Ukraine completes modernization of 2 reactors under budget. Plans to finish two others.

[NNadir]

The implementation of the post-commissioning modernisation program to bring the two units up to world-class safety standards has been officially reported to the State Nuclear Regulation Committee of Ukraine (SRNCU). The program included some 80 separate measures at Khmelnitsky 2 and 81 at Rovno 4, all carried out since their start-up in 2004.

Energoatom has managed to complete the modernisation without consuming the full amount of the $125 million of loans made to the project from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Euratom, and has used the balance to complete 18 additional security measures.

Khmelnitsky 2 and Rovno 4 are both Russian-designed V320 model VVER-1000 pressurized water reactors. Construction began on the units in the mid-1980s but was suspended in 1990 when both reactors were about 80% complete. Completion of the reactors was made a priority following the final closure of the last operating reactor at Chernobyl in 2000, and carried out with financial support from the EBRD and Euratom, which made loans of $42 million and $83 million respectively...

...Work is scheduled to begin on the completion of a further two suspended units at Khmelnitsky with a view to operation in 2016 and 2017. Khmelnitsky 3 and 4 were 75% and 28% complete when work on them stopped in 1990. Their completion is to be mainly funded through a Russian loan, with Ukraine providing 15% of the finance.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Modernisation_work_complete_at_Ukrainian_plants-1111108.html">Modernisation work complete at Ukrainian plants.

Have a nice day.

[AdHocSolver]

1. They learned nothing from Chernobyl.

The push for nuclear power from the "energy" industry is their last chance to maintain a stranglehold on civilization when oil becomes too expensive for the masses.

Wind, solar, and other "green" forms of energy production allow for the decentralization of power production at comparatively low cost. Nuclear energy requires massive amounts of capital to develop and maintain, which gives the capitalists complete control of economies.

To the problems of pollution and climate change, the Powers That Be will add the prospect of poisoning the planet by the dumping of toxic nuclear waste...assuming Earth avoids another Chernobyl incident.

[NNadir]

2. Somehow I think they know more about Chernobyl than you do.

Nuclear energy is the world's largest source of climate change gas free primary energy. For more than three decades, it has been the world's fastest growing form of climate change gas free primary energy.

It is not perfect, of course, but it doesn't need to be perfect to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.

In terms of GWh/dollar investment, nuclear power is roughly comparable to the cost of coal fired electricity, if one doesn't count the fact that coal plants are allowed to indiscriminately dump their waste in their favorite dump, earth's atmosphere.

Basically the same people who whine most ignorantly about so called "nuclear waste" are precisely the people who couldn't care less about the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste.

So called "nuclear waste" - almost all of which is incredibly valuable - differs from the anti-nukes pals in the dangerous coal, gas and oil industries inasmuch as that used nuclear fuel can be contained on site indefinitely with no fatalities resulting.

Have a wonderful evening.

[AdHocSolver]

4. One key phrase that powers my skepticism is "under budget".

Having worked in a technical capacity in electronics for many years, including in a hospital, I saw first hand how keeping costs low (to increase profits) promotes management decisions to cut corners on quality and safety. We saw this on a large scale in the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The technical "experts" are NOT in charge. They do what they are told to keep their jobs.

My comments are derived from many years of working in technical areas in business and health care. A lot of preventable "accidents" and near "accidents" occur all the time, which are covered up so that the public never hears about it. Chernobyl was just too big to cover up.

[Confusious]

3. It's not mom and pop setting up wind farms

or solar farms.

It's the big energy companies. Or small energy companies that want to be big.