Economic and safety pressures on nuclear power: a comparison of Russia and Ukraine since the break-up of the Soviet Union

*Tel.: 44 1273 686758; fax; 44 1273 685865.E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Thomas)

Energy Policy 27 (1999) 745}767

Economic and safety pressures on nuclear power: a comparison ofRussia and Ukraine since the break-up of the Soviet Union

Steve Thomas*SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), Mantell Building, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RF, UK

Received 17 November 1999

Abstract

Since the Chernobyl accident and the break up of the Soviet Union, nuclear power in Russia and Ukraine has come under intensescrutiny. The West has pursued a policy that the plants should undergo safety upgrades or be closed. However, the resources neededto achieve this have not been available. This paper examines how these pressures have a!ected nuclear power plants in Ukraine andRussia since 1991. Economic recession and the fall in electricity demand have led to lack of resources for fuel purchase, maintenanceand upgrading. The only &unsafe' plant that has been closed is one at Chernobyl in Ukraine. Russia is life-extending its &unsafe' plantsfor a further ten years service. In Russia, other plants are dispatched ahead of nuclear plants and in summer, nuclear plants areoperated at reduced power. Ukraine's position as a fossil fuel importer means that there is a greater incentive to run the nuclear plantsintensively. This pressure was particularly strong in 1992 and 1997. Performance in the years following was much poorer. Ukrainefaced an additional challenge in building up an independent regulatory capability from scratch after the break-up of the Soviet Union.While the new body is regarded as technically competent, it may lack the political power to impose its will. ( 2000 Published byElsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Nuclear; Russia; Ukraine

1. Introduction

Since the Chernobyl accident and the break up of theSoviet Union, the civil nuclear sectors in the countries ofthe Former Soviet Union (FSU), especially Russia andUkraine where most of the nuclear power plants weresited, have come under intense scrutiny and pressure.The most overt pressure on the safety side has come fromthe West. Since 1992, it has pursued a policy that theplants should either undergo a programme of safetyupgrades or, if they could not be brought up to accept-able standards at a reasonable cost, should be closed.However, the resources needed to carry this objectivehave not been available. The West, for a variety of rea-sons, has provided far fewer resources in terms of grantsand loans than Ukraine and Russia expected, while theeconomic recession that Russia and Ukraine have suf-fered since 1990 has allowed few internal resources to

carry out these objectives. This paper examines the wayin which these pressures have a!ected the operation ofthe nuclear power plants, comparing and contrasting thesituation in Ukraine and Russia since 1991, the year inwhich the Soviet Union disintegrated and the two coun-tries began to operate their plants autonomously.

2. The technologies

Two main nuclear technologies have been used forpower generation in the FSU (see Table 1). The WWERis similar in concept to the most widely used design in theWest, the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR), but theRBMK, the design used at the Chernobyl plant, has noclose counterparts. As in the West, fast breeder techno-logy has been pursued from early on, through the &BN'prototypes, but, despite continuing interest in this tech-nology in Russia, commercial orders have yet to beplaced.

Both the RBMK and the WWER have been built intwo main sizes and within these sizes, there were a num-ber of sub-models. In most countries of the region, work

0301-4215/99/$ - see front matter ( 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S 0 3 0 1 - 4 2 1 5 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 7 4 - 9

Table 1Nuclear power plants in service in the Former Soviet Union!

Station Technology Construction start Commercial operation

ArmeniaMetsamor 2 WWER-440/230 1975 1979KazakhstanShevchenko BN-350 1964 1973LithuaniaIgnalina 1-2 RBMK-1500 1977, 78 1985, 87RussiaBalakovo 1-4 WWER-1000/320 1980, 81, 82, 84 1986, 88, 89, 93Beloyarsk BN-600 1966 1981Bilibino 1-4 EGP-6 1970 1974, 75, 76, 77Kalinin 1-2 WWER-1000/338 1977, 82 1985, 87Kola 1-2 WWER-440/230 1970, 73 1973, 75Kola 3-4 WWER-440/213 1977, 76 1982, 84Kursk 1-2 RBMK-1000 (1st gen.) 1972, 73 1977, 79Kursk 3-4 RBMK-1000 (2nd gen.) 1978, 81 1984, 86Leningrad 1-2 RBMK-1000 (1st gen.) 1970, 70 1974, 76Leningrad 3-4 RBMK-1000 (2nd gen.) 1973, 75 1980, 81Novovoron 1-2 WWER-440/179 1967, 67 1972, 73Smolensk 1-2 RBMK-1000 (2nd gen.) 1975, 76 1983, 85Smolensk 3 RBMK-1000 (3rd gen.) 1984 1990UkraineChernobyl 1 RBMK-1000 (1st gen.) 1972 1978Chernobyl 3 RBMK-1000 (2nd gen.) 1977 1982Khmelnitsky 1 WWER-1000/320 1981 1988Rovno 1-2 WWER-440/213 1976, 77 1981, 82Rovno 3 WWER-1000/320 1981 1987South Ukraine 1 WWER-1000/302 1977 1983South Ukraine 2 WWER-1000/338 1979 1985South Ukraine 3 WWER-1000/320 1985 1989Zaporozhe 1-6 WWER-1000/320 1980, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86 1985, 85, 87, 88, 89, 96

!Note: Includes plants that were in service in the period 1992}1998.

was halted on all plants under construction in 1989}90.In some cases, such as Poland and the Former GermanDemocratic Republic (GDR), the plants were abandonedand will not be completed, while in others, such as theCzech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Ukraine, workhas subsequently re-started or may re-start. The plantswere designed to successively more stringent safety stan-dards, of which the three most recent and those mostrelevant to the commercial nuclear power plants areOPB-73, OPB-82 and OPB-88 (the numbers show theyear of issue). OPB-88 standards re#ect at least some ofthe lessons that have been learnt from the Chernobyldisaster, but no completed plants have been designed tothese standards. Indeed, the main design work on all theoperating plants was carried out before 1982 and, whilemodi"cations were introduced to re#ect OPB-82, nooperating plants were designed with OPB-82 standardsin mind.

2.1. The WWER

The WWER has been built in two sizes, a smaller unitproducing an electrical output of about 440 MW and

a larger, newer design producing about 1000 MW. TheWWER concept was proven with a series of prototypesat the Novovoronezh site. Unit 1, ordered in 1959, com-pleted in 1964 and closed in 1990 had an electrical outputof 210 MW. Its successor, ordered "ve years later andbrought on line in 1969, was larger with an electricaloutput of 365 MW and continued in service until 1992.Two more, semi-prototype units (Novovoronezh 3 and 4)were built before the "rst of the two main designs of the440 MW design, the model 230, took over. There were 14WWER-440/230 units which entered service, includingtwo in Russia (Kola 1 and 2), but none in Ukraine.Closure of the plants of this design has been a priority forthe West since 1992 because of the lack of some of thesafety features usually judged necessary in the West.While six units were closed before 1992 (in the formerGDR and Armenia), none has been closed since and oneof the units in Armenia has been re-started. In terms oftheir safety, the two Novovoronezh units (model &179')are generally classi"ed with the 230 model. Two units ofthis basic design were also built in Finland (Loviisa) butwith extensive design safety improvements and the use ofWestern suppliers. There is no strong pressure to close

746 S. Thomas / Energy Policy 27 (1999) 745}767

1Work on Rostov 1 was halted in 1991 when the project wasestimated to be 90}95% complete. By January 1999, a constructionpermit was still pending.

2 In 1999, the Russian authorities hoped to have Kursk 5 on-line by2001.

these plants mainly because they have a full pressurecontainment.

The successor model was the WWER-440/213, de-signed to OPB-73 standards. By 1990, 14 units of thisdesign had entered service, including two in Russia (Kola3 and 4) and two in Ukraine (Rovno 1 and 2). A numberof other units were under construction at this time, forexample in Cuba and the Slovak Republic, on whichwork subsequently resumed or may yet resume, withvarying degrees of design change to take account ofWestern safety criteria. There is no strong Western lobbyfor early closure of these plants although there is pressurefor a programme of safety upgrades (InternationalAtomic Energy Agency, 1999).

There were also a number of early designs of theWWER-1000. These included three in Russia(Novovoronezh 5, the model &187' and Kalinin 1 and 2,the model &338') and two in Ukraine (South Ukraine1 (model &302') and 2 (model &338')) before the main seriesof plants, the model 320, took over. The early designs, theso-called &small' series were designed to OPB-73standards. The WWER-1000/320 was also designed toOPB-73 standards, but was later upgraded to the higherOPB-82 requirements. By 1990, 12 units of the &320'design were in service, including three in Russia(Balakovo 1-3) and eight in Ukraine (Khmelnitsky 1,Rovno 3, South Ukraine 3 and Zaporozhe 1-5). Sub-sequently three further units, Balakovo 4, Zaporozhe6 and Kozloduy 6 (in Bulgaria) have been completed withonly minimal changes to the original design. Work onother units of this design may restart, including two unitsin Russia (See Nucleonics Week, 1999a)1 (Kalinin 3 andRostov 1) and two units in Ukraine (Khmelnitsky 2 andRovno 4). Construction of two units of this design in theCzech Republic, Temelin, was largely halted in 1990 butwas re-commenced in 1995 with signi"cant design cha-nges and safety upgrades, and using some Westerncontractors. There are no fundamental safety issues that,in the eyes of the West, make continued operation ofthe WWER-1000 unacceptable. However, there area number of safety issues, which generally have arisenfrom operating experience, and which would require ex-tensive safety upgrades to be carried out at all the operat-ing plant (International Atomic Energy Agency,1996,1999).

2.2. The RBMK

The RBMK was only installed in the FSU. Unlike theWWER, which is refuelled annually during its mainten-ance shutdown, the RBMK is refuelled continuously

while the plant is operating at full power. Four smallunits at Bilibino (11 MW each), using a similar concept tothe RBMK, were ordered in 1965, three years ahead ofthe "rst orders for the commercial size plants. Theseprovide heat as well as power and are still in service. Thelarge-scale plants have been built in two sizes, producingelectrical outputs of about 1000 MW and 1500 MW.However, only two units of the larger size have beencompleted, in Lithuania (Ignalina), and, in 1989/90, theSoviet Regulator restricted the output of these plants to1250 MW, a restriction that remains in force still. TheIgnalina units are not considered in detail in this paper.All other units were installed in Russia or Ukraine. Therewere essentially two designs of the RBMK-1000. Therewere four units of the "rst generation design completed inRussia (Leningrad 1 and 2, and Kursk 1 and 2) and twoin Ukraine (Chernobyl 1 and 2). These were all designedbefore OPB-73 came into force. The turbine hall at Cher-nobyl 2 was destroyed in a "re in October 1991 and itspermanent closure was "nally announced in March 1999.Unit 1 was permanently closed in December 1996.

