The president of Ukraine’s state-controlled nuclear power company announced Monday that the country is terminating an agreement with Russia to complete the construction of two nuclear reactors.
The president told the satellite television channel Ukraine Today that the company was looking for new technical and economic advice from other countries to help finish the reactors. The reactors are currently 75 and 28 percent complete, and the company believes both will be completed by 2020.
The project was been delayed several times by both Russia and Ukraine due to political concerns and Ukraine’s parliament voted to terminate the agreement with Russia last September. The country’s Ministry of Energy held off of an outright cancellation as Russia was providing the financing for the reactors. The reactors will likely be finished by American companies such as Westinghouse, which previously bid on a contract to finish the reactor.
Ukraine is heavily dependent on nuclear energy as its 15 reactors generate half of the electricity used in the country. The two new reactors would provide a total of 2,000 megawatts of electricity, according to the World Nuclear Association. That’s enough electricity to power roughly 1.5 million homes.
Ukraine is deeply skeptical of any Russian involvement in its power grid due to the tensions and outright conflict between the two countries. Additionally, hackers linked to Russia attacked the country’s power grid last December, according to a February statement by Ukraine’s energy ministry. The massive hacking was the first known cyber-attack to take down an electric grid and one of relatively few attacks which damaged physical infrastructure. It left approximately 700,000 homes without power for several hours last December, mostly in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine.
The attack was probably caused by a well-engineered malware called BlackEnergy that disconnected electrical substations from the main power grid. A similar malware was used against Ukrainian media organizations during the 2015 local elections. The American Department of Homeland Security twice warned American utilities about the type of malware in December 2014 and again in June 2015.
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