million of loans made to the project from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Euratom, and has used the balance to complete 18 additional security measures.

Khmelnitsky 2 and Rovno 4 are both Russian-designed V320 model VVER-1000 pressurized water reactors. Construction began on the units in the mid-1980s but was suspended in 1990 when both reactors were about 80% complete. Completion of the reactors was made a priority following the final closure of the last operating reactor at Chernobyl in 2000, and carried out with financial support from the EBRD and Euratom, which made loans of $42 million and $83 million respectively.

A condition of the completion project was the implementation of a modernisation program to bring the reactors to current world safety standards. With the need for the units to be online as quickly as possible in order to make up the generation shortfall from the loss of Chernobyl, the modernisation was divided into measures that needed to be implemented before the plant could be safely commissioned, those that could be applied post-commissioning and some that were classed as "before and after commissioning". Some 147 measures were completed pre-commissioning.

Work is scheduled to begin on the completion of a further two suspended units at Khmelnitsky with a view to operation in 2016 and 2017. Khmelnitsky 3 and 4 were 75% and 28% complete when work on them stopped in 1990. Their completion is to be mainly funded through a Russian loan, with Ukraine providing 15% of the finance.
 

Researched and written 

by World Nuclear News