nuclear-news

America gets Ukraine to hop on its nuclear power marketing bandwagon

How Washington Is Fighting For Russia’s Old Europe Energy Market, Forbes, Kenneth Rapoza , 17 May 16

“……..Nuking Ukraine

Getting Ukraine to hop on the Westinghouse band wagon was particularly crafty. Either it was simply fantastic timing on the part of Westinghouse, or the U.S. government and the new, post-Euromaidan government of Ukraine colluded to kick Russia to the curb.

“I think that Westinghouse was somehow involved in getting the EC to push Ukraine away from Russia on this front,” says Tomas Vlcek, an nergy security expert based out of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.

In March 2014, just two months after the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted, a European environmentalist group called Bellona sent out stories saying that the Russian government was ready to punish Ukraine with an embargo on nuclear fuel supplies from TVEL.

When compared to what Gazprom has done with gas supplies, Putin ordering a stop on TVEL sales of nuclear fuel assemblies simply sounded like something he would propose. Only, it is not possible to ban nuclear fuel supply. Not only does the fuel rod stay in the reactor for years, someone else can make it for the reactor instead of the Russians. Like Westinghouse.

The Bellona coverage brandished Russia as a villain in the nuclear energy business too. Brussels called for “diversification” in Ukraine’s nuclear fuel market and gave Westinghouse’s European fuel division millions of euros in subsidies for the sake of “energy security”.

The whole shebang had nothing to do with Westinghouse in Pennsylvania. Their spokeswoman said she’s never heard of Bellona. Her colleagues in Europe, on the other hand-

Derek Taylor, the former E.U. civil servant who works at the Brussels branch of Bellona is also a Senior Advisor on energy at Burson-Marsteller which, in turn,is a public affairs firm working for Westinghouse worldwide.

Despite the civil war in East Ukraine, sanctions and Gazprom gas disputes, the Russians have never missed any scheduled nuclear fuel delivery to Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Westinghouse is more than a brand name American power company. It’s a battering ram used by Washington to promote energy security.

In 2012, Ukraine’s nuclear regulator banned the use of Westinghouse fuel assemblies in the country pending an investigation. Two years later, according to sources in Ukraine, then-Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk consulted Westinghouse on picking a new nuclear safety regulator for his new government.

In 2015 during a scheduled outage at a reactor unit at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant, two of the Westinghouse-made fuel assemblies were found to be leaking contrary to Westinghouse’s claims that those were of an ‘improved’ modification to fit the Rosatom VVER-1000 type nuclear reactors there.

Regardless, anti-Russia politics trumps technological problems. Westinghouse is currently planning to deliver five reloads of fuel to the South Ukraine and Zaporizhia nuclear power plants, the company said on April 28, meaning the new regulator has concluded its study and their VVER-1000 fuel assemblies are as good as those made in Russia. Capturing that market, as Toshiba says it will in corporate presentations, serves as a means to punish the Russians. It’s a political convenience the Russian’s are not willing to ignore.

“Our ability to make VVER fuel is not in question,” says Westinghouse Roderick. “We will continue to sell to VVER-1000s. I think it’s good to have competition in that market.”

It is good. Political pressure, whether Russian or American, is probably more harm than good. And it’s going to really irk countries, like Russia, who clearly see it as Washington poking them in the eye on purpose.

Energy security is therefore as much fact as it is fiction. It is as much a means to market Russian rivals as it is to limit the serious role energy politics plays in Russian-European relations.

But derailing nuclear projects while running into technical difficulties with Westinghouse fuel assemblies in Rosatom reactors is a dangerous way to promote energy security there. Paradoxically as it might seem, it plays into Russia’s hands when those projects to work according to plan. The Russians look reliable and solid by comparison.

“On the finance side too, I think Rosatom has Westinghouse beat,” says Jirusek about the Russian company’s ability to finance the construction of a new power plant and long term fuel supply deals.

Apart from Ukraine, where diversification was imposed for political reasons, Rosatom’s TVEL still holds its market share. Japan’s Westinghouse, despite paying no corporate tax in the U.S., will continue applying the pressure with the help of Washington and the U.S. taxpayer.

For the Russia-United States nuclear stand off , once again it is a war of attrition.

On May 12, Toshiba said it is coming back from the brink. It will post an operating profit of $1.1 billion this year after losing $6.6 billion last year due to massive write downs associated with Westinghouse and restructuring costs in the wake of a damaging accounting scandal.

No one should bet that Washington will suddenly stop selling their Westinghouse nukes to the Europeans. They could promote another Japanese-American hybrid, like the General Electric/Hitachi boiled water reactors. Or Oregon-based NuScale, who make a smaller modular reactor that is less capital intensive and is designed to be integrated into a renewable energy grid.  But they do not, obviously. It’s not because those are inferior products or even that Europe is currently a pressurized water reactor market. They do it because Westinghouse competes directly with the Russians. That’s what Washington is really after. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2016/05/17/washingtons-european-energy-security-boondoggle/#4247a5f362ef

May 21, 2016 Posted by Christina Macpherson | marketing, politics international, Russia, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment