MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine’s decision to use unlicensed US-produced radioactive fuel for its nuclear power plants is a blatant violation of safety standards that Kiev will have to answer for before the International Atomic Energy Agency and the entire international community, a Russian scientist told RIA Novosti Monday.
“This is a case of complete negligence of nuclear security requirements. I think that Ukrainian authorities will never take this step because their experts won’t let them,” said professor Boris Kalinin, the head of the materials science department at Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.
Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear operator Energoatom recently prolonged a contract with US-based Westinghouse to supply Ukrainian power plants with nuclear fuel. Experts say US-produced fuel rods are incompatible with the country’s Soviet-era reactors, which could result in a second Chernobyl disaster.
“A new type of fuel needs to be licensed before it is loaded in a reactor,” Kalinin stressed. “This hasn’t been done, which will irritate both the Russian scientific community and the IAEA, because it violates the most sacred of all nuclear energy norms.”
He added that the designers of the Ukrainian nuclear facilities must first give Ukraine’s energy agency the green light to use the US fuel.
The Czech Republic earlier cancelled the construction of two nuclear reactor projects by Westinghouse due to a radiation leak. In 2012-2013, Kiev reported problems with the Westinghouse-made fuel assemblies that were installed on the Soviet-made reactors at the South Ukraine power plant.