There were six units of the second-generation designcompleted in Russia (Kursk 3 and 4, Leningrad 3 and4 and Smolensk 1 and 2) and two in Ukraine (Chernobyl3 and 4). These were upgraded to OPB-73 standards.Chernobyl 4 was destroyed in the accident of April 1986.One part-built unit in Russia, Kursk 5, may yet becompleted (Nucleonics Week, 1999b).2 The West hasapplied pressure for the closure of all RBMK units, butthe priority has been the closure of the "rst generationdesign because of their poorer level of safety. Ignalina1 was also built to OPB-73 and is also therefore a genera-tion two design, while unit 2 has had some additionalsafety features retro"tted. Smolensk 3 was the only plantcompleted (in 1990) after the Chernobyl disaster and itwas possible to make some modi"cations to take accountof the OPB-88 standards. O$cials therefore sometimesdescribe Smolensk 3 as being a third generation design.

3. The political background

The Chernobyl disaster in April 1986 alerted the Westto some of the problems that existed in the civil nuclearsector in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. How-ever, actions from the West were relatively limited. Inpart this was because Soviet o$cials explained that theChernobyl disaster was the result of inexplicable mis-takes by the operating sta!. The absence of clear in-formation on the situation in the Soviet nuclear industryand the Cold War left little scope for the West to getinvolved.

S. Thomas / Energy Policy 27 (1999) 745}767 747

3For a review of the safety de"ciencies of the WWER-440/230, seeInternational Atomic Energy Agency, 1992.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequentloss of control of the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe,followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union itselfin 1991, removed the &iron curtain' on information andgave much more scope for the West to intervene. Oneearly initiative, the Energy Charter, was well intentioned(DoreH and De Bauw, 1995). It was meant to remove anybarriers to Western investment in the energy sector of theregion. Essentially the deal was that it would allow West-ern money to go in to the FSU to ensure supplies of gasto Europe and, in exchange, the civil nuclear sectorwould be brought up to adequate safety standards. How-ever, this initiative got bogged down in negotiations andnot all parts of the Charter have been concluded. TheCharter appears to have had no signi"cant impact on thenuclear sector so far.

From 1988 onwards, the International Atomic EnergyAgency (IAEA) had begun to extend its various inspec-tion visits, especially the OSART inspections (Opera-tional Safety Review Team) to the region. There was alsoa programme set up in 1990 to examine the safety ofolder nuclear power reactors. This was to cover both theEast and the West, but its initial focus was on theWWER-440/230. These two programmes were broughtinto focus in an extended visit to the Kozloduy site inBulgaria, which houses four WWER-440/230 and twoWWER-1000/320 units, in June 1991. The poor condi-tion of the plant clearly shocked those on the visit and, inuncharacteristically direct language, the IAEA reportsaid the plant was in &very poor condition with a numberof safety relevant de"ciencies' (International Atomic En-ergy Agency, 1991). This, in combination with the limitedsafety provisions in the WWER-440/230 design (Interna-tional Atomic Energy Agency, 1992)3 led to considerablemedia coverage and the Kozloduy site became notoriousin the public mind.

The problem of nuclear safety in the FSU and EasternEurope was increasingly perceived as a much wider issuethan just a fundamental design error with one particulartype of reactor. The adequacy of safety systems, theresources available for maintenance and repair, and theresources available for training and retaining skilled op-erations and maintenance personnel all became issues.

At a political level, the independence of Ukraine fromRussia in 1991 gave the West a further opportunity toin#uence matters. Indeed, a clear but unspoken objectiveof countries such as the USA has been to ensure thatUkraine and Russia do not re-unite. As a result, thee!orts to persuade Ukraine to close Chernobyl haveachieved a high pro"le on the international politicalscene and all the annual G7 summits since the break-upof the Soviet Union have contained statements in their

communiqueH s on the progress towards the closure ofChernobyl. There were other factors leading to greateremphasis being placed on the civil nuclear sector ofUkraine. These included the much lower level of nuclearexpertise in that country and also the poor state of theeconomy. The latter has meant the Ukrainian economyhas been dependent on support from Western Interna-tional Financial Institutions (IFIs) since its indepen-dence. This meant that the West could exert far greaterleverage over Ukraine than it could over Russia.

The IAEA extended its special programme on thesafety of the WWER-440/230 in 1992 to cover all WWERand RBMK plants. This became the so-called &Ex-trabudgetary Programme on the safety of WWER andRBMK Nuclear Power Plants', which continued to oper-ate until 1998 (See International Atomic Energy Agency,1999, for its "nal report). In 1996, it published its reviewof the WWER-1000/320 (International Atomic EnergyAgency, 1996). Up till then, the WWER-1000 had es-caped much scrutiny because of the clear adoption ofWestern safety philosophy (the WWER-1000 is some-times referred to as the &Eastinghouse' design because ofits similarity to the market-leading design of PWR in theWest, that of Westinghouse). The IAEA programmeclearly identi"ed operational reliability as a serious prob-lem with these plants. This was in contrast to the otherRussian designs which, whatever their other faults, hadgenerally had a very good record of reliability in routineoperation (See, for example, International Atomic En-ergy Agency, 1997. This report also contains some analy-sis of the other WWER designs.)

4. The economic background

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, all 15 of thecomponent republics have experienced economic prob-lems and all now have a Gross Domestic Product (GDP)lower than in 1989. The real level of output of the repub-lics is di$cult to estimate, especially in Russia andUkraine, because of the increasing importance of un-recorded activity (the &black' economy), which some haveestimated to be equivalent to up to nearly 50 per cent ofrecorded GDP (Boss, 1998). Ukraine is not a netexporter of fossil fuels and its easily recoverable coalreserves have been extensively exploited. This lack of oiland gas reserves has contributed to the particularly se-vere economic problems Ukraine has experienced andGDP, which is now only about 40 per cent of the 1989level, is still falling. The problems in Russia have beenrelatively less severe, although the economic crisis inRussia in the summer of 1998 has hit its economy hard.How quickly it will recover from this latest set back is notyet clear.

The economic problems have an impact on the nuclearpower sector in a number of ways. From 1993 to 1997,


4 In 1998, the head of the Russian nuclear operator, Rosenergoatom,accused the main Russian generator and grid operator, UES, of beingbiased against nuclear plants, and imposing restrictions on nuclearoutput to favour non-nuclear producers See East European EnergyReport (1998a).

5The Novovoronezh 5 unit has a di!erent fuel assembly design and,as a result, is not subject to this problem.

Ukraine was able to obtain nuclear fuel from Russiawithout charge as compensation for giving up nuclearwarheads. The USA paid for the cost of fuel for thenuclear plants. This meant that the marginal cost ofgeneration at nuclear plants was very low and, as a result,the few "nancial resources available were channelled tothe nuclear plants. Any extra nuclear output that couldbe produced e!ectively substituted for output from coal,oil or gas-"red plant. The avoided fossil-fuel consump-tion helped the balance of payments (the fuel could beexported or its import avoided). There was thereforea strong incentive to operate the plants to their max-imum extent, and in some cases output levels have beensigni"cantly above the design level. Since 1997, Ukrainehas had to purchase its nuclear fuel, but the marginal fuelcost of generation at the nuclear plants is still probablyless than at fossil fuel plants and the incentive to maxi-mise nuclear output remains.

Low rates of payment of electricity bills, particularly inthe industrial sector, are a problem in both Russia andUkraine. Many bills are settled through barter or notpaid at all. This is often because the industries that uselarge amounts of electricity are not internationally com-petitive and paying electricity bills in cash would bank-rupt them. In Russia, it is estimated that non-payment forelectricity consumption is about 25 per cent, with cashaccounting for only 10}15 per cent of the billed amountand barter, o!sets and other methods accounting for60}70 per cent. The nuclear sector is particularly badlyhit by this problem in Russia because, in e!ect, thestructure of the electricity industry e!ectively makes itlast in the queue to receive what cash payments are made.In 1997, only 1.4 per cent of its payments were made incash, a "gure that had improved to 10 per cent for 1998(Nucleonics Week, 1999c). In Ukraine, the non-paymentproblem is as severe. In 1998, the Ukrainian nuclearpower utility, Energoatom, was only paid in cash for10 per cent of its deliveries, 13 per cent was not paid for atall and the rest was paid for in barter, a process in whichabout half the value of the transaction is lost (NucleonicsWeek, 1999d).

This lack of liquidity starves the electricity industry,including the nuclear plants, of money to pay for fuel,maintenance and spare parts. As a result, plants may bekept o!-line because there is not enough money to repairthem, or operated at reduced levels to save fuel. Lessobviously, it may be necessary to skimp on maintenanceor it might not be possible to complete the maintenanceas quickly as if resources were not so limited. It shouldbe noted that a shortage of funds is often not apparentfrom the operating record of the plant. Extensions tomaintenance periods because of lack of money are sel-dom explicitly identi"ed and a cash shortage would haveto be extreme if there were not enough money to buynuclear fuel or to buy a spare part essential to allow theplant to return to service.

The economic decline in Russia and Ukraine hasmeant that many electricity-intensive industries havebeen closed, much reducing electricity demand. In Uk-raine, nuclear power accounts now for about 45 per centof electricity supplies compared to only about 25 per cent8 years ago. This is close to, but not yet at, the level atwhich demand would be low enough to require that theoutput of the nuclear plants be reduced at times of lowdemand. Russia is much less dependent on nuclearpower, at about 12 per cent. However, the large size ofRussia means that some regions are heavily dependenton nuclear power. Prior to the break-up of the SovietBloc, this was not a problem as the whole of the electric-ity system was co-ordinated from Moscow and powercould be moved around the whole region. Now, theRepublics and some regions of Russia increasingly im-pose their own priorities and, in some parts, it appearsthat the local companies choose to run other plant inpreference to the nuclear plants.4 A particularopportunity for nuclear power plants near the borderswith Western countries is the possibility of earningWestern currency through exporting power. The clearestexample is the Leningrad power plant that exports powerunder long-term contract to Finland.

5. Safety and regulatory issues

A number of issues have arisen which have a!ected theway in which the plants have been operated. The &stick-ing' control rod problem on the WWER-1000, discussedbelow, has resulted in some restrictions being placed onthe output of this design. The "rst generation RBMKsare regarded as the plants posing the greatest risk and, asa result, the power output has generally been restricted toabout 70 per cent of the design rating. Despite concernabout the safety of the WWER-440/230, no output re-strictions have been placed on this design.

A major concern with the WWER-1000s has been thecontrol rods (these are inserted into the plant to controlthe power level and are the main method of closing downthe plant).5 It emerged in testing that control rods be-came deformed during operation and, as a result, couldnot be inserted into the core within the prescribed time,and some got stuck completely. The safety authorities inUkraine instituted a regular test programme to monitorthe situation. This recommendation was later endorsedby the IAEA which suggested that testing be carried outat each unit at three monthly intervals (International


6 In discussions with various experts from national and internationalbodies, none of those spoken to were aware of this restriction.

Atomic Energy Agency, 1996). Remedies for this problemhave been proposed but the IAEA stated in 1996 they willonly be proven after at least three years' experience. TheIAEA report also suggested that safety upgrades wouldbe required if the plants were to be operated in load-following mode. At present, therefore, if demand is toolow for all the output of a WWER-1000 plant to beutilised, a load-following regime is not an option. By1999, the remedial measures taken meant that the IAEAcould describe this problem as having &low' safety signi"-cance (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1999, pp.89}90).

