Westinghouse Electric Sweden in 2017 will supply the state enterprise NNEGC Energoatom with six shipments of nuclear fuel for Ukraine's nuclear power plants.
"Westinghouse will supply six shipments of fuel to Ukraine for the first time in 2017. It is planned that six downloads will be delivered by 2020. At least that's what is written down in the contract," Jose Emeterio Gutierrez, an interim president and CEO of Westinghouse Electric Company, said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Gutierrez said Westinghouse has expanded the capacity to produce nuclear fuel of late.
"Now we are ready to supply more fuel to Ukraine, but the final decision whether to buy more Westinghouse fuel is up to the Ukrainian government," said Gutierrez.
He said the recent tests of the operation of the TVS-WR at the South-Ukrainian NPP were successful.
"It's already obvious that Westinghouse's fuel works very well in Ukraine: the inspection at South-Ukrainian NPP showed this last week. This is good news for Energoatom, which knows that Westinghouse is a good and reliable supplier," the CEO emphasized.
In late March, Westinghouse has announced launching bankruptcy procedure. However, the company assured that this will not affect the fulfilment of the company's obligations to produce and supply fuel to nuclear power plants in Ukraine.
Westinghouse is one of two suppliers of nuclear fuel to Ukraine. In 2016, Ukraine spent 162 million dollars on US fuel and 388 million dollars on the Russian fuel.
In late 2014, Westinghouse signed an agreement with Energoatom on a significant expansion of nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine's nuclear power plants until 2020.
Aziz Dagh, Vice President and Managing Director of Westinghouse, said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine that the contract envisages the supply TVS-WR to two of the three units at South-Ukrainian NPP (# 2 and # 3) and four of the six units at the Zaporizhzhya NPP (# 1 and # 3–5). According to him, Energoatom also has an option to expand supplies beyond these stations to Khmelnitska and Rivne NPPs, each of which has two VVER-1000 units.