The United Kingdom’s intelligence services said on Thursday that the supply of Western fuel to the Rivne nuclear power plant in Ukraine accelerates Kiev’s efforts to stop being dependent on the supply of nuclear fuel from Russia.
So they recalled that on September 10, the Ukrainian nuclear company Energoatom announced that it had successfully introduced fuel into a reactor at the Rivni power plant using Western-made nuclear fuel, said a statement from the British Ministry of Defense on its account on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.
“All Ukrainian nuclear power plants have reactors based on Soviet designs, and until February 2022 they relied on Russia for nuclear fuel supplies,” they explained, before emphasizing that “since the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion, Ukraine has continued to diversify its plans accelerated their supplies.
“Given that nuclear power supplies about half of Ukraine’s electricity, Energoatom’s success in procuring and installing Western fuel is an important starting point for long-term withdrawal from Russia, whose influence over Ukraine’s energy supply has been severely limited,” they concluded.
Energoatom recently announced that “on September 10, 2023, a historic event took place at the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant with the installation of Westinghouse fuel in reactor units with a capacity of 440 megawatts.” “So far, reactors of this type have operated only on Russian-made nuclear fuel,” he specified.
During the event, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko emphasized that “the greatness of this day is the end of the Russian monopoly over this segment of the nuclear fuel market.” “I really hope that this day will pave the way for rapid sanctions against the Russians in the nuclear industry,” he stressed.