In Russia, since 1994, the power output of all of theWWER-1000s (except Novovoronezh 5) has been re-stricted to 90 per cent of design power. This restrictionhas been imposed by the safety Regulator, Gosatomnad-zor, because of &faults in the RCPS (reactor control andprotection system) control rod equipment' and &pendingcompletion of studies of fuel assembly behaviour duringoperation'. It is apparent from the operating records ofRussian plants that this restriction was still in force atmost, if not all of the six a!ected plants in 1999.

The existence of this restriction is not widely known,even amongst experts in the West, and similar restric-tions in Ukraine do not appear to have been enforcedsince 1996.6 There were suggestions from Western ex-perts interviewed that the restrictions were due to coreinstability when a large amount of fresh fuel was loaded.It was suggested that these restrictions applied for the"rst 40}60 days after refuelling. No such restrictions arereported in the IAEA data. It is di$cult to determinewhether any power restrictions have been imposed be-cause of core instability. This is partly because of the90 per cent power restriction resulting from the RCPSproblems and partly because restart after refuelling gen-erally occurs in the summer when unit output is often lowbecause of high coolant temperatures.

Dealing with the safety of the RBMK has proved moredi$cult to handle because of the association in the pub-lic's mind with the Chernobyl disaster. The only politi-cally viable policy in the West has been to press for earlyclosure of all units. However, especially in Russia wherethe RBMK accounts for more than half the nuclearcapacity, this policy was not likely to be successful, espe-cially given that this design of plant has, in normaloperating conditions, always been a very reliable gener-ator of power. Immediate closure of all the plants wouldnot have been politically and economically acceptable inRussia or Ukraine. Given their fundamental design #aws,there is reluctance in the West to facilitate, through thegranting of loans, the carrying out of safety upgradeswhich might reduce the risk in the short-term but which

might open the way for the plants to continue in service.The focus has therefore settled on pressing for closure ofthe remaining units at Chernobyl and on the "rst genera-tion plants in Russia.

A particularly contentious case has been the Ignalinaplant in Lithuania. Western target dates for the closure ofthis plant, which supplies almost all Lithuania's powerneeds have been constantly missed and the latest Euro-pean Commission target of 2005 does not appear likelyto be met (Nucleonics Week, 1999e). Lithuania cannotlightly ignore Commission targets as it is seeking entry tothe European Union and its entry may have conditionsrelated to the closure of Ignalina placed on it.

A complicating factor with this design is the fuel chan-nels in the graphite core. These have an operating life ofabout 15}20 years, before they must be replaced if theplant is to remain operable. This requires an expensiveand lengthy operation, often taking two or more years.This operation would not be economically justi"able ifthe plant was not expected to operate for a decade ormore after its completion. All the "rst generation plantsin Russia have now either undergone or are undergoingre-channelling and re-construction. Re-channelling at theoldest of the second-generation plants, Leningrad 3, be-gan in 1995. Experience with these "rst re-channellingoperations has suggested that the fuel channels in thecentre of the reactor need to be replaced before those atthe periphery. As a result, it may be possible, although byno means certain, to avoid the need for a single lengthyoutage, by a programme of targeted channel replace-ments carried out in extended maintenance shutdowns.This possibility has raised serious concerns in Lithuaniawhere some limited re-channelling has taken place, lead-ing to fears in the West that Lithuania planned to main-tain its two units in operation for some time to come.

In the "rst years after the Chernobyl disaster, therewere no formal restrictions on the output of any of theplants until 1990, when the output of the "rst generationplants was restricted to 70 per cent of the design rating.In Russia, this restriction has been maintained until theplants have been closed for major overhauls, primarily toreplace the graphite fuel channels (see Table 2). Duringthese outages, the Russian authorities have said that theplants have been essentially &re-built', presumably tohigher safety standards.

Russia has not acceded to the West's pressure to closethe RBMKs. Some Western money (about ECU75m) hasbeen used in these refurbishments and this was condi-tional on the completion of in-depth safety assessments(IDSA). However, none has yet been completed and theyare being carried out using Russian resources andRussian methodologies (Nucleonics Week, 1999f ).

After completion of the re-construction process, out-put of the plant has, in most cases, not been restricted.However, Kursk 1, has only been licensed to operate at70 per cent of design after completion of reconstruction.


Table 2Major plant overhauls at Russian and Ukrainian RBMKs!

Plant Date on-line Design gen. Overhaul period Output restrictions

RussiaLeningrad 1 11/74 1st 7.89-3.91 3.91-1.92 70%

10.94-6.96Leningrad 2 2/76 1st 11.91-12.94 6.90-11.91 70%

12.94-3.95 70%Kursk 1 10/77 1st 4.94-12.97 9.90-4.94 70%Kursk 2 8/79 1st 4.98- 6.90-4.98 70%Leningrad 3 6/80 2nd 7.95-11.98UkraineChernobyl 1 5/78 1st 6.90-12.94 70%

1.95-12.95 80%Unit not operated after 12.96

Chernobyl 2 5/79 1st 6.90-10.91 70%Turbine hall destroyed in "re, 10/91, unit not restarted

Chernobyl 3 6/82 2nd

!Note (1) Table is based on plant status at end September 1998. (2) Output restrictions listed include only those not connected to a speci"c equipmentfault.

In 1999, it was the subject of a dispute between Ukraineand the West, which had granted loans on the conditionthat the unit would not be returned to service until anIDSA had been carried out. The Russian authorities haveallowed the restart of the unit at reduced power in a &test-ing' regime that could continue for more than three years.

The Leningrad 1 unit is a special case. It was closed for2 years from 1989 and when it returned to service, it wasstated that output was restricted to 70 per cent untilSeptember 1992, although from January 1992, this limitwas clearly being ignored and the plant run at full designrating. Further modi"cations were carried out in anotherextended outage from 1994 to 1996 and after this, nooutput restrictions were enforced.

In Ukraine in 1991, the output of Chernobyl 1 and2 was also restricted to 70 per cent of design. The turbinehall of unit 2 was destroyed in a "re that year and theplant has not operated since, but the restriction appliedto unit 1 in 1992 although the plant was only on-line for3 months of that year. The reason for this shut down wasnot disclosed in the IAEA report. During a lengthyoutage in 1997/98 due to the discovery of crackingin plant systems during a maintenance period, theopportunity was taken to carry out limited fuel channelreplacement. It has not been disclosed how long thisoperation will postpone the need to either complete there-channelling work or close the plant.

Apart from these technology-speci"c restrictions, thereare some other more general factors that might have animpact on the operation of the plants. There is probablya widespread perception in the West that the standards ofoperation at the plants in the region were low and paidtoo little regard to safety. For example, a recent Euro-pean Commission Panel of High Level Advisers wrote in

1998 that &safety culture is no longer unknown in theEast' (Panel of High-Level Advisors, 1998). Such a blan-ket condemnation of the previous safety regime in allcountries of the region probably cannot be justi"ed, butit does illustrate a common perception in the West.

If, in the past, there was a poor appreciation of theneeds of safety, the technology does give cause for con-cern as it allows operators some discretion to ignoredanger signals. For example, in some designs, scramsignals (a scram is when the plant is shut down in a con-trolled fashion but as quickly as possible) could be over-ridden if the operators believed them to be spurious orthey believed the problem could be solved withouta scram. If warning signals were unjusti"ably ignored,this would tend to result in better reliability "gures, interms of scrams per year, than was warranted. However,even if safety issues were now given higher priority, andas a result, scram frequency increased, it would be di$-cult to disentangle this e!ect from that caused by otherfactors. For example, an increase in the scram rate couldbe the result of more cautious operation of the plant or itcould be the result of poorer maintenance because ofresource shortage leading to more frequent equipmentfailures.

Another potentially important impact comes from thepolitical power and rigour of the safety regulatory re-gime. While the West can contribute theoretical safetystudies and occasional inspection visits to a few plants, itis the local regulatory authorities that should be in con-trol of ensuring safety in the day-to-day running of theplant. Before the break-up of the Eastern Bloc, the plantswere designed and largely supplied from Russia andsafety regulation was also controlled from there. In somecountries, local knowledge of the technology was very


7When the plant is not in service, even if the plant has been derated,the power lost is categorised as outage losses.

limited. With the break-up of Soviet power, all the com-ponent countries apart from Russia had to build anindependent regulatory capability from a very low base.In Russia, the skills were present, but the tradition ofindependent powerful regulation was probably not asstrong as in the West. This caused considerable concern:for example, an IAEA report in 1992 wrote that it hadfound `the regulatory bodies had poor inspection stan-dards and were ine!ective in identifying safety concerns.The regulatory bodies need to have su$cient indepen-dence and authority to act in the best interests of safetya(International Atomic Energy Agency, 1992a, p. 38).Technical competencies and traditions of independentpowerful regulation cannot be built overnight. In 1997,a World Association of Nuclear Operators' (WANO)report on the Ukrainian nuclear sector found a lack ofsafety culture (Nucleonics Week, 1997a,b). In 1998, anindependent review of the Ukrainian nuclear regulatoryregime still characterised it as ine!ective (Budnitz andSteinberg, 1998).

6. Analysing the operation of the nuclear power plants

Data published by the IAEA (International AtomicEnergy Agency, annual) allows all plant shut downs to beidenti"ed, including the duration and cause (using a cod-ing system to identify the cause as well as a brief verbaldescription). Indicators such as power produced and timeon-line are tabulated on a monthly basis. This allowsa measure of plant reliability to be calculated, forcedoutage frequency. This is calculated as the number oftimes in the given year that the plant owners were forcedto shut down the plant without prior planning. Thisnumber is normalised for 6000 h of operation, so, forexample, if a plant was on-line for 3000 h and experi-enced two forced outages, the normalised outage fre-quency would be 4.

The IAEA data also allows the plant records to beanalysed to split the potential output of the plant intofour categories. These are expressed as percentages of thepower the plant would have produced had it operateduninterrupted, at its design rating, throughout the year.The categories are:

f Load factor * the power actually produced.f Outage losses* the power lost because the plant was

shut down.f Derating losses * the power lost (or gained) if the

plant is authorised by the safety authorities to operateat less (more) than the design rating. In the followinganalyses, derating losses are zero unless otherwisestated.7

f Operating losses* the power lost (or gained) when theplant was producing power, but at less (or more) thanthe authorised electrical rating.

6.1. Derating losses

The licensed thermal output of nuclear plants can bereduced for a number of reasons. In extreme cases, gener-ally with one-o!, or prototype plants, derating occursbecause the reactors are not capable of operating safelyat the design output level. In other cases, output might bereduced to avoid excessive wear on components. Forexample, in Britain, output at most of the "rst generationnuclear plants was reduced to minimise problems ofcorrosion associated with the coolant gas. Output atsome plants may be reduced to minimise the risk fromknown safety problems. Only the third category is rel-evant to the FSU, where output at some of the plants ofsimilar design to Chernobyl has been reduced to lowerthe safety risk. It is important to note that only perma-nent or semi-permanent changes in plant rating arecategorised as derating losses. Short-term regulatory re-strictions on output, typically lasting less than a year, willshow up as operating losses.

