The South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant (), also known as the Pivdennoukrainsk Nuclear Power Plant, is a

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power st ...

in Ukraine, near the city of

Pivdennoukrainsk Pivdennoukrainsk (), formerly known as Yuzhnoukrainsk (), is a city on the Southern Bug river, in Voznesensk Raion, Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine, about 350 kilometers (over 200 miles) south of the capital Kyiv. It hosts the administration of Pivden ...

Mykolaiv Oblast Mykolaiv Oblast (, ), also referred to as Mykolaivshchyna (, ), is an administrative divisions of Ukraine, oblast (province) of Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Mykolaiv. At the most recent estimate, the population ...

, about south of

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

. It is the second largest of the country's five nuclear power stations. It is part of the South Ukrainian Energy Complex, along with the

Tashlyk Pumped-Storage Power Plant Tashlyk Pumped-Storage Power Plant () is a pumped-storage power station near Pivdennoukrainsk in Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine. It connects with Oleksandrivka, Oleksandrivka settlement hromada, Voznesensk Raion, Mykolaiv Oblast, Oleksandrivka reservoi ...

and Oleksandrivska hydroelectric power station. It has three

VVER The water-water energetic reactor (WWER), or VVER (from ) is a series of pressurized water reactor designs originally developed in the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. The idea of such a reactor was proposed at the Kurchatov Instit ...

-1000 pressurized water reactors and a net generation capacity of 2,850 megawatts (MW). In 2013, following major upgrade work, unit 1 was given a 10-year license extension, which will take it beyond its original 30-year design lifetime. Similar extensions are planned for units 2 and 3, licensed until 2015 and 2019, respectively. The

Vetrino–Isaccea–Yuzhnoukrainsk powerline The Vetrino–Isaccea–Yuzhnoukrainsk powerline is one out of three 750 kilovolts powerline running from Ukraine to the European Union. History Construction of a 750 kV powerline from Ukraine through Romania to Bulgaria was agreed on ...

runs from the plant to

Isaccea Isaccea () is a small town in Tulcea County, in Northern Dobruja, Romania, on the right bank of the Danube, 35 km north-west of Tulcea. According to the 2021 census, it has a population of 4,408. The town has been inhabited for thousands o ...

, Romania, but is mostly dismantled or ruined. Yuzhnoukrainsk

History

Since 1992, it has been guarded by the 4th NPP Protection Battalion. The main supplier of fuel for nuclear power plants in Ukraine has been

TVEL :''TVEL (') is also a Russian abbreviation of the "heat-releasing element", fuel rod.'' The TVEL Fuel Company (TVEL) is a Rosatom-owned nuclear fuel cycle company headquartered in Moscow. It has operated since 1996. History and operations The co ...

, with whom NNEGC signed a contract for the supply of nuclear fuel for Ukrainian WMR in 1997 until 2010. Under a US-Ukrainian initiative to reduce Ukraine's dependency on Russia for fuel, tied to the dismantling of its nuclear weapon arsenal,

Energoatom The Public JSC National nuclear energy generating company "Energoatom" () is the public enterprise operating all four Nuclear power in Ukraine, nuclear power plants in Ukraine (Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Zaporizhzhia, Rivne Nuclear Power ...

had been using reactor core of unit 3 to test nuclear fuel produced by

Westinghouse Electric Company Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, includ ...

Västerås Västerås () is a city in central Sweden on the shore of Mälaren, Lake Mälaren in the province of Västmanland, west of Stockholm. The city had a population of 127,799 at the end of 2019, out of the municipal total of 158,653, over 100,000 mo ...

in Sweden, mixed with Russian assemblies. In August 2005, it was loaded with the first six experimental fuel assemblies produced by Westinghouse together with Russian fuel for a period of pilot operation. The pilot runs were "deemed unsuccessful, with Energoatom claiming manufacturing defects in the fuel led to a lengthy unscheduled outage at two of the units, while Westinghouse said that errors had been made during fuel loading". Nevertheless, in 2008, Energoatom signed a fuel supply contract with Westinghouse to supply 630 nuclear fuel assemblies to its three reactors starting in 2011. Westinghouse shipped a reload batch of 42 fuel assemblies for the 3 units in mid-2009 to last for three years of commercial operation. In June 2010, Energoatom signed a long-term fuel supply contract with Russia's TVEL for its nuclear reactor fleet. Earlier,

Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom (commonly referred to as Rosatom rus, Росатом, p=rosˈatəm}), also known as Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, (), or Rosatom State Corporation, is a Russian State corporation (Russia), sta ...

had offered a substantial discount to Ukraine if it signed up with TVEL for 20 years. During trial use of Westinghouse manufactured fuel in 2012, the fuel became deformed and caused serious damage to the reactor. On 11 April 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea, the fuel contract with Westinghouse was extended through 2020. The fuel will be made at the fuel fabrication facility in Västerås. According to Ukraine, Russian troops were advancing to the plant in the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, but were repelled in the March 2022 Battle of Voznesensk. On 19 September 2022, the power plant was reportedly hit by Russian artillery. A missile exploded about 300 metres from the reactors, blowing out windows in the buildings and damaging a neighbouring hydroelectric power station. Nuclear reactors were not damaged. On May 8, 2024, preparatory work began at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant for the construction of two new power units, No. 4 and No. 5, using the American AP1000 technology by Westinghouse.

Impact on Chernobyl disaster

At around 2pm on 25th April 1986, one of the reactors reportedly scrammed due to an incident. This suddenly took out around 800 MWe out of the grid. This led partly led to the grid controller calling for the delay in the rundown of

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) is a nuclear power plant undergoing decommissioning. ChNPP is located near the abandoned city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, northwest of the city of Chernobyl, from the Belarus–Ukraine border, a ...

unit 4 until midnight. This caused the

RBMK The RBMK (, РБМК; ''reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalnyy'', "high-power channel-type reactor") is a class of graphite moderated reactor, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor, nuclear power reactor designed and built by the Soviet Union. It is so ...

core of unit 4 to get excessively poisoned with

Xenon Xenon is a chemical element; it has symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

135 isotope causing the disaster.

References

External links

Archived
official website in English.

{{Nuclear power in Ukraine 1983 establishments in Ukraine Buildings and structures in Mykolaiv Oblast Energoatom Energy infrastructure completed in 1983 Energy infrastructure completed in 1985 Energy infrastructure completed in 1989 Nuclear power stations built in the Soviet Union Nuclear power stations in Ukraine Nuclear power stations using VVER reactors

History

Impact on Chernobyl disaster

See also

References

External links