Power Unit Four in Chornobyl blew up fourteen years ago. Ukraine proclaimed its independence ten years ago. All these years we have wholeheartedly cursed the Soviet Union, blaming it for all seven deadly sins, as well as for sins it never perpetrated and those we committed ourselves. We seem unaware of copying the worst possible things from our Soviet past, doing so both subconsciously and consciously. Why?
I have two answers: (a) we do not know how to live any other way, in a modern way, and cannot rid ourselves of today’s permanent chaos, or (b) we are just turncoats.
Let hard facts speak for themselves.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) teemed with energy resources (6,000 kWh per capita). Fantastic! The nuclear power stations alone generated 35-38 million kW (at the time of the Chornobyl disaster and even after). However, the lack of energy conservation technologies reduced nuclear facility efficiency to 30%, with 1.5 times more “dump heat” (i.e., discharged into the ground and atmosphere) than at power plants using organic fuel, while generating similar amounts of electricity. Most of the latter was exported and the nuclear plants were originally built precisely to export electricity.
Nothing has actually changed in Ukraine after gaining independence; no growth of efficiency or progressive energy conservation technologies. Nothing, although I strongly believe that we should ask the West to help renovate our energy sector for the sake of development.
Electricity was available at a low prime cost, yet the lowest value (54 kopecks) was registered at the Chornobyl station (compared to the others operating analogous RBMK- 100 reactors). Practically all the electricity (except that supplied to a couple of neighboring districts in Kyiv oblast) went to Europe.
It is still the same, plus supplies to some 2 million Ukrainians.
In 1982, the first breakdown occurred at Chornobyl’s Power Unit One, accompanied by a radioactive discharge (this is not hearsay). And then came 1986 and Unit Four exploded, constituting the world’s biggest nuclear disaster. The containment structure was built in great haste (such were the circumstances) and people exposed to lethal radiation. The containment, which became known as the Sarcophagus, was meant to last 30 years (sic). The result was faulty heavy concrete packing. It started to crack three years later (over 1000 square meters of holes by 1990), discharging dust (over 30 tons formed by heat emanating from a 1,300 kW source and by radiation “crushing” concrete mixed with nuclear fuel). The containment was cracking, spilling dust, and leaking. Rain penetrated the structure and then further down, reaching the groundwater.
In independent Ukraine, various projects were developed to neutralize the Sarcophagus danger, focused on three major concepts: the traditional one of burying the containment under a mound, leaving it as a sad reminder to posterity; a scientific one, building Sarcophagus-2 over Sarcophagus-1, also leaving the whole thing to posterity; and a green one, tearing the thing apart, leaving the site to overgrow with green grass. The money for such projects had to be saved by the Chornobyl station, once again in operation.
At present, the containment is supposed to be reconstructed, so it can last 50-100 years. This time interval is what causes the strongest doubt; in fact, one feels certain that the money will once again go down the drain or be buried somewhere. The more so that no funds of its own have been raised over the years. And what did they expect to achieve?
It was for such a “noble” purpose that Power Unit Three was again made operational in April 1987.
July 14, 1989, the Kyiv oblast committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine announced that the issue of shutting down and mothballing the first, second, and third power units at Chornobyl could be raised only after the station had ended its design service life, i.e., not earlier than 2007. And this was considering that the Soviet Union had plenty of energy sources. But of course, Chornobyl was making 250 million rubles every year, a large sum at the time (with the official exchange rate set at one ruble/$0.62).
In the early 1990s, Mykhailo Umanets, director of the Chornobyl station, said that Power Unit One would be shut down in 1995-96, adding that “We still have no technology or feasibility study to justify the removal of the unit from service... Many pounced on the fact that the Ministry of Nuclear Energy drew 65 million rubles from Chornobyl’s disaster relief account to supply its own needs. We spend more than 65 million a year to keep the [official evacuation] zone under control.”
So keeping the evacuation zone under control was more important than taking care of people. How so very true to our declared principles of humanism!
From Volodymyr Yavorivsky’s speech, July 31, 1990: “A cleanup team from Chornobyl was invited to attend the Greenpeace Congress, but only half came, because the rest were dead. Each of us should recall our election campaign... You promised the electorate to deal with the Chornobyl problem, you promised a moratorium... We must finally put and end to this nuclear orgy...”
On November 9, 2000 (Den, No. 205, not translated): “This is a very serious political issue [i.e., closing down Chornobyl — Auth.) which has simply turned into a kind of auction. If it is an action, one must act tough and pragmatic... I think that torturing Ukraine any further without giving the money and pressuring it for closing down the Chornobyl station is immoral. Our great ‘friends’ in the West should understand once and for all that it is not worth playing with us, treating us like provincials.”
October 11, 1991, the reactor protection and monitoring system broke down at Chornobyl’s Power Unit Two. Oxygen leaked at Turbogenerator Four, and there was a fire.
Director Umanets was promoted, first as President of the Ukratomenerhoprom Concern and later to the post of Chairman of the Derzhatomenerho State Nuclear Energy Committee.
