State-owned enterprise National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom and JSC Turboatom (Kharkiv) signed the five year (2020-2024) program on modernizing equipment of Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs) on Tuesday.
According to a press release of Energoatom, the program involves the replacement of eight turbine condensers of nuclear power reactors, including four Russian-made condensers. After replacing the condensers, the total increase in power of reactors will be about 400 MW.
The document also provides for the modernization of flowing parts of turbine cylinders with a capacity of 200 MW and 1000 MW, including five turbines with a capacity of 1000 MW as part of import substitution. Modernization includes the replacement of rotor blades on existing rotors and diaphragms, which will increase the turbine’s power and its efficiency.
It is also planned to upgrade the high-pressure cylinders of the turbines of the Zaporizhia NPP, starting in 2020. Modernization of turbines will increase the capacity and efficiency of existing reactors of Ukrainian NPPs by 10%, which will provide a power increase of 70-100 MW at each reactor.
In addition, on Tuesday in Enerhodar (Zaporizhia region), an agreement was signed between Atomkomplekt (a separate division of Energoatom) and Turboatom for the manufacture and supply of a block-modular condenser for replacing the condenser of the K K-1000-60/1500 turbine at reactor five of Zaporizhia NPP in April 2020.
The parties also discussed a long-term repair program for the replacement of used spare parts.
“Four years ago, we gave a new powerful start to our cooperation, which is not only servicing the turbine park, but also the replacement and modernization of equipment. This will allow us to increase and improve the efficiency of nuclear power plants, to increase the generation of electric energy, which is important in conditions a new market, when every additional kilowatt-hour produced gives additional income,” Energoatom President Yuriy Nedashkovsky said.
According to the CEO of Turboatom Victor Subbotin, the volume of modernization at Energoatom for five years will exceed UAH 6 billion, which is a significant contribution to the utilization of production capacities and personnel of the enterprise.
Norway’s Norsk Solar has signed an agreement with the Voltage Group Ukrainian Company for designing and building of a 9 MW solar power plant near the town of Brovary in Kyiv region, the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO) reported on its website. According to the NEFCO, Voltage Group developed design documentation for construction of the solar plant on a total land area of 12.6 hectares.
The plant, which is located in the village of Semypolky, is to be commissioned at the end of 2019.
As reported, the NEFCO will lend EUR 4.35 million to Norway’s Norsk Solar for the construction of the plant, while Norsk Solar will issue another EUR 4.35 million.
The project owner and majority equity contributor, Norsk Solar AS, is part of the Norsk Vind group.
Norsk Solar is owned by Norwegian Lars Helge Helvig.
Ukrainian SPP will be the second such kind of a project for the company.
BUILDING, CONTRACT, KYIV, NORSK SOLAR, SOLAR POWER PLANT, UKRAINIAN CONTRACTOR
Antonov State Enterprise (Kyiv), part of Ukroboronprom state concern, is expected by the end of the year to receive a firm order from the Interior Ministry for the production of 13 new transport An-178 aircraft with a lifting capacity of 18 tonnes for the State Emergencies Service and the National Guard of Ukraine.
According to the press service of the state concern, within a preliminary agreement of the parties announced by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov at the 53rd international aerospace show Le Bourget 2019 (France), the signing of a contract to build 13 new An-178s for the ministry agencies is scheduled for autumn.
According to President of Antonov State Enterprise Oleksandr Donets, in the near future the enterprise plans to complete the design and certification of new An-178 airplanes, which is expected to be equipped with Ukrainian, American and European equipment. The transfer of the first aircraft to the customer is preliminarily scheduled for 2021-2022.
Head of Ukroboronprom Pavlo Bukin noted the production of aircraft for the domestic customer is considered to be the key condition for the resumption of serial production of aircraft in Ukraine.
PJSC ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) has signed an agreement worth almost $30 million with the Chinese company CISDI for the modernization of the largest blast furnace (No. 9).
According to a press release of the company, the contract includes the development of engineering, the supply of basic equipment, its installation, supervision and training of the metallurgical plant’s personnel.
It is noted that the company has four blast furnaces, of which DP-9 is the largest one, its useful volume exceeds 5,000 cubic meters. It produces about half of all pig iron at the steel plant and is still considered one of the largest in Europe.
The modernization of the furnace will increase its productivity to 10,000 tonnes of pig iron per day using the existing raw materials and up to 12,000 tonnes using sinter and pellets. ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih plans to produce pellets after the construction of a pelletizing plant (the declared capacity is 4.5-5 million tonnes per year). Both projects are the key ones in the enterprise’s investment program for the renovation and construction of production facilities.
