Ukraine energy minister to go to Moscow to discuss NPP project
KYIV. Jan 28 (Interfax) - Ukraine's Energy and Coal Industry Minister Eduard Stavytskyy will discuss the construction of units 3 and 4 of the Khmelnytskiy nuclear power plant with the Russian nuclear energy corporation Rosatom in Moscow next week.
"I am going to Moscow this week for talks with the Rosatom chief. We will proceed to discuss practical aspects of the project to open investment lines, a loan agreement and the construction directly [units 3 and 4 of the Khmelnytskiy nuclear power plant,]" he said on Rada television on Tuesday.
Stavytskyy added that the talks will also deal with the construction of a nuclear fuel production facility in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government's commissioner for cooperation with Russia, CIS and EurAsEc Valeriy Muntiyan said in early January that the completion of the project to build energy units 3 and 4 by Russian blueprints, and the construction of a nuclear fuel production facility, of a hydropower plant and a pump-storage hydropower plant, rank among major energy projects with Russian funding.
These agreements were negotiated at a meeting of the Ukrainian-Russian interstate commission in December 2013, he said, adding that the loans to be provided are worth $6 billion.
Ukraine and Russia signed an intergovernmental agreement on June 9 2010 on cooperation in building units 3 and 4 of the Khmelnytskiy nuclear power plant. The agreement says that Russia will provide the funding necessary to develop the project and commission the energy units.
In early December 2010, Sberbank informed Ukraine's energy corporation Energoatom that it could provide a $1 billion loan to do the first-priority workload to finish the construction of the third and fourth energy units for three years, against state guarantees, and on condition that Ukraine will put at least 15% of the project's estimated value into the construction.
Russia's initial loan proposals for the Khmelnytskiy nuclear power plant involved a state, not a commercial loan with a lower interest rate.
Energoatom said in May 2011 that the Sberbank-proposed terms, including a rather high interest rate, did not suit it.