In the West, increasingly, utilities are using improve-ments in turbine technology and heat exchanger techno-logy to increase the electrical output generated froma given heat output from the reactor. Where plant outputhas been increased over design, derating losses are nega-tive. No plant upgrades resulting in increased electricaloutput have yet been carried out in the FSU.

6.2. Operating losses

In the analysis presented in this paper, operating lossesare of particular importance. Short-term power reduc-tions due to safety concerns, economic factors such asshortage of money to buy fresh nuclear fuel, and lowelectricity demand would all appear as operating losses.Short-term operation at above design electrical ratingwould show up as negative operating losses. However,analysis is complicated by the fact that nuclear powerplants are designed to produce a given neutron (heat)power. This heat is then turned into electricity by theturbine generator. It is the maximum neutron power thatthe plant is authorised to produce that is generally speci-"ed by the safety regulator. A number of factors mayin#uence how much electricity can be produced froma given neutron power, such as changes in the intrinsice$ciency of the turbine generator and the temperature ofthe cooling water used by the turbine condenser. Cha-nges to the e$ciency of the turbine generator will occur ifspeci"c upgrades are undertaken, for example, the "ttingof more e$cient blades. Such upgrades are generallydeclared by the plant owner as an uprating and are easilyidenti"ed as negative derating losses.


However, variations in electrical output due to cha-nges in cooling water temperature are more di$cult todeal with. If the temperature of the cooling water is low,for example, in winter, signi"cantly more electricity canbe produced from the same neutron power than in sum-mer when the water is warmer. The operating lossescalculated on an annual basis may therefore obscureimportant details. For example, if a unit was operated atabove its design rating in the winter but below in thesummer, for example because of low electricity demand,these two factors might cancel out and the demandproblem in summer would be obscured. In practice, inmost countries, the seasonal variation in electrical outputis small and in some cases, such as Japan, negligible. Forexample, in 1996, the Fukushima Daini 2 plant in Japanwas on-line uninterrupted throughout the year. The vari-ation in monthly load factors was minimal ranging be-tween 99.4 per cent and 99.6 per cent. In Germany, thevariation is somewhat larger. For example, the Grohndeplant was on-line uninterrupted for eight months of 1996and the range of monthly load factors in those monthswas 96.6 to 105.9 per cent. A range of about six percent-age points in monthly load factors for months whenthe plant is on-line all the time is reasonably typicalworld-wide.

This causes some problems for analysis, as it is theelectrical output, not the heat output of the nuclearpower plant that is documented. It is therefore not al-ways possible, for example, to distinguish operation atreduced power resulting from high coolant temperaturefrom power reductions to conserve fuel. Nor is it possibleto distinguish operation at above design electrical rating,possible because of cold cooling water, from operation ofthe reactor at above design thermal rating. Operating theplant at above authorised thermal rating would usuallybe seen as a serious violation of the terms of the operatinglicense. How far operation of the electrical part of theplant at above design electrical rating, perhaps because oflow coolant water temperatures, puts an extra strain onthis equipment is not clear. This might have a detrimen-tal e!ect on overall reliability, although this will dependon the tolerances built in to the electrical systems.

A useful indicator for more detailed examination ofoperating losses may be derived by dividing the monthlyload factor (calculated using the authorised rating) by thepercentage of the month that the plant was on-line. Thislatter statistic is tabulated in the IAEA reports in which itis termed operating factor. If the load factor is greaterthan the operating factor, this indicates that, on average,the plant was operated at above the authorised rating forthe speci"ed period.

The IAEA does explicitly identify at least some, butnot all, of the power reductions (and operation at abovedesign rating) other than those related to cooling watertemperature (which are generally not identi"ed). Wherepower reductions are identi"ed, the cause and duration,

and an estimate of the output lost or gained is given. It isuseful to identify the main reasons why a plant would beoperated at below or above the rating authorised by thesafety authorities.

The only reason for operating above authorised heatrating is pressure to produce additional power, forexample, if demand is unusually high. The issue ofwhether it is desirable to operate plant at above its designrating is one that requires a technical analysis speci"c tothe design and the plant involved. Permanent increases inthe authorised rating generally require a formal case forupgrading to be presented to and accepted by the nation-al safety regulator.

There are several technical reasons for running belowauthorised rating:

f Some equipment failures may require running at re-duced power until the fault has been repaired or it isconvenient to shut down the plant to carry out therepair.

f Some maintenance activities can be carried out whilethe plant is operating, but only at reduced powerlevels.

f Unresolved safety concerns may persuade the safetyregulator to restrict the output of the plant, at leastuntil the concerns are resolved.

f In hot summers, if the input temperature of the coolingwater is high, it may be necessary to restrict the outputof the plant.

In addition, there are a number of practical reasons forrunning at below authorised rating:

f If electricity demand is not su$cient for all the poten-tial output of the plant to be used, output may have tobe reduced. Because nuclear power plants are notdesigned to be able to increase or decrease their outputlevels quickly, the demand level at which the plant canoperate is likely to be the lowest demand point duringthe day. If demand is too low, it may be necessary toshut the plant down completely.

f In a system with a large amount of hydro-electriccapacity, in a wet year, it may be necessary to restrictnuclear output to ensure that all the producible hy-dro-power (which has e!ectively zero marginal cost) isused.

f If the nuclear fuel is too exhausted to operate at fullpower, it may be more economic to keep the plant inoperation for a few more weeks at reduced powerlevels (so-called coast-down) until it is convenient forthe refuelling outage to take place.

f In severe economic circumstances where there are dif-"culties raising the money to purchase new nuclearfuel, the plant may be operated at reduced power toeke out the life of the nuclear fuel.

f If there is inadequate storage capacity at the plant siteto store spent fuel, it may be necessary to reduce plant


Table 3Operating performance of Russian Nuclear Power Plants

Year Loadfactor

Outageloss

Oper. loss Forcedoutagefrequency

1992 67.3 25.8 6.8 2.51993 64.3 26.9 8.8 1.61994 51.6 35.4 12.9 1.41995 52.9 33.5 13.5 1.01996 58.3 32.3 9.4 1.51997 58.1 31.8 10.1 0.71998 57.0

Table 4Operating performance of Russian RBMKs

Year Loadfactor

Outageloss

Oper.loss

Forcedoutagefrequency

1992 64.2 29.3 6.6 1.41993 67.7 23.8 8.5 0.91994 55.8 31.6 12.6 0.31995 54.1 38.2 7.7 0.71996 60.4 34.6 5.0 0.81997 59.7 35.1 5.1 0.31998 53.9

output to postpone the date when additional spent fuelwas removed from the reactor.

7. Russia

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, all thenuclear power plants in Russia, except the Leningradplant, have been owned and operated by Rosenergoatom(REA) a publicly owned company. A separate, publiclyowned company owns the Leningrad plant. The nuclearsector is under the control of the ministry of atomicpower, Minatom and safety regulation is carried out byGosatomnadzor. By 1999, REA was in some "nancialdisarray and there were allegations of "nancial corrup-tion (Nucleonics Week, 1999g). It is clear from examina-tion of the data that the Russian plants are operatingunder di!erent pressures to those facing Ukraine. 1992was the last year before extraordinary events began tohave a severe e!ect on the operating performance of theplants in Russia. These events include:

f A rolling programme of reconstruction at the RBMKunits usually taking more than two years per unit, suchthat at any one time, at least one unit in Russia was outof service.

f Output restrictions on "rst generation RBMKs, atleast until reconstruction had been completed, restrict-ing their output to 70 per cent of design.

f Output restrictions imposed in 1994 at WWER-1000units restricting them to 90 per cent of their designoutput.

f Shortages of money to buy nuclear fuel and plantspares leading to longer maintenance outages and re-duced power output to conserve fuel.

f Reduced electricity demand and apparently arbitrarydecisions by wholesale power purchasers and the gridoperator not to utilise all the available output fromnuclear plants. This has meant that some of the poten-tial output of plants cannot be used.

Table 3 shows the detailed operating performance forthe 24 plants in service in Russia from 1992 onwards.This shows a steep decline in performance after 1992 withsome recovery from 1996 onwards. Not surprisingly,the decline appears to be due in part to an increase in thetime lost due to outages, but of almost equal signi"canceare higher operating losses. How far these higher operat-ing losses are due to low electricity demand, safety-inspired restrictions on output and insu$cient resourcesto operate the plant at full power, is not clear. However,despite this decline in output, there has been a steady andsigni"cant improvement in reliability, as measured by theforced outage frequency. This strongly suggests that it isunlikely that the poor load factors can be blamed directlyon poor standards of operation and maintenance.

If the analysis is broken down into the three maintechnology categories, the RBMK (11 units in service),the WWER-440 (6 units in service) and the WWER-1000(7 units in service), many of the trends noted above areapparent in each category. This suggests that these trendsare not just statistical anomalies. In particular, all threeclasses show a steep decline in load factors after 1992with a corresponding increase in operating losses andoutage losses. Load factors reach a low point in 1994/95,after which there has been some improvement, mainly inoperating losses rather than outage losses. The improve-ment in forced outage frequency, with a setback in 1996,is also common to all three technologies.

However, major di!erences between the technologiesdo emerge (see Tables 4}6). Since 1992, the WWER-1000has performed much worse in terms of load factor andforced outage frequency than the WWER-440s and theRBMKs with the decline in load factors largely being theresult of increasing operating losses.

Inspection of the records shows that it is necessary tolook at the plants on a site-by-site basis. This is because itis clear that the amount of resources available for opera-tions and maintenance, and the region in which the plantis sited are crucial to the operation of the plants. TheRBMKs are on three sites, Kursk, Leningrad andSmolensk, the WWER-1000s are at Balakovo andKalinin and the WWER-440s are at the Kola site.Novovoronezh contains one WWER-1000 and two


Table 5Operating performance of Russian WWER-1000s

Year Loadfactor

Outageloss

Oper.loss


1992 67.7 25.6 6.7 4.61993 56.5 34.3 9.2 2.91994 42.7 39.6 17.7 2.91995 47.6 30.6 21.8 1.61996 51.1 34.7 14.2 2.31997 52.3 32.8 14.8 1.31998 56.8

Table 6Operating performance of Russian WWER-440s

Year Loadfactor

Outageloss

Oper.loss


1992 72.8 19.7 7.5 2.11993 65.9 25.1 9.0 1.41994 54.4 37.8 7.9 1.81995 57.0 28.3 14.6 0.81996 62.7 25.4 11.9 1.41997 61.8 24.6 13.6 0.81998 62.9

WWER-440s, but these are the "rst models of theirrespective designs di!ering signi"cantly from later mod-els. Technological inferences from the performance ofplants at Novovoronezh should therefore be made withsome care.

