The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which was seized by Russia last year, will stop using US-produced nuclear fuel as soon as possible, a Russian official said Thursday, cited by Russia’s Interfax news agency.
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which was built for the most part during the Soviet Union, originally used Russian nuclear fuel, but Ukraine gradually switched to Westinghouse fuel after the first conflict with Russia in 2014.
Last year, Russian forces seized the power plant during their invasion of parts of Ukraine, and it has since been at the center of a nuclear security crisis due to constant shelling near its facilities, blamed on each other by Kiev and Moscow.
Renat Karshaa, an adviser to the general manager of the Russian energy company Rosenergoatom that has taken over the nuclear plant, told Interfax that it has stockpiled American-made fuel for about four years.
However, the Russian administration will seek to replace this fuel with Russian fuel as soon as possible as it considers its own technologies superior, he noted.
Source: Documento
