Nuclear power in Ukraine
Encyclopedia
In 2007, nuclear power
supplied 47.5% of Ukraine
's electricity
production of 195 billion kWh. The total installed capacity of nuclear reactor
s in Ukraine is over 13 GWe.
Ukraine is one of Europe’s
largest energy
consumers, it consumes almost double the energy of Germany
, per unit of GDP. A great share of energy supply in Ukraine comes from nuclear power, with the country receiving most of its nuclear fuel
from Russia
. Oil
and natural gas
provide the remainder of the country's energy; these are also imported from the former Soviet Union
. Ukraine is heavily dependent on its nuclear energy
. The largest nuclear power plant
in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
, is located in Ukraine. In 2006, the government planned to build 11 new reactors
by the year 2030, in effect, almost doubling the current amount of nuclear power capacity
. Ukraine's power sector is the twelfth-largest in the world in terms of installed capacity, with 54 gigawatts (GW). Renewable energy
still plays a very modest role in electrical output; in 2005 energy production was met by the following sources: nuclear (47 percent), thermal (45 percent), hydroelectric and other (8 percent).
The Chernobyl disaster
was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
in Ukraine
. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe. It is considered the worst nuclear power
plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale
(the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
). The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion ruble
s, crippling the Soviet economy.
) were located at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
. All of the reactors there have been shut down, leaving only the much safer VVER reactors operating in the country. Three of the reactors listed were built in post-independence Ukraine, with the first one of these being constructed in 1995; the other sixteen reactors the country inherited from the Soviet Union.
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
supplied 47.5% of Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
's electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
production of 195 billion kWh. The total installed capacity of nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
s in Ukraine is over 13 GWe.
Ukraine is one of Europe’s
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
largest energy
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
consumers, it consumes almost double the energy of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, per unit of GDP. A great share of energy supply in Ukraine comes from nuclear power, with the country receiving most of its nuclear fuel
Nuclear fuel
Nuclear fuel is a material that can be 'consumed' by fission or fusion to derive nuclear energy. Nuclear fuels are the most dense sources of energy available...
from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Oil
Oil
An oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....
and natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
provide the remainder of the country's energy; these are also imported from the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Ukraine is heavily dependent on its nuclear energy
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
. The largest nuclear power plant
Nuclear power plant
A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity.Nuclear power plants are usually...
in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the third largest in the world.The plant is located in Central Ukraine near the city of Enerhodar, on the banks of the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnieper river. It has 6 VVER-1000 pressurized light...
, is located in Ukraine. In 2006, the government planned to build 11 new reactors
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
by the year 2030, in effect, almost doubling the current amount of nuclear power capacity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
. Ukraine's power sector is the twelfth-largest in the world in terms of installed capacity, with 54 gigawatts (GW). Renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
still plays a very modest role in electrical output; in 2005 energy production was met by the following sources: nuclear (47 percent), thermal (45 percent), hydroelectric and other (8 percent).
The Chernobyl disaster
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, northwest of the city of Chernobyl, from the Ukraine–Belarus border, and about north of Kiev. Reactor 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in...
in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe. It is considered the worst nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale
International Nuclear Event Scale
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to enable prompt communication of safety significance information in case of nuclear accidents....
(the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
The is a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. The plant comprises six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric ,...
). The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion ruble
Ruble
The ruble or rouble is a unit of currency. Currently, the currency units of Belarus, Russia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, and, in the past, the currency units of several other countries, notably countries influenced by Russia and the Soviet Union, are named rubles, though they all are...
s, crippling the Soviet economy.
Reactors
All of Ukraine's RBMK reactors (the type involved in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disasterChernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
) were located at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, northwest of the city of Chernobyl, from the Ukraine–Belarus border, and about north of Kiev. Reactor 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in...
