First shipment of Westinghouse fuel delivered to Ukraine’s Zaporozhye from Sweden’s Västerås.

February 25, 2016 (NucNet) The first shipment of Westinghouse-made nuclear fuel has been delivered to Ukraine’s Zaporozhye nuclear power station in the southeast of the country, Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom said. It was produced at Westinghouse Sweden Nuclear Fuel Factory, located in Västerås, Sweden. Energoatom said it plans to load the new fuel into the 1,000-MW Zaporozhe-5 reactor during a scheduled outage in May 2016. 

The company also said it expects to use the new fuel for Units 1, 3, and 4 if the results from Unit 5 allow for it. Westinghouse Sweden confirmed today that in 2016 it is delivering five reloads to nuclear power plants in Ukraine, a contract for which was signed in 2014. The South Ukraine-2 and South Ukraine-3 nuclear units already operate using Westinghouse fuel under a 2008 fuel supply agreement, which was extended to 2020 in April 2014. 

In June 2015, Westinghouse received a €2m ($2.2m) grant from a European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) funding programme for a Euratom project to establish security of supply of nuclear fuel for Russian-designed reactors in the EU.