Ukraine is seeking to strike a deal with Bulgaria in June to acquire nuclear reactors to compensate for the loss of the Zaporizhia plant seized by Russia, Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine's state-owned nuclear power company Energoatom, revealed in an interview with Reuters.
The new reactors will be installed at the Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant in western Ukraine and will be equipped with Russian equipment that Kiev wants to import from Bulgaria, Petro Kotin said in an interview.
Russia gained control of the Zaporizhia plant, Europe's largest nuclear power plant, after it began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Zaporizhia plant's six nuclear reactors are currently shut down.
"Negotiations between the government of Ukraine and Bulgaria continue, and I think that sometime in June we will have the result of concluding contracts with Bulgaria for the purchase of this equipment," Kotin said in the interview.
"I have put (the task) before our construction organization and the Khmelnytsky plant to be ready for installation by June," he said, referring to the first of the two reactors, which will be ready for installation immediately.
He said that if it is delivered on time and in full, Energoatom will be ready to start commissioning the new reactor in 2 to 3 years - a period that is also needed to produce the turbine for the unit. Energoatom is in preliminary talks with General Electric ( GE.N ), opening a new chapter to build the turbine, he said.
The second reactor will be installed later, but there is no exact date yet.
Bulgaria has previously set the price of the two reactors at 600 million dollars, but Sofia is willing to increase the price of the equipment, which, apart from Bulgaria, can only be bought from Russia, he said.
"There is a constant desire on the part of the Bulgarian side to achieve greater benefits for itself than this $600 million, and the more time passes, the higher prices they indicate, but we are still focused on the price of $600 million." Cottin said.
He said that Energoatom intends to build two more reactors in Khmelnytskyi based on the American AP-1000 reactor and that the company will start pouring concrete for the two new units in early April.
Since the loss of the Zaporizhia NPP, Ukraine relies on nuclear power from three operating plants in the country with a total of nine reactors, including two reactors currently operating at the Khmelnitsky plant.
Ukraine has not given up on its plans to one day restart the Zaporizhzhia power plant and that, unlike Russia, it will be able and know how to put it back into operation.
"Russia still says it will restart the plant, but technically it cannot start it because there are no power lines, no water and no personnel," Kotin said, adding that Moscow did not want to recognize this at the political level.
On the battlefield, however, Ukrainian troops themselves are at a standstill after attempting a counteroffensive last year that proved unable to break through Russian defense lines in the Zaporozhye region.
Energoatom, which retains the staff that managed Zaporozhye, will be ready to restart the plant after its "de-occupation" and has already trained special teams for this.
After the explosion of the Kakhovka dam, the plant lost the constant flow of water from the Dnieper River needed for the power units, and for now the plant only has a small supply in a lake near the facility.
According to Kotin, under current conditions, only one reactor can operate for no more than a month, and then it must be shut down due to lack of water for its cooling system.
He noted that in order to restart the plant, either the destroyed Kakhovka dam must be restored or pumps must be built to bring water from the Dnieper.
"It takes somewhere around two years, but that's for the main costly measures. During that time it will be possible to check all the systems and if there is no sabotage, all the other systems will be ready for commissioning." /BGNES
