Local authorities have transferred land to state nuclear operator Energoatom as the company begins preparations to build a new four-unit nuclear power station at the Chyhyryn site in central Ukraine.
Energoatom said in a statement that it is working on the search for new construction sites and the most promising is Chyryryn, near the town of Orbita in Cherkasy Oblast, about 250 km southeast of Kyiv.
The company said it is planning to build four new power units there using AP1000 technology provided by US-based Westinghouse.
It said Chyhyryn City Council had approved plans to issue a permit for the development of a land management project for permanent use of the land by Energoatom. It also approved the transfer to the company of land plots with a total area of more than 38 hectares.
Energoatom is also planning to develop the largely abandoned Soviet-era satellite town of Orbita nearby.
Plans to build a nuclear power station at the Chyhyryn site were shelved following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Ground had been broken in 1970, but little progress made.
Orbita was built for the planned nuclear facility but abandoned. “We will rebuild it,” Energoatom president Petro Kotin said last year, when plans were first discussed.
Construction at Orbita was officially cancelled before the fall of the Soviet Union, but it nevertheless has a population of 120.
Existing Plants Due For Retirement
Ukraine has said it is planning for new nuclear power plants as it seeks to replace existing units that began operation in the 1980s and will be in service for a maximum of 60 years.
Kotin has said Ukraine’s 15 commercial nuclear plants, the first of which, Rovno-1, began operation in 1981, were designed to operate for 30 years, but upgrades will see them remain online for the maximum 60 years.
“We already need to think about replacing the power units that are currently in operation,” Kotin said.
“If the economy needs electricity, then we need to introduce additional power a little faster. Even if the situation is more or less the same with consumption as it is now, the new units will simply be used to replace capacity that will be decommissioned.”
Kotin said last year that Energoatom was also evaluating Odesa in the south of the country as a potential site for new reactors.
Work on the Odesa site began in the 1980s, but was stopped after Chernobyl. Two Russian VVER-1000 pressurised water reactor units were planned to produce electricity for the Odesa region and heat for Odesa and the cities of Chornomorsk and Teplodar, which was being built to house nuclear workers.
