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NATIONAL REPORTS: UKRAINE

The heaps contain ore grades of 0.050-0.080% U, obtained as a result of the dump radiometric sorting. The volume of the heap is 40 000 tonnes of ore. At the Vatutinskiy deposits, the HL site has been built. On the site, there are four heaps with total volume 160 kt of ore. At the Michurinskiy deposits HL is still in the planning stage.

Ownership of uranium industry

All enterprises in the uranium industry (geology, mining, fuel processing) are owned by the state. The mining and processing enterprise VostGOK is part of the Department Strategic Policy of Investments and Nuclear Energy Complex in the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine. SE “Kirovgeology” is responsible for the balance of uranium mineral resources of Ukraine (geological survey, evaluation and exploration of deposit) and is part of the State Service of Geology and Resources of Ukraine, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.

In April 2008, the government of Ukraine founded a new entity called “Nuclear Fuel” through the merger of existing organisations in the sphere of the directorate of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy.

Secondary sources of uranium

•mixed oxide fuel (MOX) has never been produced in Ukraine or used in its NPPs;

•re-enrichment tails have never been produced or used in Ukraine;

•reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is not conducted in Ukraine nor has it been used.

Environmental activities and socio-cultural issues

The main environmental impact of uranium production at mines result from ore stockpiles, tailings, radiometric ore-sorting sites, waste dumps, ventilation systems infrastructure, and transport (railways, technological motor roads).

The main environmental impact from the hydrometallurgical process plant and heap leaching sites are harmful chemical and ore dust emissions, airborne transportation of aerosols and groundwater contamination from tailings impoundments. In order to minimise the environmental impacts, permanent monitoring is being conducted.

On the hydrometallurgical plant (Zheltye Vody), process water is recycled for the technological process. There are two tailings impoundments, one situated 9 km from the hydrometallurgical plant consisting of two sections (135 and 163 ha), and the second 0.5 km from the plant (55 ha). The latter has been used, and reclamation is ongoing.

There are issues connected with the decommissioning of uranium mining and uranium processing enterprises.

At the closed Prydnieprovskiy Chemical Plant, there are nine tailings impoundments (covering a total area of 268 ha containing 42 Mt of wastes) with total activity of 75 000 Ci (Curie) and some buildings and other facilities are contaminated by radioactive elements. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine initiated a state programme for reclamation with state funds amounting to UAN 22.3 million (Ukrainian hryvnia, about USD 4.5 million) since 2005.

The total cost of improving radiological protection at all enterprises of the atomic industry and all contaminated areas resulting from mining and processing of uranium is expected to amount to USD 360 million, including decontamination of polluted soils, environmental monitoring, installation of monitoring systems where necessary and improved technology for the management of water flows, radioactive rocks in dumps, polluted equipment and land areas.

NATIONAL REPORTS: UKRAINE

Uranium requirements

Uranium production in Ukraine meets 30% of domestic nuclear energy requirements. Nuclear fuel requirements have always been provided by importing fuel from Russia (provided by TVEL). Annual fuel loadings of the 4 operating NPPs (comprised of 13 VVER-1000 units and 2 VVER-440 units) are 15 sets of fuel elements at a total cost of about USD 300 million. The government has been set a target that by 2020, 100% of uranium requirements for the Ukrainian nuclear fleet will be met by domestic production.

Installed nuclear generating capacity by 2035

At present, 15 reactors are operating at 4 NPPs: 6 VVER-1000 units at Zaporozhskiy, 3 VVER-1000 units at South-Ukrainian, 2 VVER-1000 and 2 VVER-400 units at Rovenskiy and 2 VVER-1000 units at Khmelnitskiy.

The national programme for nuclear energy production foresees to produce about 45% of electricity by nuclear power plants by 2030. To fulfil this requirement, annual nuclear energy production will have to increase to 75.2 billion KWe/h. This will require life extension of operating NPPs, the construction of 12 additional units (with 10 of these having a total capacity 1 500 MWe) and during this time frame, the decommissioning of 12 NPPs that will be at the end of their operational lifetime.

Uranium policy, uranium stock and uranium price

Ukrainian government policy is increasing the production of natural uranium and improving the foreign investment climate in order to develop uranium projects in Ukraine.

enrichment will be conducted abroad.

On 17 April 2009, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine passed Resolution N 650-p “Some Questions of Liquidation and Organisation of State Mergers in the Nuclear Industry”. The resolution founded the company “Nuclear Fuel”, by the merger of all state enterprises and research and design institutes in the field of the nuclear fuel cycle. The aim of the resolution is to improve investment conditions.

The joint venture “plant for the manufacture of nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors VVER-1000 type” was established in Ukraine in October 2011. The plant is situated in the Kirovograd region, close to “Vatutinskiy” uranium deposits. In the JV, 50% +1 share belongs to the state Russian company TVEL.

The technical economical assessment for construction of the plant was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (statement N437 dated 27 June 2012). The total cost of construction was estimated at UAH 3.7 billion. The schedule of construction was as follows: Stage I was commissioned in 2015 and stage II was planned for 2020. Planned capacity of the plant was 800 nuclear fuel sets per year. However, the construction of the plant has been postponed.

The decision to build in the zone of alienation of the Chernobyl NPP, the centralised storage facility of the used fuel from domestic reactors VVER, has been made (Law of Ukraine N4384, dated 2 September 2012). Initially, the commissioning was planned for 2016. Currently, the storage facility is under construction by the company “Holtec International” USA.

