The management of state nuclear-energy giant Energoatom is fighting a Cabinet plan to remove the Zaporizhya nuclear-power plant from its control and channel the energy it produces to Zaporizhya oblast alone.
The plan was first voiced last month by the new First Deputy Energy Minister Volodymyr Kurat-chenko, who was governor of Zaporizhya region until his Cabinet appointment in January.
The giant Zaporizhya nuclear-power plant consists of six reactors that produce the same amount of energy as Ukraine’s four other nuclear plants together, or a quarter of the country’s total electricity output.
Under the plan, Zaporizhya would have its own regional energy exchange. The energy produced by the Zaporizhya nuclear-power station would be sold at the regional energy exchange to local industry at cut-price rates.
Energoatom’s director, Mykola Dudchenko, said such a move would cause a serious imbalance in energy supplies in the whole country, as well as speculative trading on the exchange over the cheap electricity.
He said that currently the Ukrainian national energy system allows the high cost of energy produced by thermal plants to be compensated by the much lower cost of energy from nuclear plants, and the population pays the average price of 11 kopecks per kilowatt, regardless of its source.
Dudchenko told the Post last month that if the biggest and the cheapest nuclear power plant drops out of the system, prices will soar.
At the same time, industry in Zaporizhya region would be getting cut-price energy. Currently, the production costs at Zaporizhya nuclear power plant run 30 percent less than at the rest of the plants.
Dudchenko said the new plan would mean direct subsidizing of Zaporizhya region while discriminating against the rest of Ukraine.
‘We shouldn’t try to build communism in one region; we need to try to create normal [business] conditions in the whole country,’ he said.
Dudchenko also said that cheap energy in one region would foster many middlemen who would buy Zaporizhya’s cheap energy and sell it to other oblasts at a profit.
‘Somebody is trying to create a favorable climate around themselves, because they cannot change the whole economic system,’ Dudchenko said.
Kuratchenko refused to comment on his plan to the Post. He said through a spokesman that the Post’s written questions were ‘naive’ and he had ‘no interest in answering them.’
Visiting Zaporizhya oblast on April 5, President Leonid Kuchma said he has signed a decree ‘creating special economic conditions in the region.’ Although Kuchma provided no further details, Ukrainian media later reported that the decree was designed to subsidize the local economy with cheap electricity.
