Ukraine, by depriving Russia of its monopoly on fuel for nuclear power plants on the European market, has provided the opportunity for Europe to impose sanctions on it in the field of nuclear energy, President of National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom Petro Kotin has said.
“Ukraine became the first country to break Russia’s monopoly on the fuel market, starting to replace its fuel with U.S. fuel from Westinghouse, first in VVER-1000 reactors, and now in VVER-440. There are 16 such reactors in Europe, and today, our European partners, there are no arguments against imposing sanctions on Russia. Previously, this argument was that we cannot impose sanctions because there will be no fuel for nuclear power plants. There is fuel. This is a big event, Russia’s monopoly has been broken, and sanctions can be imposed,” Kotin said during the United News national telethon.
As he said, Russia at one time achieved success in the nuclear technology market because it had been dumping its own services for a long time.
“As a result of this, it made European countries dependent on their technology, their uranium and nuclear fuel, but now this dependence is no longer there,” Kotin said.
He said that sanctions would be the first step towards limiting the Russian state corporation Rosatom’s access to the European market and receiving funds from working on it.
As reported, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko, during meetings with U.S. senators in Washington in November, noted the need to impose sanctions against Rosatom and deprive it of the opportunity to use the nuclear technologies of the aggressor country.
In September 2023, Ukraine for the first time loaded Westinghouse nuclear fuel into the VVER-440 reactor at the Rivne NPP. U.S. fuel will work in the reactor core with Russian fuel, followed by its complete replacement.
Initially, the project for the start of Westinghouse fuel operation was planned to be launched in 2025, but after the start of full-scale Russian aggression, it was possible to significantly reduce the production time of this fuel in Sweden.
Thus, Energoatom became the first energy generating company in the world to operate reactors of Soviet design, but to implement a project to diversify nuclear fuel for VVER-1000 and VVER-440 reactors.