WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) – The head of Holtec, a
private U.S. nuclear power company working in Ukraine, said
Russia’s occupation the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is a serious
hit to the future of clean energy.
Russia took over the plant, Europe’s biggest, soon after its
Feb. 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The plant has suffered
shelling and cut power lines during the war, raising concerns of
a nuclear catastrophe. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for
the shelling.
Kris Singh, the chief executive of New Jersey-based Holtec
International said in an open letter published on Thursday that
Russia President Vladimir Putin’s military occupation of the
plant should be viewed as a “serious blow to humanity’s clean
energy future.”
Singh said it has “normalized a new horrendous instrument of
war”.
Nuclear power backers, including the Biden administration,
say the electricity source is critical to fight climate change,
because it generates virtually emissions-free power. Nuclear’s
critics say it’s too costly and building new plants is too
time-consuming to do much to curb climate change, though some
acknowledge that current reactors should keep running if they
operate safely.
In Ukraine, Holtec works on storage of spent nuclear fuel
and wants to build next-generation small modular reactors there.
Russia’s war in Ukraine and the taking of Zaporizhzhia could
be costly for its international nuclear business. Last year a
Finnish-led consortium scrapped a contract for Russia’s
state-owned Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant in Finland,
citing delays and increased risks due to the war in Ukraine.
The Hanhikivi 1 project would have increased Finland’s
dependency on Russia for its energy.
Singh urged the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International
Atomic Energy Agency, to call on its member states to agree
resolutions that make attempts to interfere with peaceful
generation of nuclear power “punishable by expulsion of the
aggressor state.”
The IAEA did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner;
Editing by Sandra Maler)
