MOSCOW, March 17Ukraine may not count on mastering the technology for the production of nuclear fuel, the American Westinghouse is unlikely to transfer it to Kyiv even for a «screwdriver assembly,» said Alexander Uvarov, editor-in-chief of the nuclear energy portal AtomInfo.ru.
Ukraine plans to start production of nuclear fuel together with the American Westinghouse, which will replace Russian fuel in the European market, the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said earlier. The production of nuclear fuel is a high-tech process, and Ukraine does not have its own capacities for the production of fuel assemblies.
“I think that we are not talking about the full production of nuclear fuel. At best, we mean the screw-driven assembly of fuel assemblies using the technology transferred from the West. At the same time, there is no certainty that Westinghouse will transfer this technology to Ukraine, because it does not represent no financial benefit, which means that in reality, apparently, there will be nothing more than the production of a non-nuclear part of the cassettes: the so-called heads and tails,» Uvarov said.
«If we assume that Ukraine plans to develop its own nuclear fuel, then only its introduction at nuclear power plants will take at least 10 years, because new fuel must go through a full qualification cycle at operating units. First, pilot batches are operated with a study its behavior in a nuclear reactor, and only then can commercial operation begin,” the expert added.