. All of the reactors there have been shut down, leaving only the much safer VVER reactors operating in the country. Three of the reactors listed were built in post-independence Ukraine, with the first one of these being constructed in 1995; the other sixteen reactors the country inherited from the Soviet Union.
| Name | Location | Type | Capacity, MWe | Operational | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chernobyl NPP Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, northwest of the city of Chernobyl, from the Ukraine–Belarus border, and about north of Kiev. Reactor 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in... |
Chernobyl Chernobyl Chernobyl or Chornobyl is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, in Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. The city had been the administrative centre of the Chernobyl Raion since 1932.... |
RBMK RBMK RBMK is an initialism for the Russian reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalniy which means "High Power Channel-type Reactor", and describes a class of graphite-moderated nuclear power reactor which was built in the Soviet Union. The RBMK reactor was the type involved in the Chernobyl disaster... |
1000 | 1977-1996 | |
| RBMK | 1000 | 1978-1991 | |||
| RBMK | 1000 | 1981-2000 | |||
| RBMK | 1000 | 1984-1986 | exploded in the Chernobyl accident | ||
| Khmelnytsky | Netishyn Netishyn Netishyn is a city in Khmelnytskyi Oblast , in the west of Ukraine. Located on the Horyn River this city of oblast subordinance has a population of 34,267.... |
VVER VVER The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design... |
1000 | 1987- | |
| VVER | 1000 | 2004- | |||
| Rivne Rivne Nuclear Power Plant The Rivne Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant in Kuznetsovsk, Rivne Oblast, Ukraine.It has four reactors: -External links:* *... |
Kuznetsovsk Kuznetsovsk Kuznetsovsk is a city in Rivne Oblast, Ukraine. Population is 40,872 . The mayor of Kuznetsovsk is S. Anoshchenko .The urban-type settlement was founded on 1973 as a company town of the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant. The new town was named in honor of the Soviet secret agent Nikolai Kuznetsov. The... |
VVER VVER The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design... |
402 | 1980- | |
| VVER | 417 | 1981- | |||
| VVER | 1000 | 1986- | |||
| VVER | 1000 | 2004- | |||
| South Ukraine South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant The South Ukraine Nuclear Power Station , is a nuclear power station in Ukraine.It is located near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk in Mykolaiv province, approximately south of Kiev. The nuclear power station has three VVER-1000 reactors and a net generation capacity of 2,850 megawatts... |
Yuzhnoukrainsk Yuzhnoukrainsk Yuzhnoukrainsk is a city in Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine. Population is 38,206 .Yuzhnoukrainsk NPP is located near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk, approximately 350 kilometers south of the capital Kiev. This nuclear power station has three VVER-1000 reactors and a net achievement of 2,850 megawatts... |
VVER VVER The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design... |
1000 | 1982- | |
| VVER | 1000 | 1985- | |||
| VVER | 1000 | 1989- | |||
| Zaporizhzhia Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the third largest in the world.The plant is located in Central Ukraine near the city of Enerhodar, on the banks of the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnieper river. It has 6 VVER-1000 pressurized light... |
Enerhodar Enerhodar Enerhodar is the city in north-west part of Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine.Enerhodar is located on the left bank of Dnieper river near the Kakhovka Reservoir.... |
VVER VVER The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design... |
1000 | 1984- | largest nuclear power plant of Europe |
| VVER | 1000 | 1985- | |||
| VVER | 1000 | 1986- | |||
| VVER | 1000 | 1987- | |||
| VVER | 1000 | 1989- | |||
| VVER | 1000 | 1995- | |||
| Total | Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia... |
VVER VVER The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design... |
13819 | 1981 (1978)- |
See also
- Energoatom (Ukraine)
- Nuclear energy policyNuclear energy policyNuclear energy policy is a national and international policy concerning some or all aspects of nuclear energy, such as mining for nuclear fuel, extraction and processing of nuclear fuel from the ore, generating electricity by nuclear power, enriching and storing spent nuclear fuel and nuclear fuel...
- List of Chernobyl-related articles