Energy Headlines

At the Ministry of Fuel and Energy a meeting of Yurii Prodan with Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy of the State Department of the United States of America Richard Morningstar has taken place. This meeting of the Minister is second as back in May Yurii Prodan and Richard Morningstar had talks already during “Southern Corridor – New Silk Road” summit in Prague.

In the course of meeting in Kyiv the interlocutors discussed issues of Ukrainian energy policy and American-Ukrainian cooperation in energy domain.

In particular, Yurii Prodan informed the American delegation about successful realization of the Project of qualification of nuclear fuel on South-Ukrainian NPP. “This project is successful and we have no any remarks to those six fuel cassettes produced by American Westinghouse which in 2005 were launched in an active zone of the third energy block of South-Ukrainian NPP,” Yurii Prodan said. According to him, within the frames of Ukraine-America Agreement on introduction of the Project of qualification of nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants signed in 2000 Ukraine expects for supply of 42 fuel assemblies. “On completion of the Qualification project our future cooperation will depend only on licensing of fuel of Westinghouse by respective Ukrainian regulating bodies,” the Minister added.

To his part, Richard Morningstar assured the Ukrainian party on intentions of the USA to further cooperation in this direction and expressed hopes in successful realization of the Project.

Moreover, the meeting dealt with considering an issue of project of construction of a storage of used nuclear fuel (SUNF).

Taking into account the fact that realization of a project of building of SUNF by Holtec International company have to be performed in compliance with requirements of Law “On order of approving decisions on location, design, building of nuclear facilities and objects to handle radioactive wastes having national significance”, the sides expressed hopes that this year the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine will approve a respective law called to open way to building the storage in 2010 already. “We will spare no effort to facilitate the Parliament to vote for this law in autumn. Apart from that, it is one of bail-out ones as it envisages flows of significant monetary resources into the country’s economy,” Yurii Prodan underlined.

Source: Government portal