In Appendix A, a detailed station-by-station analysisof the plants in Russia is given. This reveals very clearlythat each station has had its own unique operating re-gime and history determined only in part by the techno-logical characteristics of the plant. The RBMK stationsappear to have been less a!ected in normal operation bylack of resources and lack of demand for their outputthan the WWER stations. This may be due in some casesto geographic circumstances, i.e. they are sited in areaswhere electricity demand has remained high enough forthe output to be readily used. For example, the output ofthe Leningrad station has clearly been much less re-stricted than some plants. This is likely to be because theopportunity to sell surplus power from the plant to theNordic power market means that lack of resources orlow electricity demand are less likely to be important. Itis signi"cant that, while REA owns all the other Russiannuclear power plants, a separate company owns theLeningrad nuclear power plant, somewhat insulating the

plant from the general di$culties facing REA. However,even this special status has not removed entirely "nancialpressures, and in late 1998, it was close to bankruptcybecause of the low rate of cash payment from the Russianpower distribution companies it supplies (East EuropeanEnergy Report, 1998b).

There is no suggestion in the operating records of theplants that shortage of space for spent fuel has resulted inreduced power operation to delay the time when furtherspent fuel was produced.

The other two RBMK stations have generally beenoperated to the maximum extent technically possibleapart from a period in 1994/95 when the Smolensk plantdid not have enough money to buy new fuel. This fullplant utilisation may have been because output restric-tions on the older plants and the long-term closures forre-construction took up any need for power reductionsthat might otherwise have occurred. There may also besome hesitation to voluntarily change power levels at theRBMKs because it was during a change in output levelsthat the Chernobyl disaster occurred. It has been claimedthat the reconstruction programme at the older plantshas been lengthened by shortage of resources, but thiscannot easily be veri"ed.

The WWER stations have been subject to much moreinterference in their operating regime. The Balakovostation has su!ered very severely due apparently to lackof demand for its output and, in 1994, one unit at thestation was kept o!-line for eight months by the dis-patcher. Things have improved somewhat since then butrestrictions still seem severe. The Kalinin plant has alsosu!ered from low demand for its output, but it has alsosu!ered from shortage of cash to buy fuel. Technicalproblems have a!ected output levels and, unlike theother Russian plants, the reliability at Kalinin, as mea-sured by the forced outage frequency, has not improvedin the last 6 years. It is now double that of any otherRussian plant.

The Kola station is increasingly su!ering from lack ofdemand in the summer months forcing the plant outputdown to about 50 per cent of design. However, the con-straints seem to have been taken account of in a moreorderly fashion than at Balakovo and Kalinin, and, forexample, shortage of money to buy fuel and plant clos-ures enforced by the system dispatcher do not appear tohave occurred. The Novovoronezh station is a somewhatspecial case. The site has always been the centre ofWWER development and the two "rst commercialWWER plants, completed in 1964 and 1970 and closed in1988 and 1990, were built there. It has a particular role asa training centre for Russian (and also other East Euro-pean and FSU countries). Its plants are amongst theoldest in Russia and are of semi-prototype design. Theredo not appear to have been any restrictions on demandas a result of low electricity demand or shortage ofmoney.


Table 7Operating performance of Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plants!

Year Load factor Outage loss Derate loss Oper. loss Forced outage frequency

1992 70.6 28.9 0.5 !0.1 2.51993 66.8 23.6 1.4 8.3 4.01994 62.4 26.7 0.9 10.1 3.11995 63.4 27.6 0.8 8.1 1.81996 65.2 27.3 1.2 6.3 2.41997 71.3 24.3 0.0 4.3 2.11998 67.3

!Notes: (1) From 1991, Chernobyl 1 was formally down-rated by up to 30 per cent of its design rating. It produced its last power on 30 November 1996and is therefore not included in the 1997 data. (2) Zaporozhe 6 entered commercial service in September 1996 and is included in the 1997 data.

8. Ukraine

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine'snuclear power plants were owned and operated by theatomic power ministry, Minatomenergoprom. In 1997,a new company, EnergoAtom was created to operate allthe nuclear plants. The station managers, who had pre-viously enjoyed a large element of independence, weremade members of the board. However, the organisationwas slow to become organised and was &re-launched' inMarch 1998. By early 1999, its "nances were still ina poor condition mainly because of the low rate ofpayment for its power (less than 10 per cent in cash).Industrial action by its employees was carried out inMarch because payment of wages was massively in ar-rears. The cash shortage was said to be so serious thatspending on safety improvement had largely ceased(Nucleonics Week, 1999h). The plants were being oper-ated at reduced power to conserve fuel supplies (Nuc-leonics Week, 1999i). Regulation is carried out by theNuclear Regulatory Authority, which was created afterthe break-up of the Soviet Union. This agency reports tothe Environment ministry and was given additionalstatus in March 1999.

The technological and economic situation in Ukrainehas many parallels with Russia. The plants are all ofRussian design, economic recession is deep (probably farworse than Russia) and there has been considerable insti-tutional change as their economies are slowly trans-formed from centrally planned to market economies.However, there are also important di!erences. Ukraine isa much smaller country geographically and in terms ofpopulation than Russia. There does not appear to havebeen such severe restrictions on plant output due to lackof demand from the grid operator. Historically, nucleartechnological capability in Ukraine has generally beenmuch lower than in Russia, particularly regarding plantdesign and safety regulation. Ukraine has made stronge!orts to build up an independent regulatory capabilitysince the break-up of the Soviet Union and, while the

newly created regulatory authority has still to establishitself as an e!ective body, this may have more to do withlack of political power than low technical competence.However, Ukraine is probably still dependent on outsideassistance if major technological problems emerge.

As with all plants in the former Soviet Bloc, the stationmanager of plants in Ukraine has enjoyed considerableautonomy. He has control not only over the plant, butalso over the towns (usually with a population of tens ofthousands) built to construct and operate the plant. Sta-tion managers were able to make special deals to sell atleast part of the output of their plant under terms negoti-ated by themselves, often via barter arrangements. Theautonomy of the station managers is now being reduced,but over the period under consideration, 1992}1997, theresources available to each station could di!er accordingto the commercial acumen of the station manager (EastEuropean Energy Report, 1998c).

These and other factors have led to signi"cant di!er-ences in policy towards the nuclear plants compared toRussia. Re-construction of the two remaining RBMKunits at Chernobyl would not have been politically ac-ceptable in the West and the Chernobyl 1 unit was retiredin 1996 after 18 years of service. Comparable Russianplants had all been closed down for re-construction bythe time they reached this age. Ukraine probably hadlittle option but to close this unit permanently unless itwas prepared to carry out the re-tubing operation, a re-pair likely to cost about US$300 m and take two years.As with comparable units in Russia, unit 1 was restrictedby up to 30 per cent of its design rating from 1990onwards. Chernobyl 3 will be 18 years old in 2000, theyear Ukraine has committed itself to shutting the plantdown. There would appear to be little scope to operatethe plant beyond then without major repairs, unlessa highly controversial programme of incremental tubereplacement was adopted. Another important di!erencehas been the response to the control rod drive stickingproblem, which in Russia has resulted in all WWER-1000s subject to this problem being restricted by the


Table 8Operating performance of Ukrainian WWER-440s (Rovno 1 and 2)

Year Loadfactor

Outageloss

Oper.loss


1992 92.8 11.4 !4.3 1.41993 71.4 25.0 3.6 3.41994 80.8 14.5 4.7 0.01995 81.6 14.5 3.9 0.41996 79.6 15.4 5.0 0.51997 81.1 15.9 2.9 0.51998 79.1

Table 9Operating performance of Ukrainian RBMK-1000s (Chernobyl 1 and 3)!

Year Load factor Outage loss Derate loss Oper. loss Forced outage frequency

1992 32.4 67.8 0.0 !0.2 0.01993 71.7 11.4 9.7 7.2 0.91994 58.9 24.4 6.1 10.7 2.11995 66.4 23.3 5.9 4.4 1.01996 65.2 19.1 8.5 7.1 0.51997 50.1 45.9 0 4.0 0.01998 54.2

!Note: Chernobyl 1 last produced power on 30 November 1996. It is therefore not included in 1997 data.

Table 10Operating performance of Ukrainian WWER-1000s!

Year Load factor Outageloss

Oper.loss


1992 73.9 24.7 1.5 3.21993 64.9 25.7 9.4 4.71994 59.4 29.6 11.1 4.01995 59.2 31.1 9.7 2.21996 62.4 31.3 6.3 3.11997 71.5 23.9 4.6 2.51998 66.3

!Note: From 1992 to 1996, 10 WWER-1000 units were in service.Zaporozhe 6 entered commercial service in September 1996 and isincluded in the 1997 data.regulatory authorities to 90 per cent of design since 1994.

A similar restriction in Ukraine does not appear to havebeen enforced since 1996.

As with Russia, there is no suggestion in the operatingrecords of the plants that shortage of space for spent fuelhas resulted in reduced power operation to delay the timewhen further spent fuel was produced.

Table 7 shows the operating performance of Ukrainiannuclear power plants since 1992 and, whilst it is possibleto identify some trends from this table, the presence of theChernobyl units in the data does distort the "guressigni"cantly. Of the other 13 units in service, two areWWER-440/213 units (at Rovno) and these also havevery di!erent operating characteristics to the 11 otherunits, which are all WWER-1000s. It is therefore sensibleto concentrate on the WWER-1000 units which,after Chernobyl is closed, will make up more than 90 percent of Ukraine's nuclear capacity. The Rovno 1 and2 and the Chernobyl units are examined separately (seeTables 8 and 9 and Appendix A for a more detaileddiscussion).

The record of the Ukrainian WWER-1000s does sharesome common features with the record of their Russiancounterparts (see Table 10). There is a decline in perfor-mance after 1992, albeit not nearly as steep as in Russia,bottoming in 1994/1995, after which there is a partialrecovery. At least some of this decline is the result of

increased operating losses, although not nearly as pro-nounced as in Russia. However, while load factors areconsistently higher than in Russia, there appears to belittle evidence of any downward trend in forced outagerate. This remains much worse than in Russia.

In the period 1995}1997, the forced outage rate wasmore than 60 per cent higher in Ukraine than in Russia.While shortage of cash to pay for nuclear fuel appears tohave been a problem in Russia, it has been less signi"cantin Ukraine. This may be because of the deal under whichthe West exchanges civil nuclear fuel for nuclear war-heads (East European Energy Report, 1994). This maymean that the cost of nuclear fuel, at least from 1994-97,was e!ectively zero.

While the autonomy of the station managers was iden-ti"ed by the Ukrainian authorities as a barrier to e$cien-cy and has now been much reduced, there does appear tohave been much greater consistency in the way in whichthe plants are operated than in Russia since Ukrainianindependence. The two most southerly plants,Zaporozhe and South Ukraine did su!er from a varietyof problems in 1993}1995, which meant they were fre-quently operated only at reduced power in the summer


months. This was attributed to a range of problems thathave not applied from 1996 onwards. These includemainly high cooling water temperatures, but also thecontrol rod drive issue and dispatcher limitations. It isnot clear whether, as the Ukrainian authorities claim,high cooling water temperatures alone were su$cient tocause the Zaporozhe units to be operated at only abouthalf their capacity in the summers of 1994 and 1995.

The years 1992 and 1997 stand out as ones when loadfactors were much higher than other years. This wasachieved in part by running the plants at signi"cantlyabove design electrical rating and by shorter outageperiods. The Ukrainian Regulator has alleged that in1997, maintenance was not being carried out rigorouslyand that all necessary tests were not carried out fullybefore the units were returned to service (East EuropeanEnergy Report, 1998d). Despite this apparent #outing ofrules, the Regulator does not appear to have taken anyformal action against the o!ending plants.