National Energy Company Ukrenergo has signed a contract with Xian Electric Engineering Co. Ltd. (China) to reconstruct the 330 kV Brovarska substation with the installation of an autotransformer, the press service of the company has reported. The press service said that 11 companies from eight countries took part in a tender under the rules of the European Investment Bank (EIB), which finances the project. The cost of the project fell by 25%, to EUR 19.4 million.
Reconstruction of the Brovarska substation envisages the installation of modern complete switchgears with SF insulation and the modernization of relay protection and emergency control systems.
In addition, an additional 330/110/35 kV autotransformer with a capacity of 200 MVA will be installed at the substation. This will ensure the reliability and security of energy supply to consumers of the Kyiv energy hub – Brovary, Boryspil and Baryshivka districts of Kyiv region, including the Boryspil airport, as well as expand opportunities for their further economic development.
“Modernization of the Brovarska substation is one of the strategic projects of Ukrenergo. In two and a half years, this substation will be fully automated in accordance with international requirements for reliability and safety,” Deputy Director for Investment Volodymyr Kudritsky said.
Ukrenergo operates trunk and interstate transmission lines, as well as centralized dispatching of the country’s integrated power grids. It is a state-owned enterprise managed by Ukraine’s Finance Ministry. The company will be soon reorganized into a private joint-stock company.
Principal of Kramatorsk-based Donetsk National Medical University (Ukraine) Petro Kondratenko has said he plans to scrap his university’s contract with an intermediary company called Ukrainian Education Services (Ukrayinski Osvytni Posluhy). “The company’s debt to the university amounts to UAH 37 million. These are debts starting from 2016, when the international medical university began to function. We appealed to an economic court to terminate the relationship with that firm, terminate the contract and recover the funds that the firm owes,” Kondratenko at a press conference at the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Tuesday.
He said that in the summer of 2018 he discovered an “organized group” at the university that included an intermediary firm and university staff. He said the group “was patronized by employees of Ukraine’s SBU State Security Service.”
Kondratenko said, “This group earned money for illegal migration.”
“In 10 months, we issued 1,563 invitations for foreign citizens to come to study, but 243 people came. We could not but be interested in what happened to the rest of the invitations,” he said, adding that 95 invitees “were allegedly credited to our university by fake order, and money was taken from them as the fee for education. They were not our students, but Ukraine’s State Migration Service issued certificates of temporary residence in Ukraine for a period of five to six years.”
Kondratenko said the difference between the tuition fees that the intermediary firm takes and the cost established by the university is $5,000 per year.
“Plus $500 in insurance, $500 for a medical certificate, $500 for food, $500 for registration, $1,000 for accommodation in a hostel. In total, it turns out $8,500 per person. Multiply it all by 1,100 [the number of foreign students] and it works out to around $9.5 million. Plus the discount that the company received, depending on the number of students sent to study… The total amount is almost or more than $10 million, which went into the pockets of certain individuals,” the principal said.
He said that since September last year he had notified various officials, including the SBU’s main directorate in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the police and the prosecutor’s office of Kramatorsk, and the Kropyvnytsky police. “Almost 20 criminal cases are opened for this company by a court decision, including, under Article 129 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code (threat of murder),” he said.
Kondratenko said he had received threats of physical violence and SMS messages, which said if he did not leave his job, he or someone from his family would be killed. The court granted him state protection. He said the medical university extended the deadline from January 8 to February 7 for foreign students who arrived by invitation to study and who did not pay tuition to pay it, offering them to sign a contract directly with the university. “Virtually no one has signed.… Out of 1,100 students, 850 did not sign the contract,” he said.
The reason for the refusal to sign contracts directly with the university, according to the principal, were threats to students from the dismissed teachers and other persons, who said Kondratenko would soon leave his post. “It is surprising to me that a Member of Parliament of Ukraine is also involved in this,” he said.
Kondratenko said students who had not signed contracts would be expelled from the university, and, according to Ukrainian legislation, would be forced to leave Ukraine. “We want the university to operate legally and don’t want anyone to interfere in personnel policy,” the university’s head said.
Donetsk National Medical University (dnmu.edu.ua) is based in the Ukrainian-controlled town of Kramatorsk and the Ukrainian-controlled city of Mariupol in Donetsk region, as well as in the city of Kropyvnytsky in Kirovohrad region.
CONTRACT, FOREIGN STUDENTS, KRAMATORSK-BASED, MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, PRINCIPAL, SCAMS
