Two! Four! Ten! How Many Reactors Will Energoatom Actually Build?

The number of nuclear reactors that we plan to build just the day after tomorrow is mind-boggling. Considering that nuclear power today is the hope and backbone of our energy system, it is high time to separate the hullabaloo of Energoatom’s management from objective needs and real results. Of course, since recently Energoatom has become an entire corporation, which will definitely have a supervisory board, but let us not overestimate this reform.

Yes, the role of NPPs in the energy system is key. Last year, they fell just a little short of half of the total electricity generation in the country (in winter, their share of generation sometimes reached 60%). According to the results of 2023, Ukrainian NPPs generated 52.4 billion kWh, and the plan for this year is 53.6 billion kWh. It is possible to increase capacity at least for the sake of the possibility of repairing existing ones.

In fact, it is at the expense of cheap nuclear power that we manage to keep relatively low prices for the population (by the way, two thirds of the company's revenue — 128 out of 190 billion UAH in 2023 — went to compensate for these tariffs).

All of this is provided by thousands of workers. Many of them are in the Ukrainian armed forces. And although the units themselves have not yet been shelled, the trajectories of the missiles have passed directly over the nuclear reactors of the same South Ukrainian plant, at a height of 100–200 metres, and there have already been attacks on the industrial zone of the plants. And this really threatens the world with a catastrophe bigger than the Fukushima disaster.

However, war is war, and schemes are schemes. They have been going on and on around the National Nuclear Energy Generating Energy Company (NNEGEC) for years. Energoatom’s tenders have long become a fascinating puzzle for journalists — you can often find bidders with prices much higher than market prices (sometimes several times), driven to victory by the finger of fate. This irritates Energoatom terribly. Not overpricing, of course, but close attention to the company's purchases. They explain everything by enemy psychological operations and continue to change nothing.

In planning issues, too. A couple of years ago, the NNEGEC management and the friendly Ministry of Energy recalled the tale of Hodja Nasreddin and teaching a donkey to speak. Well, remember, either the donkey dies, or the Padishah will not have enough time. They prudently assigned the role of the Padishah to Bankova. Since then, they have been voicing grandiose plans for future megastructures of reactors of various types and in unprecedented quantities with a regularity of about once a month.

We started with the completion of one or two Soviet-designed units at the Khmelnytskyi NPP. Then the units began to multiply themselves, and at the moment they are already counted in dozens. True, the lion's share of them are microreactors that do not exist in iron at all, which are promised to be constructed in the next decade, but who cares about such trifles. Everyone knows in advance that later the plans will be corrected, most of them will be thrown to the dump, and... new ones will be drawn. But continuous generation of good news is useful in the struggle to keep your place. And then, the more large-scale the planning, the more financial flows it generates. Actually, the business of spending money on the development of all kinds of feasibility studies is by no means Energoatom’s know-how.

Unfortunately, the process is not so harmless. Partners get used to the fact that statements by Ukrainian top officials can be just shaking of the air with kindergarten level arguments, and our attitude towards us changes not for the better.

A fresh example is a statement by the Minister of Energy: “...in the summer or autumn of 2024, Ukraine plans to start construction of four new nuclear reactors. We need reactor vessels, which will have to be imported. We want to build the third and fourth units (at the Khmelnytskyi NPP. – I.M.) at once... We want to compensate for those at the Zaporizhzhia NPP.”

Two reactors are going to be bought in Bulgaria (we have already written about this). Two more — in the United States (and about this).

As a matter of fact, it is not difficult to start construction. Energoatom says that they are already working on the completion of the third unit and they are not deceiving — they have put a rain roof on the unit and are plastering the auxiliary rooms. Who says it’s not construction? There is also a very economical option — to put a sign “here will be the block number so-and-so.” At the Rivne NPP, such a sign has been in place of Unit 5 since the Yanukovych presidency.

But in our case, it's a bit more complicated than that and can hit consumers' pockets pretty good.

Negotiations on the purchase of “Bulgarian” blocks have been officially underway since last summer. The deadlines have been gradually postponed, but the process has not stopped. Sofia’s key condition is to sell them for no less than 600 million euros. This is how much Bulgaria bought them from Russia. Scenarios with higher figures — up to 750 million euros — are also voiced. At the same time, the Bulgarians claim that the Ukrainian side expects to finance the deal from the EU aid. Curiously, is the Ukrainian Finance Ministry aware of this?

The purchase of state reactors has in fact already started. A year of negotiations and in December 2023, Energoatom announced that it was buying a reactor for a new power unit at Khmelnitsky NPP for another $437.5 million. We have already told you: it is not so much that we want to buy, as that they want to sell us two reactors, which Westinghouse has to get rid of by 2025 under the debt settlement agreement. And the buyers were frankly tight.

The Chinese reached a 70% level of production localisation when building their units. Now they have their own reactor of the same type. The attempt to reach an agreement with the Indians is not very successful either — the project to build six reactors there is stalled, and according to the old Indian tradition, no one says yes or no. And so it has been for many, many years. The Europeans were not keen either. But Energoatom was ready to buy.

However, there was one little thing in the way — absence of money, as always.

Not only for reactors, by the way. There is no money for cheaper facilities, and in the conditions of the war, even for facilities that are more necessary for the energy system. In its investment plan last summer, the NNEGEC melancholically stated that there were not enough funds even for personnel shelters at the South Ukraine NPP and the Khmelnytskyi NPP. It sounded like this: “...in 2023 it was planned to design a civil defence shelters at .... ... in 2023 it was planned to design the construction of an additional personnel shelter at the industrial platform of the Khmelnytskyi NPP and to carry out pre-project works and develop technical requirements for the construction of an additional personnel shelter at the industrial platform of the South Ukraine NPP. Due to the deficit of funds, the financing of the construction of the shelters at the Khmelnytskyi NPP and South Ukraine NPP is postponed.”

It turned out that there were much more important things than spending several hundred million hryvnias on shelters for station workers. Then the honourable management was reprimanded a bit, but the priorities were maintained.

I don't even know what to call it — in the conditions of war to start four whole construction projects in the absence of funds and construction resources even for one? No decent answer can be found...

In the old days, it would have been called sabotage. Now the times are bursting with humanism, so (later) they will call all this “inefficient use of resources.” And they’ll wag their finger. Maybe even directly from the supervisory board.