October 29, 1991: Verkhovna Rada decided to impose a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power units.
In early 1992, Parliament passed a resolution ordering Chornobyl closed by the end of 1993.
At the end of 1992, it canceled the closure resolution, explaining this inconsistency by our electricity shortage.
In 1993, Power Units One and Two were operational at Chornobyl and another “disaster” occurred September 20: the nuclear fuel vanished into thin air — or was stolen (as testified by Volodymyr Usatenko, Verkhovna Rada consultant for Chornobyl).
October 15, 1993, Volodymyr Preobrazhenska, Candidate of Sciences in biology wrote a letter to Speaker Ivan Pliushch, to the effect that Ukraine’s nuclear lobby is worried by the status of the nuclear power industry and cancellation of the moratorium, while “none of the currently operational nuclear power stations meet international safety standards.”
October 21, 1993, Verkhovna Rada canceled its resolution of October 21, 1993, lifting the moratorium, actually approving the construction of nuclear power units.
(In April 2000, the newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda v Ukraine had a hot line with Premier Viktor Yushchenko. Among other things, he was asked by a reader in Borodianka, “Do you know that 95% of the people supposedly crippled by Chornobyl are not actually disabled, because disability comes with the third group, and second group means officials and their relatives?” To which Mr. Yushchenko replied, “Every step made by the government will never badly affect an actually handicapped individual. It takes a cynic or a barbarian to mistreat a disabled person”).
Power Units One and Three are still the only operational ones at Chornobyl.
February 23, 1994, President Leonid Kravchuk issued a secret edict called On Urgent Measures to Develop the Nuclear Power Industry and Create a Nuclear Fuel Cycle in Ukraine.
The United States had already “disarmed” Ukraine and inoperative Ukrainian strategic missiles were being transferred to Russia in return for free nuclear fuel (see Den, October 7, 2000). Such free deliveries from Russia were to be completed in 1995-96.
A full nuclear fuel cycle starts with the extraction of uranium ore (Ukraine has sufficient deposits), ending with the recycling of spent nuclear fuel and burial of radioactive wastes.
The issue of building the fourth power unit at the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Station (in the Crimea) was expected to be decided by July 1, 1994, putting into operation the high-service-availability-degree power units (laid by under the Soviets), namely: Power Unit Six (95% service availability) at the Zaporizhzhia NPP in 1994, worth $35 million; Unit Two (70%) of the Khmelnytsky NPP in 1995 at $89 million; Unit Four (70%) in the Rivne NPP in 1996 costing $74 mil., and Unit Two (it would burn down) at Chornobyl in 1995. The power units (except the one at Chornobyl) had 1,000 MW water-moderated reactors known under the acronym VVER (Chornobyl’s RBMK uranium graphite-moderated reactor had the same capacity).
It was further planned to complete the construction of Khmelnytsky’s Units Three (20%) and Four (15%) in 1998-99 ($450 million and $570 million respectively). Quite ambitious projects. But with what money? Ukrainian taxpayers’, to be sure, but also using other sources as well.
One has to give Ukraine’s Greenpeace and Peace Committee their due for making all these secret schemes public knowledge (in particular, courtesy of A. Tsvetkova, B. Zrezartsev, O. Honchar, N. Preobrazhenska, D. Hrodzinsky, to mention but a few).
The West was alarmed. An executive order was issued in February, and in April 1994 Ukraine once again promised the international community to close down Chornobyl, without specifying the date. Another round of haggling began. A G-7 nuclear safety task force turned to banks, among them World Bank and EBRD, asking to organize a joint mission in Ukraine to investigate safety arrangements at the local nuclear power stations. The mission started on April 5, and its findings were anything but new for us: safety arrangements below international standards, inadequate construction materials (I wrote about this a month before the nuclear disaster), equipment, and monitoring devices, poor management, insufficient subsidization and quality control; 84% of electricity thus generated remaining to be paid for, etc.
The Derzhkomatom State Nuclear Power Committee planned to invest $4.1 million in the repeated start-up of Chornobyl’s Unit Two, while the station claimed some $40 million worth of expenses involved in modernizing safety arrangements. Derzhkomatom insisted on large- scale reconstruction, both at Chornobyl and the Sarcophagus, also on building a spent fuel recycling plant, nuclear waste storage facilities, and finishing the construction of high availability power units.
The mission noted “a terrifying economic situation in Ukraine” that could significantly complicate the employment of the required resources and subsidies, as well as the ambitious nature of the plans harbored by the leadership, plans that would most likely be never carried out due to the lack of funds. The mission saw the only way out in speeding economic reform.
In July 1994, the US media broached the subject of distrusting Ukraine because of its dreadful economic situation, collapsing energy sector, and controversial top level decisions.
Indeed, on the one hand, we shouted about the terrible consequences of the Chornobyl disaster for the environment and people and a threat to the rest of the world; on the other, demanded help not for the victims but to save the nuclear power industry. It is also true, however, that the nuclear plants could supply almost 40% of all electricity needs if working at full capacity. A tangible indicator, if only we could use energy-saving technologies and raise the nuclear power’s efficiency while lowering electricity’s prime cost.
