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Ukraine will have to move beyond nuclear power, but when?

Thirty years after Chernobyl, what chance of a post-nuclear Ukraine?  Ecologist, Jan Haverkamp & Iryna Holovko 26th April 2016“………A move towards clean, renewable energy sources – such as wind, water, sun, biomass and geothermal – would seem a logical route, especially given the potential savings in health costs and increase in energy independence.

Here, in these countries most afflicted by Chernobyl, economic realities make this switch to a clean energy future inevitable: the old centralised energy economy is collapsing, slowly but surely, and an awareness movement is growing.

In Ukraine, future-oriented enterprises will choose independence from the politically and economically unstable conglomerates that dominate the country’s energy sector. The question is: are these companies getting the space they need to start Ukraine’s energy [r]evolution?

The [r]evolution is inevitable – but not when it happens

Clearly, Ukraine currently faces several fundamental choices for the future. These choices relate to political contexts and preferences, but none of them is as inevitable as the need for an energy [r]evolution.

We are not asking anyone to experiment with unknown technologies. The techniques for a clean energy future exist, and Ukraine has even built up experience with them. Technically, then, the next step is an evolution. But one that means a revolutionary departure from a highly unstable energy politics that rely on centralisation of access to gas, oil, coal and nuclear power, and the energy policy and planning paradigms associated with it.

Ukraine has significant potential for the development of renewable energy sources. Asresearch for The Solutions Project by Mark Jacobson and his team at Stanford University shows, Ukraine could cover its entire energy demand in 2050 with wind, solar and water and a 32% decrease in primary energy need.

However, the fact that Ukraine currently enjoys only 1 GW of installed capacity from renewable sources signals that energy policy is yet to undergo fundamental change, and the obstacles are many.

The staying power of old energy structures should not be underestimated. Ukraine’s electricity market is a political battlefield, and not only due to interference of oligarchs and dependency on Russia for coal, nuclear fuel and technology. The market is virtually completely regulated, and regulation has become a political tool…….

Twelve of these reactors were built in the 1980s, and are now in need for large safety upgrades if they are to be operated with a lifetime extension beyond 30 years.

Risky business: ageing nuclear plants starved of investment……..

The necessary safety upgrades (for life-time extension, but also in reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe – Ukraine participated in the EU post-Fukushima nuclear stress tests) are thus weakened or postponed, and there are even indications that there is a lack of money for operational costs.

At the same time, Ukraine’s nuclear fleet faces an increased security risk due to political instability. The risks for terrorist or insurgent attack on nuclear infrastructure are currently higher than in peace time, meaning further upgrades are necessary.

In addition, most of the upgrading work is dependent on Russian technological input. Delays in the implementation of upgrades are not only caused by lack of finance, but also by unforeseen technical complications and problems with tender procedures. On top of that, Energoatom is bleeding funds on an unrealistic nuclear new build programme in Khmelnytksy, western Ukraine.

The political position of Ukraine’s increasingly risky nuclear sector is strengthened by the rhetoric that only lifetime extension of the ‘independent’ ageing nuclear fleet can fill the gap left by lost coal resources in the east.

The nuclear sector’s dependency on Russia has been masked by swapping the tenders for upgrading and new builds from Russian companies to a Czech-based company Skoda JS (a deal that is part of anti-corruption investigations in Switzerland), which is actually Russian-owned, and by tests at the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power station with the use of Westinghouse nuclear fuel (produced in Sweden), partly in reaction to delivery problems with Russian fuel in the last few years.

The fact that economic control over technology and a large proportion of fuel will always come from Russia remains off the table…… the awareness that a lot of the corruption in Ukraine is related to the centralised nature of the old energy carriers is growing, and we see an increasing amount of courageous small and medium investors seeing efficiency and renewables as chances for job and income creation…….. http://www.theecologist.org/essays/2987610/thirty_years_after_chernobyl_what_chance_of_a_postnuclear_ukraine.html

April 27, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Ukraine