OREANDA-NEWS. October 24, 2008. Ukraine needs modern Russian technologies in the field of nuclear fuel production, President of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Boris Paton said during a Russian-Ukrainian conference on the development of Russian-Ukrainian nuclear cooperation.

He is sure that the Ukrainian nuclear power engineers will develop their cooperation with Russian TVEL, one of the biggest nuclear fuel producers in the world.

 “I am sure that TVEL will be one of our key partners as today Ukraine has 13 WWER-1000 and 2 WWER-440 reactors and needs TVEL’s latest achievements in the field of development and production of nuclear fuel for WWER,” Paton said.

TVEL has supplied the Ukrainian NPPs with fuel for many years. But recently Ukraine began to diversify its supply sources.

“Diversification is not bad but it must be economically and scientifically expedient and must not be based on political motives,” Paton said.

He pointed out that TVEL was a highly technological company and produced high-quality and science-intensive products.

“We will continue our cooperation with TVEL and have agreed to hold such seminars on a permanent basis,” Paton said.

One of the key fields of nuclear cooperation between Russia and Ukraine is development of fast-breeder reactors.

“We don’t have fast reactors in Ukraine. I am sure that we must cooperate in this field. We must be friends,” Paton said.

The conference has been organized by TVEL and is being attended by managers of TVEL, Energoatom Concern (Russia) and Energoatom company (Ukraine) as well as representatives of research organizations.