On March 28 the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP) and the city of Slavutych saw the Ukryttia (Shelter) Chornobyl Foundation wrap-up assembly participated by delegations from the donor countries that finance work in the CNPP area. On the same day, the government of Ukraine passed the resolution On the Early Shutdown of Power Unit No. 3 and Final Decommissioning of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Taking this serious step in pursuance of the Memorandum of Understanding between Ukraine and the G7 on closing Chornobyl, the government of Ukraine hoped for a reply from the international community.
“It is now important for Ukraine to get the most possible concrete information about the kind of foreign support we can rely on and about the areas where we must only rely on our own forces,” Vice Premier Yuliya Tymoshenko said, addressing the gathering.
The participants’ opinions differed. “We welcome the decision of the Ukrainian government because it enhances the relationship of trust between the Memorandum parties. However, we would like first to see and have an opportunity to study the document,” Yukia Amano, in charge of nuclear safety for the G7, thinks.
“Ukraine has not yet met all EBRD conditions for crediting the construction of capacities to compensate for decommissioning the CNPP,” EBRD vice president Joachim Jancke said. He also reminded the assembly of EBRD first vice president Charles Frank’s statement about “the absence of any direct link between CNPP shutdown and Western funding of the completion of construction of the Rivne and Kharkiv nuclear power plants.”
Ukraine made a quite strongly worded statement in reply. For example, Vitaly Haiduk, first deputy minister for fuel and power generation, reminded the donors: “Expert calculations confirm that unit No. 3 can be safely operated and generate $1.3 billion in electrical energy until the year 2004.”
A question arises as to whether the resolution is really the last point in the CNPP shutdown controversy? “The resolution passed, in my opinion, is not as unequivocal as it seems to be: it bears no concrete dates and conditions. The document leaves open the question of its fulfillment,” CNPP general manager Vitaly Tolstonohov told The Day.