A recent authoritative study concluded that the Uk-rainian regulatory regime was still not e!ective (Budnitzand Steinberg, 1998). It is clear that the poor load factorsachieved by Russian WWER-1000s are in part the resultof arbitrary dispatching. However, there must be fearsthat the higher load factors achieved by UkrainianWWER-1000s compared to their Russian counterpartsare achieved, at least in part, because the regulatoryregime in Ukraine does not have the political power toenforce its will.

9. Conclusions

Many of the pressures facing the nuclear power sectorin Russia and Ukraine are similar. Electricity demandhas fallen steeply in both countries to the point that, inregions of Russia, and in Ukraine as a whole, if thenuclear power plants worked to Western standards ofreliability, it would be di$cult to utilise all the potentialoutput. Nevertheless, for plants near potential exportmarkets, power from nuclear plants, produced at lowmarginal cost, can be an attractive source of hard cur-rency. In both countries there is a chronic shortage ofcash in the electricity sector because of the low rate ofcash payment for electricity produced. There is pressurefrom the West to either close or perform safety upgradesat plants that are believed not to reach adequate safetystandards, and there is a need to build an e!ective safetyregulatory regime. However, the di!ering circumstancesof the two countries mean that these pressures have beenhandled in very di!erent ways.

Russia has a much larger and relatively more success-ful economy than Ukraine, more able to generate inter-nal resources for the nuclear sector. The pressure on it tocomply with Western wishes in order to clear the way forloans to the electricity sector is therefore not so intense.

In technical terms, Russia has a very strong and sophisti-cated capability in the nuclear sector and has a muchbetter understanding of Soviet nuclear technologies thanthe West can o!er, or than exists in Ukraine. Therefore, itwould not be appropriate or politically acceptable for theWest to try to make a major technical contribution inRussia in the way it has done in plant completion andsafety upgrade programmes in, for example, Ukraine,Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.

9.1. Economic pressures

Perhaps because of its vast size and the increasingdevolution of political power, in Russia there appears tobe less national co-ordination in the management andoperation of the plants than there is in Ukraine. Forexample, the Leningrad plant earns valuable hard cur-rency exporting power to the Nordic market. As a result,it seems to have been much less restricted than otherplants by shortage of funds to maintain and operate theplant and the plants are used to their maximum extentthroughout the year. By contrast, some plants, especiallythe WWER stations at Balakovo, Kalinin and Kola haveexperienced di$culties because the electricity theseplants can produce is not required, either because de-mand is too low or because other plants are being run inpreference. The plants have also occasionally su!eredfrom shortage of cash to buy nuclear fuel. It is not clearwhether it is simply coincidence that all the RBMKstations appear generally not to have su!ered restrictionsdue to lack of demand for their power. Or whether therehas been a concerted policy to ensure that these stationsare operated at as stable a demand level as possible.

Unless power exports are possible, the economic in-centive to maximise the output of the nuclear plants isgenerally much stronger in Ukraine than in Russia, be-cause unlike Russia, Ukraine is a net importer of all thefossil fuels. Russia is a net exporter of coal, oil and gasand, as world fossil fuel prices are low, the opportunitycost of using fossil fuels in Russian power stations ratherthan exporting them may be small. Extra nuclear outputin Ukraine will reduce the fossil fuel import require-ments.

In Ukraine, the much smaller geographical size of thecountry and the lack of political devolution probablyallows the electricity system to be run much more asa uni"ed system. There is little evidence that nuclearplants have had to reduce output signi"cantly simply ondemand grounds. Shortage of cash appeared to a!ectplant operations in 1994/1995, but there has been littleapparent impact since then. The fact that nuclear fuel wasessentially free in the period from 1994 to 1997 may havehelped reduce cash shortages. The pressure to maximiseoutput seems to have been intense, especially in 1992 and1997. The poorer performance that followed in 1993 wasrepeated in 1998 although the dip was not so


pronounced. This is strong evidence that the stretching inoutput that occurred in those years cannot be main-tained.

It would be understandable if, in 1992, the "rst yearafter the independence of Ukraine, that new safety Regu-lator in Ukraine was not able to counterbalance thepressures to maximise nuclear output. There were alsoreported to be problems of sta! shortages after Russiantechnicians left the plants. It may be that the pressure tomaximise output from the nuclear plants from 1997 on-wards arose because of problems with operating thecoal-"red plants. Many of these are in a poor state ofrepair because of the cash shortage in the electricitysector and Ukrainian coal is now of such poor qualitythat e!ective combustion requires a large input of naturalgas, which must be imported at international prices. Thismay explain why, in 1998, Ukraine's President Kuchmawas severely critical of the nuclear industry when nuclearplants had to be closed down for safety reasons (EastEuropean Energy Report, 1998e).

9.2. Plant closures and upgrades

The designs targeted by the West for earliest closureare the "rst generation RBMK-1000s and the WWER-440/230. In Russia, there appears to be little prospect thatthe six "rst generation RBMKs and the four earlyWWER-440s will be closed. All the "rst generationRBMKs have undergone (or are undergoing) a majorre-construction programme taking two or three years perunit, to replace the fuel channels. It is not clear how farsafety upgrades undertaken at the same time meet theWest's safety concerns about this design. It is almostinconceivable that Russia would incur the huge expenseassociated with these repairs if it did not have a strongexpectation that the plants would operate for a decade ormore. This programme of fuel channel replacements isnow being extended to the second generation RBMKs asthey reach the age (about 15 years) when the repair isrequired.

The life extension activity at the WWER-440s has beenless conspicuous, but, in 1997, the Russian authorities putback their expected closure date for these plants frombefore 2005 to 2010 (Nucleonics Week, 1997b). Thisdecision appears to be based on a re-evaluation of thelifetime of key components, such as the pressure vessel,rather than the carrying out of a safety upgrade pro-gramme. The WWER-1000 has been identi"ed as requir-ing a major programme of plant upgrades (InternationalAtomic Energy Agency, 1996b), but as yet, it does notappear that any Russian plants have undergone sucha programme.

The only plant targeted by the West for early closure inUkraine is Chernobyl. However, the picture is cloudedby the on-going negotiations between the West andUkraine on the loans that the West has committed itself

to make to Ukraine in exchange for the closure of Cher-nobyl by 2000 (For an account of this decision, seeFederal Environment Agency, 1998). If Ukrainian fundswere not restricted, it would be possible for three units(1}3) to be brought into service at the site after fuelchannel replacements at all units and reconstruction ofthe turbine at unit 2. However, it is most unlikely thateven EnergoAtom would see this as the most productiveuse of capital in the Ukrainian nuclear sector. The mostlikely outcome now may be that Chernobyl 3 will beoperated until the fuel channels are no longer serviceableand the other units will not be brought back. No majorprogramme of safety upgrades at Ukrainian WWER-1000s has been carried out yet.

9.3. Regulation

It is outside the scope of this paper to comment onwhether the plants in Ukraine and Russia are beingoperated safely, but the analysis presented here doesthrow up a number of interesting contrasts. In Russia, thecontrol rod problems with the WWER-1000 plants haveresulted in an output restriction being rigorously enfor-ced in Russia since the problem was identi"ed. A similarrestriction in Ukraine has not been enforced since 1996.In Ukraine, pressure to maximise output from the nu-clear plants has been intense, especially in 1992 and 1997.There is evidence that the pressure to produce extraoutput did have a detrimental e!ect on the plants and theRegulator did identify poor maintenance practices in1997, aimed at keeping the plants on-line for longer. Thepressure to produce output does not appear to be sointense in Russia generally and it is not clear how far theRussian Regulator would have been able to prevent poorpractices in a comparable situation.

Anecdotally, the Ukrainian Regulator has a much bet-ter reputation internationally for technical competencethan the Russian Regulator, and the apparent evidencethat the Ukrainian Regulator is weaker may have moreto do with the political pressures on him than on tech-nical competence. Whatever the di!erence in regulationof the operating plants, neither has been successful inforcing the closure of plants regarded in the West asunsafe and in enforcing major safety upgrades at theother plants.

Overall, the expectation at the time of the break-up ofthe Soviet Bloc, that the West would be able to move intothe region, o!ering technical and "nancial support to thesector to ensure the safety of the civil nuclear powerplants, has proved unfounded. This analysis shows thatin many respects, the operation of the civil nuclear sectorin both Russia and Ukraine is chaotic and while theremay have been improvements in, for example, proceduresand sta! training, the hardware remains largely un-changed. There must also be fears that adequate re-sources are not available at the station level and that the


8Under &over design operation', the ratio is the number of reactormonths when average output level was above design rating to thenumber of reactor months the station was on line for more than 40% ofthe month. The second "gure is the number of reactor months whenaverage power level was above design as a percentage of the totalnumber of reactor months. Under &low power operation', the ratio is thenumber of months in the period May-September when the averageoutput level was less than 70% of design rating, as a percentage of themonths when the plant was on-line for more than 40% of the months.The second "gure is the number of reactor months when average powerlevel was less than 70% design as a percentage of the total number ofsummer reactor months.

9The completion dates given are the year of "rst commercial opera-tion.

safety regulatory regimes are still not su$ciently e!ec-tive.

Appendix A. Station-by-station analysis of the operatingperformance of Russian and Ukrainian nuclear powerplant8

A.1. Russia

A.1.1. BalakovoThe Balakovo site is in the south-west of Russia near

the border with Kazakhstan. It contains four WWER-1000s, all of the most recent design, the &320', completedbetween 1986 and 1993.9 Two more WWER-1000/320units were planned for the site but no work is beingcarried out on these. The operating record of theseplants, especially after 1993, is extraordinary (seeTable 11). Its load factor record is the poorest fora WWER-1000 station. The record for 1992 is reasonablytypical of a nuclear power plant anywhere in the world.However, the very high operating losses (4 per cent mightbe typical for a Western plant), yet steadily decliningforced outage frequency (unlike Kalinin), suggest that thevery poor performance achieved is due at least in part tofactors other than the reliability of the plant. From 1994onwards, the Regulator imposed a restriction on theoutput of the plants to 90 per cent of the design rating,but this is unlikely to have much impact on the perfor-mance achieved as plant output seems to be determinedmainly by demand considerations. In the winter months,the condenser coolant temperature is low and averageoutput is only a little below design rating. In othermonths, the plants were running at well below 90 per centof design rating.

In 1993, all three units then in service were down for,on average, "ve months for what was described as a &me-dium-scale repair'. It is not clear why such a lengthyrepair period was required and what operations were

carried out. In 1994, unit 1 was shut down again for aneight month period most of which was attributed to&dispatcher imposed limitation'. In other words, the out-put was not required. By contrast, unit 2 was on-linealmost continuously, but on average, at only 60 per centof design rating and in August, at only 32 per cent ofdesign rating. Again there were some technical problemsbut most of the losses were attributed to the dispatcher.In December, power was reduced because of &lack offunds for normal operation'. Unit 3 averaged only 65 percent of design rating when in service, while unit 4 oper-ated at close to full power, but was closed for 5 months,more than two months of which were ascribed to &lack ofresources'.

