Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) and Ukraine's Energoatom have signed a memorandum of understanding that outlines cooperation agreements that could bring to completion the third and fourth units at the Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant that was begun in the mid-1980s, but halted in 1990 and again in 2015 amid contractual disagreements with Russia's Rosatom, which had taken up the project after the initial work stoppage.
Ukraine has been fishing around for a construction partner and a method of financing completion of the two units, which were considered 75 percent and 28 percent completed as of 1990.
In November 2015, after Ukraine canceled their agreements with Russia to complete the projects, the country's Energy Minister Vladimir Demchishin said that completion was dependent on “an international partner, despite the fact that these technologies were developed in Russia.” Ukraine was considering China and others, including Westinghouse and potential partners from Europe, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Ukraine has also settled on a financing option, which involves selling electricity generated by Khmelnitsky's unit 2 to the European market. In March 2015, state-owned Energoatom signed an MOU with power distribution company Ukrenergo and Polish-owned Polenergia, a multi-faceted energy company to help make that happen. The design of this MOU was to implement the so-called “energy-bridge project,” which involved trans-European energy distribution.
The combined forces of South Korea and Ukraine represents a wealth of nuclear power experience and expertise. KHNP operates 24 reactors and has six additional units under construction. For its part, Energoatom operates 15 reactors at four different nuclear power plants. The countries have respective nuclear capacities of 21,716 MWe and 13,835 MWe, respectively.