Despite the war, Ukraine plans to build four nuclear reactors

Building nuclear reactors in the midst of the fight against the Russian invasion? This is the Herculean project announced Monday by the Ukrainian Minister of Energy, Herman Halouchchenko, in order to compensate for the loss of the Zaporizhia power plant, the largest in Europe, occupied by Russian forces since March 2022. Its six reactors , which previously produced 20% of Ukrainian electricity, have been repeatedly targeted by strikes. The plant is currently shut down.

The four new reactors will be built in the Khmelnytskyi power plant, in the west of the country, which would then become “even more powerful than that of Zaporizhia,” assured the minister. He announces a launch of work this summer or fall.

Two of the reactors will be VVERs, of Soviet design, which the Ukrainians want to build with Russian equipment purchased from Bulgaria. “Ukraine showed its know-how by modernizing the Zaporizhia power plant, also of Russian design, after the Fukushima accident in Japan,” notes a French nuclear expert, however skeptical about this project and even more so about the timetable . The other two reactors would be AP1000s from the American Westinghouse, which was in discussions with kyiv before the war. There remains uncertainty over the financing of these investments, which should amount to tens of billions of euros.