In 1995, the picture changed again. Units 1 and 2 wereboth down for about 6 months for a major overhaul.Even when unit 1 was in service, power was severelyrestricted (down to 27 per cent in one month) due toa fault in the generator. Units 3 and 4 were also operatingat reduced levels, partly due to technical problems andpartly to dispatcher restrictions. This pattern of somevery long outages, and reduced power operation due totechnical reasons, demand limitations and shortage offunds continued through 1996 and 1997. From 1994onwards, the regulatory restriction to 90 per cent ofdesign rating meant that there was no over design opera-tion, although in a number of months, low coolanttemperature allowed average power output at up to95 per cent of design.

A.1.2. KalininThe Kalinin site is in south-west Russia, near the

border with Ukraine. It hosts two WWER-1000 units,completed in 1985 and 1987 using one of the designs(&338') from the &small' series. There is a third unit, usingthe 320 design on the site in which much of the construc-tion work is complete. The Russian authorities haveplanned for some time to recommence work on the plant,but little new progress has been made yet. After 1992, itappears that low electricity demand has had an increas-ing impact on the operation of the station, as re#ected inthe high operating losses (see Table 12). As with nearly allthe Russian WWER-1000s, output has been restricted to90 per cent of design rating since 1994, but this hasprobably not resulted in much loss of output. The trendsin load factors and forced outage frequencies are ratherdi!erent to those found at other plants in Russia. Theyear 1995 was a relatively good one for load factor, whilesubsequent years have been much worse. There has beenno downward trend in forced outage rates and over theyears 1995}1997, the rate is more than double that of thenext worst plant in Russia. The high losses due to lowpower operation in 1996 were due in part to an equip-ment problem at unit 1 and a decision to run consistentlyat about half power to economise on nuclear fuel at unit2 from August 1996 until October 1997.


Table 11Performance of the Balakovo Nuclear Power Station!

Load factor Outage loss Oper. loss Forced outagefrequency

Over design operation Low poweroperation

1992 71.3 22.1 6.5 6.5 4/32 (11) 1/11 (7)1993 46.0 47.3 6.7 4.2 4/24 (11) 4/9 (27)1994 41.2 42.0 16.8 2.4 0/28 (0) 4/10 (20)1995 37.6 36.2 26.4 1.3 0/32 (0) 8/11 (40)1996 50.8 36.7 12.5 1.7 0/32 (0) 0/11 (0)1997 46.4 37.2 16.4 0.8 0/34 (0) 3/11 (15)1998 54.9

!Note: In 1992}93, three WWER-1000/320s were in service, a fourth entered service in December 1993.

Table 12Performance of the Kalinin Nuclear Power Station!


Over Design operation Low Power operation

1992 73.6 23.0 3.5 2.0 8/21 (33) 0/7 (0)1993 64.8 24.5 10.7 1.1 2/20 (10) 5/9 (50)1994 53.5 29.0 17.5 2.9 2/19 (10) 5/6 (50)1995 62.9 22.7 14.4 2.5 0/20 (0) 3/8 (30)1996 54.1 25.2 20.7 3.7 0/21 (0) 8/10 (80)1997 54.5 29.7 15.7 2.3 0/19 (0) 3/8 (30)1998 66.5

!Note: Two WWER-1000/338 units are in service at this site.

Table 13Performance of the Kola Nuclear Power Station!

Load factor Outage loss Oper. loss Forced Outagefrequency

Over design operation Low power operation

1992 69.1 22.6 8.3 3.1 5/38 (10) 4/15 (20)1993 66.0 22.5 11.5 2.1 1/41 (2) 4/15 (20)1994* 59.0 31.7 9.3 1.6 2/27 (4) 1/10 (5)1995 59.7 20.4 19.9 1.1 2/38 (4) 7/15 (35)1996 56.9 27.5 15.5 1.5 2/37 (4) 8/13 (40)1997 56.8 26.2 17.0 1.2 3/38 (6) 8/14 (40)1998 55.6

!Note: Two WWER-440/230 units and two WWER-440/213 units are in service at this site. In years marked (*), one unit was out of service for theentire year or was on-line for less than 1500 hours due to a single lengthy outage, and is excluded from the calculations.

A.1.3. KolaThe Kola site is in the north-west of Russia in the

Murmansk region. It contains two units using theWWER-440/230 design completed in 1973 and 1975 andtwo of the WWER-440/213 design, completed in 1982and 1984. New reactors have been planned for the site, toreplace the two older units, but no substantive site workhas been completed yet. The two newer units consistentlyachieve load factors between 15 and 20 percentage pointsbetter than the older units (see Table 13). However,operating losses and the forced outage rates are very

similar, suggesting that the di!erence between them isdue mainly to much longer maintenance periods. It is notpossible from the records to determine how far theselonger maintenance periods are due to greater mainten-ance requirements and how far they are the result ofsafety upgrades being implemented.

The operation of the Kola plant appears to have beenseriously a!ected by low electricity demand from 1995onwards (no long-term output restrictions due to safetyconcerns have been in force). The problem might havebecome apparent a little earlier had it not been for the


Table 14Performance of the Kursk Nuclear Power Station!



1992 57.1 28.7 14.1 1.5 1/35 (2) 0/13 (0)1993 63.1 18.8 18.1 1.8 1/40 (2) 0/15 (0)1994 50.0 34.9 15.1 0.3 5/33 (10) 1/10 (5)1995* 66.9 21.3 11.7 0.3 5/29 (10) 0/10 (0)1996* 71.9 17.1 11.0 0.6 8/32 (17) 2/12 (10)1997* 69.4 19.8 10.7 0.3 9/32 (19) 2/13 (10)1998 54.4

!Note: Two "rst generation and two second generation RBMK-1000 units are in service at this site. In years marked (*), one unit was out of service forthe entire year or was on-line for less than 1500 hrs due to a single lengthy outage, and is excluded from the calculations.

10 It has been suggested that the continuation of the restriction (saidto be for testing purposes) was to avoid the need, speci"ed in anagreement between the European Bank for Reconstruction and Devel-opment and Russia, for an in-depth safety analysis (East EuropeanEnergy Report, 1998f ).

need for a shutdown of nearly a year at unit 2 in 1994 tocarry out major repairs due to &loss of integrity of reactorclosure head' and a rupture of the primary circuit piping.By 1997, the plants were being run near and sometimesabove design rating in the winter months, in the periodMay}August, they were restricted to about 60 per cent ofdesign. The plant records attribute the power reductionsalmost entirely to &dispatcher limitations' rather than forfuel economy suggesting that "nding resources for opera-tions and maintenance is less of a problem than atKalinin and Balakovo.

A.1.4. KurskThe Kursk site is in the south-west of Russia, close to

the border with Ukraine. Two "rst generation RBMK-1000 units, completed in 1977 and 1979, and two secondgeneration RBMK-1000 units, completed in 1984 and1986 are in service at this site. Construction on a "fthunit, also of the RBMK-1000 design, was started in 1985and may be completed. Unit 1 was out of service fromMarch 1994 to December 1997 to allow the graphite coreto be replaced, and for other repairs and safety upgradesto be carried out. The second unit started a similarreconstruction period in April 1998.

The high operating losses are accounted for by therestriction on units 1 and 2 to operation 70 per cent ofdesign rating and there is little evidence of power reduc-tions due to low electricity demand (see Table 14). Thismay have been accounted for in part by the fact shut-downs and power restrictions at the plant. During theperiod where other plants in Russia have had to operateat reduced power levels, over 30 per cent of the station'snormal output has not been available because of therepairs at unit 1 and the power restriction at unit 2. The70 per cent restriction appears to have been fully com-plied with and, even after completion of repairs at unit 1,this unit still appeared to be restricted to 70 per cent of

design in 1998.10 However, the newer units have beencalled upon to operate at up to 4 per cent above design inthe winter months. If allowance is made for the outputrestriction at units 1 and 2, the operating performance ofthe station as a whole is good, with the forced outagefrequency particularly impressive.

A.1.5. LeningradThe Leningrad plant (also known as Sosnovy Bor),

close to St Petersburg and the Finnish border, hosts two"rst generation RBMK-1000s (completed in 1974 and1976) and two second generation RBMK-1000s (com-pleted in 1980 and 1981). It is frequently spoken of asa site for new Russian nuclear designs, but no substantiveconstruction has taken place yet. The proximity of theplants to the Finnish border means that substantialquantities of power can be sold into the single Nordicelectricity market, which now includes Finland, Norwayand Sweden. As a result, the Leningrad station has someautonomy and its budgets are thought to be much moregenerous than for other nuclear stations because of theWestern hard currency it can earn. Since 1989, there hasbeen a programme of outages at successive units startingwith the oldest, to allow the graphite core to be replaced,and for other repairs and safety upgrades to be carriedout (see Table 15). As with the early Kursk units, the two"rst generation units were restricted to 70 per cent ofdesign rating, although after completion of the repairs,this restriction was no longer applied. The earlier start tothe reconstruction programme and the lifting of the out-put restriction after completion of these repairs meanthat operating losses are low. Operation at above design


Table 15Nuclear Power Station!



1992* 75.2 21.3 3.5 1.6 1/31 (1) 0/13 (0)1993* 83.9 12.2 3.9 0.6 5/33 (10) 1/12 (5)1994 57.1 34.1 8.8 0.5 4/31 (8) 2/13 (10)1995* 68.0 24.3 7.6 1.1 2/28 (4) 0/10 (0)1996* 74.6 22.5 2.9 1.2 5/29 (10) 0/12 (0)1997* 86.8 9.1 4.1 0.3 6/33 (12) 0/12 (0)1998 51.6

!Note: Two "rst generation RBMK-1000 units and two second generation RBMK-1000 units are in service at this site. In years marked (*), one unitwas out of service for the entire year or was on-line for less than 1500 hrs due to a single lengthy outage, and is excluded from the calculations.

Table 16Performance of the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Station!



1992 68.5 23.0 8.4 1.4 1/30 (3) 1/11 (7)1993 67.5 25.2 7.3 0.9 0/28 (0) 0/11 (0)1994 55.3 33.0 11.7 2.0 6/27 (16) 2/10 (13)1995 53.5 37.4 9.1 0.4 2/22 (6) 1/8 (7)1996 65.0 29.2 5.8 1.3 4/28 (11) 1/8 (7)1997 71.9 21.4 6.7 0.3 2/30 (6) 1/13 (7)1998 66.7

!Note: Two WWER-440/179 units and one WWER-1000/187 unit are in service at this site.

rating is now carried out in the two older units. Even insummer months, it appears that all the output of theplants can be sold, some of it to the Nordic Pool. Partlyas a result, the operating performance of the plants,including forced outage frequency, is excellent by inter-national standards.

