EU to Fund Chernobyl Replacement ProjectThe European Commission on Wednesday approved a Euratom loan of US$585 million to facilitate the construction of two nuclear reactors in Ukraine, enabling Chernobyl to be closed.The loan will be used to finance the completion, modernization and commissioning of reactor unit two at the Khmelnitsky and reactor unit four at the Rivne nuclear power plants (K2R4). The two nuclear reactors will replace the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. The replacement project will provide Ukraine with electricity from two nuclear powered generators with a safety level upgraded to acceptable western standards. The K2R4 project is already 80 percent complete. The two third- generation nuclear reactor units will help Ukraine to meet its future power requirements based upon least-cost planning principles. In 1995, the Group of Seven and the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ukraine to elaborate and implement a comprehensive program to support the Ukrainian decision to permanently close the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by the year 2000. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development recently approved a loan of 215 million dollars for the project. The total cost of the replacement project is estimated at 1.48 billion dollars. Export Credit Agencies, Russia and local contributors will finance the remaining funds for the project. However, the environmental group, Greenpeace, urged the European Commission on Wednesday not to approve the special loans for the replacement project. The environmentalists argued that an earlier Austrian study of the K2R4 project described the replacement as "particularly hazardous" and warned that the replacement nuclear reactors would not meet western safety standards. Greenpeace stressed that Europe is still suffering from Chernobyl, which is one of the reasons why there is not a single nuclear reactor under construction in the EU and no Euratom loans have been given to an EU member state for nuclear power plant construction since 1987. Last week, only six of the 15 EU member states voted in favor of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development loan for the K4R2 project. The other member states either voted against the loan or abstained from it. The six countries voted for were France, Britain, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Finland. |
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