At a meeting on Monday, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Energy, Housing and Utilities approved draft law No. 11146 on the siting, design and construction of Khmelnytsky NPP Units 3 and 4 (Kh3/X4).
According to the explanatory note to the draft law, the construction of the units based on the VVER-1000 reactor provides for the purchase of nuclear fuel, technologies, equipment, facilities, special non-nuclear materials and related services by NNEGC Energoatom from Westinghouse (USA).
The construction of X3/X4 will increase annual electricity production by 16.2 billion kWh and electricity supply by 15.4 billion kWh.
According to the Minister of Energy of Ukraine, Herman Galushchenko, the third unit can be connected to the grid in three years after the start of its completion, and the fourth unit in four years.
He clarified that the construction of X3/X4 is planned to be financed mostly by loans, and to a lesser extent by NNEGC’s own funds.
In his turn, Energoatom’s Chairman Petro Kotin reminded that the third unit will not be constructed from scratch, and the equipment for the construction part of the third unit is 80% ready.
“Today, the practical readiness for equipment installation is very high. As soon as the law you approved is signed, we will be able to start installing the equipment the next day,” he said.
Kotin clarified that a large number of specialists from the occupied Zaporizhzhya NPP who left the plant’s territory will take part in the construction of the units.
“By the end of the year, if everything goes well with the law, we plan to increase the number of people to 2,000 directly at the unit, most of them will be from ZNPP,” he said.
As reported, in July 2023, the Bulgarian parliament delegated the country’s energy minister to hold talks with the head of the Ukrainian Energy Ministry on the possibility of selling equipment intended for the Belene NPP to Kyiv. Bulgaria abandoned the project in 2012.
Earlier, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said that the construction of Khmelnytsky NPP units 3-4 would add 2.2 GW to the power system to compensate for the loss of power capacity due to the war.
