Reactors will be first in country to use US-based Westinghouse AP1000 technology
The first section of concrete has been laid as part of a ceremony to mark the official start of construction of Units 5 and 6 at the Khmelnitski nuclear power station in northwest Ukraine.
State nuclear operator Energoatom said in a statement that the two units would be the first to be built in the country using US-based Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurised water reactor (PWR) nuclear plant technology.
In August 2021 Energoatom and Westinghouse signed a memorandum on the construction of five power units in Ukraine using AP1000 technology.
In June 2022 they signed further agreements related to increasing the number of units from five to nine, although not all would be at Khmelnitski.
Khmelnitski has two Russia-supplied PWR plants in commercial operation. Two more units, Khmelnitski-3 and -4 officially remain under construction, but both units were to be supplied by Russia and their status is unclear. Energoatom had said in 2021 that Khmelnitski-3 would be completed with VVER-1000 technology while Khmelnitski-4 would be an AP1000 unit.
Khmelnitski-3 and -4 have been under construction since the late 1980s, but construction stalled in 1990 with Unit 3 around 75% complete and Unit 4 about 28%.
Addressing the ceremony, Energoatom president Petro Kotin said: “Today we are talking about the future, we are talking about stability, we are talking about the development of nuclear energy.”
According to Kotin, the project is Ukraine’s most significant modernisation project since after World War II.
New Station ‘Will Be Largest In Europe’
Kotin said earlier this year that Ukraine was planning to build four new large reactors and “moving quickly towards increasing Ukraine’s nuclear capacity from today’s 13.8 GW to more than 20 GW”.
He said these plans included the construction of two Westinghouse AP1000 units at Khmelnitski, the completion of construction of Units 3 and 4 at the plant and the deployment of small modular reactors and microreactors.
With all six reactors online, Khmelnitski will become Europe’s largest commercial nuclear facility, taking over from the six-unit Zaporizhzhia, also in Ukraine.
Neither Energoatom nor Westinghouse have said exactly when the reactors will come online.
Financing Package Could Have Exim Bank Support
According to Energoatom, the construction of one reactor unit in peacetime takes five years and the estimated cost starts from $5bn (€4.6bn). The project will be partly financed by the US Export-Import (Exim) Bank. In July 2023 Westinghouse president of energy systems David Durham was reported as saying the company anticipated supporting Energoatom in developing a financing package with “substantial support” from the Exim Bank, Washington’s official credit agency.
Ukraine existing fleet of 15 commercial nuclear reactors are of Soviet design, but it has shifted most of them to fuel provided by Westinghouse as the country continues its efforts to break away from dependence on Moscow and convert all its reactors to non-Russian fuel.
Westinghouse has already supplied fuel for VVER-1000 plants at South Ukraine-2 and -3 and Zaporizhzhia-1, -3, -4 and -5. Westinghouse fuel was recently delivered to Khmelnitski-1 and -2 and another unit at Rivne has also received a Westinghouse fuel load.
This suggests that nine out of Ukraine’s 15 reactors have been loaded or are being loaded with Westinghouse fuel, although the exact status of fuel loads is unclear.
With regards to Rivne, for example, which has four units, Westinghouse suggested in a September 2023 statement that one core had been loaded with its fuel, but did not give details of fuel loads for other units at the site.
However, Westinghouse president and chief executive officer Patrick Fragman told the Khmelnitski ceremony that “all Ukrainian power units have gotten rid of dependence on the Russian Federation and can operate on American fuel”.
A mockup of one of the AP1000 nuclear plants planned for Khmelnitski in Ukraine. Courtesy Energoatom/Westinghouse.