The US administration heatedly debated the price to be paid Ukraine for stopping, once and for all, its reactors
threatening the whole world. The Energy Department opposed financing new energy facilities in Ukraine, offering instead wind turbines (sic). Ukraine said thanks, but no, thanks.
Ukrainian Vice Premier Shmarov responded with a new promise to close [Chornobyl] “as soon as a balance is achieved in the energy system and funds are raised to phase out the station.”
Still, the way to that balance was (and still is) about as long as to Europe. All our economic problems were becoming chronic, including fuel shortages: bad-burning coal, requiring fuel oil and gas, the latter being regularly unpaid for or illicitly pumped out and re-exported, along with dwindling domestic extraction, mismanagement, mounting internal nonpayment; fuel oil requires oil, it being in constant short supply and seldom paid for with attendant frequent breaches of contract.
In fact, breaking contracts has become the rule rather than an exception, a kind of exclusive Ukrainian feature in dealing with business partners, thus regularly upsetting the balance of interests, calling forth partners’ and domestic producers’ distrust of the government.
G7 made its own computations and was horrified. Further discrepancies surfaced, primarily with regard to the completion of new power units; the Ukrainian energy capacities were not utilized fully (that is, not operating at the design level) due to faulty supplies and fuel extraction, inadequate payments for fuel supplied and consumed, meaning that the introduction of new capacities (the two reactors at the Khmelnytsky and Rivne facilities) would not only fail to solve the energy system balance problem, but would even aggravate it unless the economy is put right and economic reform carried out.
Ukraine was insistent nevertheless and a precedent established.
Somewhat earlier, the US administration gave the Czech Republic a loan of $317 million to complete two VVER-1000 (Temelin) reactors, although IAEA noted a number of shortcomings in the modernized Temelin reactors.
The efficiency and energy-saving characteristics of the Ukrainian reactors of this type, not being modernized in keeping with world safety standards, caused some members of the US administration to strongly doubt their feasibility. Ideally, modernizing the Ukrainian reactors would require huge spending and heavy hitting investors. Among the latter, the sober- minded have said a firm no, aware of the excessive risks and uncertain revenues. Hence, the good intentions were never fully implemented.
Ukraine meanwhile has gone through a new parliamentary election and a presidential campaign ending in Leonid Kuchma’s victory. However, the President had no way to order the situation of “retaining the worst” changed. Instead, the Ukrainians have received a notorious stability (i.e., a stable economic imbalance in general and that of the energy system in particular).
Academician A. Yablokov of Russia sees the reason for the numerous disproportions and imbalances in the range of thinking, whereby a politician thinks from one election campaign to the next (four years); an economist and a businessman does in terms of invested capital turnover (10-12 years), and only an ecologist always thinks 40-50 years ahead. And so all those geared to make the most of the current situation, however short-lived, short-sighted pragmatists regard the ecologists as insane.
Still, the ecologists and Greenpeace zealots, after analyzing Chornobyl’s consequences, heightened their antinuclear effort, making their voice heard more widely and strongly. How can one talk about strengthening democracy while stepping up nuclear violence, by developing the nuclear power industry? Ukraine has counted on being an exception from the rule, and this was folly (in terms of thinking range).
Greenpeace, as a worldwide movement, is the result of the concerted ecological effort of the 1970s, movement for peace and against nuclear arms (receiving a special impetus in the US during the Vietnam War), and the feminist movement of the 1980s.
In fact, the 1980s marked a period of civic activity in various countries, a period of implementing general human ideas and values. It was the decade of the most effective Greenpeace policy. In other words, socially active citizens of the world were prepared to reject the consequences of Chornobyl. It is also true that public opinion is not shrugged off in the democratic countries.
Thus one must not forget about Chornobyl’s sociopolitical impact on the rest of the world and about its consequences, which should be considered lessons learned by everybody except Ukraine.
There is also the long forgotten decision to keep Ukraine nuclear-free and nonaligned, a decision once supported nationwide.
There is no doubt that we will get help from the West, but it could be more decisive and tangible if our economy changed its horrifying status and if the energy system could use all its capacities to the full, along with progressive and energy saving technologies, increasing the efficiency of all types of power stations, while lowering electricity’s prime cost (as it is, our enterprises prefer to buy it from Russia, because it is less expensive); if we did not beat the world record in terms of corruption and risks sustained by domestic as well as foreign business; if our tax laws were not temporary and pleasure oriented; if we learned not to waste time, living a deadlocked life, making this life unbearable; if we did not sit home all by ourselves.
The main thing today is not what political decisions we make. If we do not close down Chornobyl now that we can get help from the West, we will have to close it several years from now anyway (the station’s service life is nearing its end), but by then we will be totally isolated and will have to do it at our own expense.
Of course, I am fully aware that, from the point of view of the state, it is a shame not to complete power units that are all but ready for operation. But from the general human point of view completing them is simply a sin.