A.1.6. NovovoronezhNovovoronezh (south of Moscow) is a key site in the

development of the WWER. Nearly all the major proto-types were built there including two that have alreadybeen closed (units 1 and 2). Much of the training forWWER operators is also carried out there. Currently,three units are in operation, units 3 and 4 which use the"rst WWER-440 design, the &179' and unit 5, the "rstWWER-1000 unit (designated &187'). Further units wereplanned for the site but no progress has been made.Despite the age of the plants (17}26 years old in 1998),they are the most reliable of the WWERs in Russia interms of the forced outage frequency (see Table 16).Operating losses are low suggesting low electricity de-mand and lack of resources has had less impact at thisplant than at other stations. Equally, there are few instan-ces of the output of the plants being &stretched' and the

WWER-1000 does not appear to have been operated atabove design rating.

A.1.7. SmolenskThe Smolensk site is west of Moscow and hosts two

second generation RBMK-1000 units completed in 1983and 1985. The third unit (completed in 1990) was modi-"ed in construction to take account of the Chernobyldisaster and is described as being a third generationdesign. Forced outage rates are low and comparable tothe two other Russian RBMK stations (see Table 17).Operating losses are also low, except in 1994 and, toa lesser extent, 1995 when power levels were reducedbecause of a shortage of funds to buy nuclear fuels.However, since 1993, load factors have been relativelypoor by the standards of second generation RBMKs.This appears to have been due to very lengthy (4 monthsor more) annual maintenance shutdowns. It is not clearfrom the records whether the length of these shutdowns isdue to a need to carry out additional maintenance andrepair or whether there are insu$cient resources to com-plete them quicker. Some of these maintenance periodsare in winter months suggesting that this is not simply


Table 17Performance of the Smolensk Nuclear Power Station!


Over design operation Low Power operation

1992 83.9 14.4 1.7 1.2 14/33 (39) 0/14 (0)1993 80.3 16.6 3.0 0.0 9/31 (25) 0/11 (0)1994 61.7 23.8 14.7 0.0 5/28 (14) 2/8 (13)1995 63.5 27.8 8.7 0.8 4/27 (11) 1/11 (7)1996 75.0 20.8 4.2 0.7 8/29 (22) 1/11 (7)1997 62.6 33.5 3.9 0.4 9/25 (25) 3/8 (20)1998 56.2

!Note: Two second-generation RBMK-1000 and one third-generation RBMK-1000 units are in service at this site.

Table 18Performance of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station!

Load factor Outage loss Derate loss Oper. loss Forced outagefrequency

Over design operation Low power operaton

1992 32.4 67.8 0.0 !0.2 0.0 8/17 (33) 0/0 (0)1993 71.7 11.4 9.7 7.2 0.9 14/22 (58) 0/9 (0)1994 58.9 24.4 6.1 10.7 2.1 4/19 (11) 0/7 (0)1995 66.4 23.3 5.9 4.4 1.0 1/20 (3) 0/6 (0)1996 65.2 19.1 8.5 7.1 0.5 0/21 (0) 1/8 (10)1997 50.1 45.9 0 4.0 0.0 3/7 (25) 0/3 (0)1998 54.2

!Note: Two "rst-generation and two second-generation RBMK-1000 units were installed at the Chernobyl site. Chernobyl 3 was destroyed in the 1986disaster and the turbine hall of Chernobyl 2 was destroyed in 1991 and the unit has not operated since. Chernobyl 1 produced its last power on 30November 1996. It is therefore not included in the 1997 data.

a decision to keep the plants o! line because demandlevels are low.

A.2. Ukraine

A.2.1. ChernobylThe Chernobyl plant, in the north of Ukraine, near the

border with Belarus contained two "rst generationRBMK-1000s, completed in 1978 and 1979 and twosecond generation RBMKs, completed in 1981 and 1984.Only unit 1 (retired in 1996) and unit 3 (expected to beretired in 2000) were in service in the period 1992}1997.Unit 1 was formally down-rated by 30 per cent from 1991onwards (see Table 18). In 1992, 1993 and 1997, unit3 was frequently run at a little above design electricalrating in the winter months, leading to low operatinglosses in those years. In 1996, power at both units wasreduced to economise on fuel. As with other RBMKstations, forced outage frequency is low.

A.2.2. KhmelnitskyThe Khmelnitsky plant is in the west of Ukraine,

approximately 300 km from the border with Poland. OneWWER-1000/320 unit is in service there (completed

1988) and three further units were planned. Unit 2 wasestimated to be 80 per cent complete when work wasstopped in 1990 and construction of unit 3 had alsocommenced. The Ukrainian authorities are keen to ob-tain funds to complete unit 2, but it is unlikely that theother units will now be revived. The load factors achievedsince 1992 have been good by WWER-1000 standards(see Table 19). However, it is clear from the low operatinglosses and the number of months that average outputlevels were above design, that the plant runs at abovedesign electrical rating in the winter months. It is alsoclear that output has not been constrained by low elec-tricity demand. The low load factor in 1996 was the resultof a "ve-month outage for annual maintenance and re-pairs. Forced outage rate is poor even by Ukrainianstandards.

A.2.3. RovnoThe Rovno station, in the north-west of Ukraine near

the Belarus border and close to the Polish border. Ithouses two WWER-440/213 units (completed in 1981and 1982) and one WWER-1000/320 unit (completed in1987). A fourth unit, of the WWER-1000/320 design,reached a similar stage of construction as Khmelnitsky


Table 19Performance of the Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Station!



1992 72.8 29.8 !2.6 2.3 8/9 (67) 0/2 (0)1993 65.9 34.0 0.0 4.8 5/9 (42) 0/4 (0)1994 75.7 22.9 1.4 7.2 5/10 (42) 0/4 (0)1995 68.5 31.3 0.2 4.7 3/9 (25) 0/3 (0)1996 53.9 44.6 1.5 5.8 0/8 (0) 0/1 (0)1997 73.9 26.8 !0.7 4.4 6/9 (50) 0/3 (0)1998 66.0

!Note: One WWER-1000/320 unit is in service at this site.

Table 20Performance of the Rovno Nuclear Power Station!



1992 90.2 13.2 !7.3 3.1 28/32 (78) 0/13 (0)1993 72.4 23.9 8.4 3.3 8/30 (22) 0/13 (0)1994 76.2 20.0 3.8 0.4 5/31 (14) 0/12 (0)1995 74.5 22.0 3.5 0.7 6/29 (17) 0/12 (0)1996 75.2 20.5 2.8 1.9 0/30 (0) 0/12 (0)1997 79.1 18.3 2.5 1.4 13/31 (36) 2/12 (13)1998 75.5

!Note: Two WWER-440/213 and one WWER-1000/320 unit are in service at this site.

2 and the Ukrainian authorities are also actively seekingfunds to complete this plant. Operating losses are verylow and it is clear that the plants have been routinelyoperated at above their design electrical rating in thewinter months, especially in 1992 and 1997 (see Table 20).The low power operation in 1997 was due to one of theturbines at unit 1 being out of service for two monthsreducing the plant output in that period by 50 per cent.There appear to have been no major demand relatedpower reductions. The WWER-440 units perform con-siderably better than the WWER-1000 unit on all indi-cators used in this analysis. At units 1 and 2, load factor ison average about 10 percentage points better and forcedoutage frequency is only a third of that at unit 3. Never-theless, by international WWER-440/213 standards (forexample, Paks in Hungary and Dukovany in the CzechRepublic), the performance of units 1 and 2 is mediocre.Equally, by international WWER-1000 standards, theperformance of unit 3 is good.

A.2.4. South UkraineThe South Ukraine station, in the south-west of

Ukraine near the border with Moldova, houses threeWWER-1000 units, one each of designs &302', &338' and

&320', completed in 1983, 1985 and 1989 respectively.Construction of a fourth unit of the &320' design wasstarted but halted by the government on environmentalgrounds. From 1995 onwards, performance in terms ofload factor and forced outage frequency has been ratherbetter than the average for Ukrainian WWER-1000s (seeTable 21). In 1992, 1997 and, to a lesser extent 1993, theplants were routinely run at above their design electricalratings in the winter months, partly accounting for thebetter than average performance in these years. In 1994and 1995, there were high operating losses and a signi"-cant amount of low power operation in the summermonths. In 1994, these power reductions appear to bemainly the result of operation at unit 2 at only about40 per cent of design because of concerns about thecontrol rod drive mechanism. In 1995, low power opera-tion (on average restricted to about 80 per cent of design)was imposed on all three units during the summermonths, but no explanation was given in the operatingrecords.

A.2.5. ZaporozheThe Zaporozhe nuclear power plant, in the south-east

of Ukraine, is now the largest nuclear power station in


Table 21Performance of the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Station!



1992 71.2 26.2 2.7 4.4 20/29 (56) 0/10 (0)1993 66.2 28.6 5.2 5.9 6/28 (17) 1/10 (7)1994 58.6 30.1 11.2 2.4 2/26 (8) 3/9 (20)1995 63.4 27.4 9.2 1.5 0/27 (0) 3/10 (20)1996 63.5 29.2 7.3 2.6 2/27 (6) 2/9 (13)1997 76.2 20.3 3.4 0.7 13/30 (43) 0/11 (0)1998 63.7

!Note: One WWER-1000/302, one WWER-1000/338 and one WWER-1000/320 unit are in service at this site.

Table 22Performance of the Zaporozhe Nuclear Power Station!



1992 73.5 24.4 2.2 2.1 29/48 (48) 0/21 (0)1993 62.0 23.1 14.9 4.2 10/51 (20) 7/20 (28)1994 55.0 30.2 14.7 4.9 1/44 (2) 8/15 (32)1995 54.7 32.0 13.3 2.3 1/46 (2) 11/15 (44)1996 62.6 30.0 7.4 2.5 0/45 (0) 0/16 (0)1997 68.1 25.3 6.6 3.0 11/59 (15) 4/26 (13)1998 67.3

!Note: Six WWER-1000/320 units are in service at this site. Zaporozhe 6 entered commercial service in September 1996 and is included in the 1997data. See Table 11 for de"nitions of &over design operation' and &low power operation'.

Europe, housing six WWER-1000/320 units. The "rst"ve were completed between 1985 and 1989, but the sixthwas delayed by the moratorium on nuclear constructionin force between 1989 and 1992 and also subsequentlyshortage of cash to complete the project, and was onlydeclared commercial in 1996. The Zaporozhe site con-tains more than half of Ukraine's WWER-1000 plants(see Table 22). Inevitably, its performance is close to theoverall average for Ukraine, although in terms of loadfactor, its performance has consistently been somewhatpoorer than the average. In many respects, the pattern ofperformance is similar to that found at South Ukraine,with the best performance in 1992 and 1997, when theplants were run at above design electrical capacity formuch of the year. In 1993}1995, low power operation,more pronounced that at South Ukraine, seems to havebeen the main cause for the dip in performance. Theoperating records noted four main contributory causesfor the low power operation in 1993:

f Equipment problems, especially restrictions resultingfrom faults in the control rod drive system and alsopoor e$ciency of the condenser.

f Power limitations because of the high temperature ofthe cooling water.

f Dispatcher restrictions.f Problems with the external grid.

In 1994, the main causes cited were again control rodproblems and dispatcher restrictions and, to a muchlesser extent, fuel shortage. Again in 1995, control rodproblems and dispatcher restrictions were the mainstated causes.

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Documents

Economic and safety pressures on nuclear power: a comparison of Russia and Ukraine since the break-up of the Soviet Union