Mar 3, 2011 1:04 PM GMT
Ukraine wants the European Union to help finance a planned $10 billion upgrade of heating companies aimed at reducing emissions.
“We need to reach European standards by 2018,” Deputy Energy and Coal Industry Minister Mykyta Konstantinov said today at an Adam Smith Conference in Kiev. After presenting the emissions reduction plan, “we hope Ukraine will be able to tap the EU’s financial resources.”
Ukraine also needs $1.5 billion to improve safety at its nuclear power plants and plans to seek funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and European Atomic Energy Community, Konstantinov said. The former Soviet state has already upgraded two reactors, he said.
Ukraine operates 15 reactors at four nuclear power plants. A reactor at Chernobyl, the fifth plant, exploded in April 1986, spewing radiation across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and northernEurope. The government shut down Chernobyl’s other reactors completely in 2000.
Ukraine wants to prolong the life of the working reactors by 20 years, Konstantinov said, without giving details.
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