As we warned earlier, a campaign to discredit the nuclear industry, Energoatom, and its management has been launched and actively promoted.
Our achievements and stable operation during the war, even without the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP, do not give rest to the aggressor country and its henchmen in Ukraine. For money, without their knowledge, or simply as handy idiots, they are used to undermine the situation from the inside. They deliberately want to harm almost the only and simultaneously the largest energy company in Ukraine, which ensures stable and safe operation of nuclear power units, uses the most advanced technologies for safe electricity production and is the leader in the energy sector of Ukraine.
To date, Energoatom accounts for more than the lion's share of the country's electricity generation. We are currently conducting an unprecedentedly fast scheduled maintenance campaign (of course, without disrupting production processes and safety requirements), and have mobilized all possible resources for this purpose: financial, human, and logistical. We are making the necessary purchases of equipment and materials. We are striving to shorten the duration of repairs at power units to return them to the grid as soon as possible and reduce the deficit in the power system and, accordingly, the duration of power outages.
We will do our best to ensure that Ukrainians do not suffer from massive power outages next winter. As in the previous autumn and winter period, Energoatom will operate all 9 power units, using 100% of the available capacity. As in the past autumn and winter, Energoatom will operate all 9 power units, using 100% of the available capacity.
The enemy is well aware that Energoatom is the last outpost of our country's energy security, the only reliable source of base-load power generation for the public and the economy, and it must be attacked. If not with missiles, then with information – by misleading the public, inciting hatred through lies, slander, and manipulation. For this purpose, the most painful topics for Ukrainian society are chosen: “illicit enrichment”, “corruption”, “procurement”, “everything will be stolen”, etc. The usual manipulations of information and false interpretations are used to create sensations and empty accusations that are later not confirmed by regulatory and law enforcement agencies. The perpetrators of these attacks do not hide the fact that their goal is personnel changes, i.e., the promotion of the right people who will destroy the nuclear industry. In my opinion, this is an outright harm to national interests that should be prosecuted.
Opponents of the existence and development of the domestic nuclear industry believe that they have chosen the right time to do so. Against the backdrop of Ukrainians suffering from the war and constant stress, they waited for the Government to raise electricity tariffs, for long-lasting blackouts due to the loss of generation from destroyed thermal and hydroelectric power plants, and then launched slander against Energoatom and me personally into the information space.
It will just suffice to mention the manipulation of Energoatom receiving funds from the residential tariff raising and directing it to the construction of power units 3 and 4 at Khmelnytskyi NPP.
The reality is that Energoatom will barely have enough money to fulfill the PSO, i.e. to provide full funding for the difference between the new residential tariffs and the market value of electricity. In 2024, 61% of the Company's total revenues will be allocated for these purposes – UAH 108.3 billion. This is assuming that the current market conditions remain unchanged and without taking into account that the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission of Ukraine (NEURCU) will soon approve a decision to raise tariffs for electricity transmission and distribution. Thus, the already small share of electricity cost in the residential electricity tariff will further decrease.
How the current PSO mechanism works, which entities participate in it, what pricing and flow of funds in the purchase, supply, distribution of electricity for the public, and finally who finances it all are regulated not by governmental supporting documents of draft legal acts, as some people’s deputies and “experts” believe, but by the Regulation on the imposition of special obligations on electricity market participants to ensure public interests in the functioning of the electricity market, approved by Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 483 dated 05.06.2019 (as amended).
I am sure that there are no companies in the world, except Energoatom, that, while giving 61% of their revenues (not profits!) to support the tariff for the population of the whole country, operated effectively (having lost 45% of capacity – ZNPP!), ensured nuclear and radiation safety at the highest level (and this during the war!), paid more than UAH 20 billion in taxes to the budget annually, did not receive subsidies from the state, and even launched programs for the construction of new power units!
Thus, the role and importance of the nuclear industry for our country can hardly be overestimated. No matter how hard some well-known figures try to discredit the sector.
We are ready and will continue to protect Ukraine's nuclear power industry and develop its enormous potential. As the law permits, we will stand up for the rights of Ukrainians to have their own stable, high-tech, and safe nuclear generation in the future in any way.
Because we cannot do without it!