In September 2012, the decision to build two NPPs, N3 and N4 on the Khmelnitsky site, in collaboration with Russia was made (the Law of Ukraine N4384 dated 2 September 2012). Commissioning of these units was initially set for 2018 (N3), and 2020 (N4), respectively. Meanwhile, the new build activities have been postponed.

NATIONAL REPORTS: UKRAINE

The government of Ukraine made the decision to build a new process plant for the Novokonstantinovskiy uranium deposit (Resolution of the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine N 933-P dated 24 February 2012). The process plant production capacity is 1 500 000 tons of ore per year or 2 000 tons of uranium. There is no activity at the present time.

Uranium exploration and development expenditures and drilling efforts – domestic

(UAH million as of 1 January 2017)

* Non-government

Reasonably assured conventional resources by deposits type

(tonnes U)

NATIONAL REPORTS: UKRAINE

Prognosticated conventional resources

(tonnes U)

Cost ranges

Speculative conventional resources

(tonnes U)

Cost ranges

Historical uranium production by deposits type

(tonnes U in concentrate)

Historical uranium production by production method

(tonnes U in concentrate)

*Pre-2011 totals may include uranium recovered by heap and in-place leaching.

Historical uranium production by processing method

(tonnes U in concentrate)

*Also known as stope leaching or block leaching.

**A subset of open-pit and underground mining, since it is used in conjunction with them.

NATIONAL REPORTS: UKRAINE

Ownership of uranium production in 2016

Uranium industry employment at existing production centres

(persons/years)

Short-term production capability at existing, committed and planned centres by prime-cost from USD 80/kg (I) and USD 130/kg (II) up to 2035

(tonnes U/year)

Net nuclear electricity generation

Installed nuclear generating capacity till 2035

(GWe net)

Annual reactor-related uranium requirements till 2035 (excluding MOX)

(tonnes U)

NATIONAL REPORTS: UNITED KINGDOM

United Kingdom

Uranium exploration and mine development

Historical review

Some uranium mining occurred in Cornwall, as a sideline to other mineral mining, especially tin, in the late 1800s. Systematic exploration occurred in the periods 1945-1951, 1957-1960 and 1968-1982, but no significant uranium reserves were located.

Recent and ongoing uranium exploration and mine development activities

Exploration in overseas countries is carried out by private companies operating through autonomous subsidiary or affiliate organisations established in the country concerned (e.g. Rio Tinto).

There were no industry expenditures reported for domestic exploration from 1988 to the end of 2016, nor were there any government expenditures reported for exploration either domestic or abroad. Since 1983, all domestic exploration activities have been halted.

Uranium resources

Identified conventional resources (reasonably assured and inferred resources)

The reasonably assured resource and inferred resources are essentially zero. There has been no geological appraisal of the UK uranium resources since 1980.

Undiscovered conventional resources (prognosticated and speculative resources)

There are small quantities of in situ undiscovered resources as well as speculative resources. Two districts are believed to contain uranium resources: the metalliferous mining region of south-west England (Cornwall and Devon) and north Scotland including Orkney.

Unconventional resources and other materials

None to report.

Uranium production

The United Kingdom is not a uranium producer.

NATIONAL REPORTS: UNITED KINGDOM

Secondary sources of uranium

Production and/or use of mixed oxide fuels

The United Kingdom no longer produces MOX fuel, and the Sellafield MOX Plant is no longer operational – it closed in 2011.

Production and/or use of re-enriched tails

Urenco has a long-term contractual agreement to upgrade tails material, but considers this to be commercially confidential. In November 2012, the Capenhurst site (the location of a gaseous diffusion enrichment facility that was closed in 1982), including legacy uranium enrichment tails, was transferred to Urenco, operator of the adjacent centrifuge enrichment plant. An agreement between the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Urenco was signed for the processing of these NDA-owned legacy materials.

Uranium requirements

On 1 January 2017, there were 15 licensed reactors with a combined capacity of 8.9 GW operating in the United Kingdom. On the basis of current scheduled closure rates, most of the UK’s existing nuclear power stations will have shut by 2030. Successive UK governments have taken a series of facilitative actions to encourage nuclear new build, and industry has set out proposals to develop 18 GW of new nuclear power at six sites in the United Kingdom, broken down as follows:

•Électricité de France (EDF) and China General Nuclear Power Corporation (as NNB Generation Company – NNBG) will build two EPR reactors at Hinkley Point C (3.2 GW) and propose plans for two more at Sizewell (3.2 GW). The two companies also plan to build two HPR1000 reactors at Bradwell (2.2 GW).

•Horizon Nuclear Power, owned by Japan’s Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd, proposes to build two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR) at each of its sites in Wylfa and Oldbury (2.7 GW each).

•NuGen, a consortium of Japan’s Toshiba-Westinghouse and France’s ENGIE (Toshiba will shortly be purchasing ENGIE’s shares in the consortium), proposes to build three AP1000 reactors (3.4 GW) at Moorside near Sellafield.

The UK government decided to proceed with Hinkley Point C in September 2016, signing contracts with NNBGenco, including directing the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC) to offer a “contract for difference” (CfD) for Hinkley Point C. Key terms include a 35-year CfD, the “strike price” of GBP 92.50/megawatt-hours (MWh) (2012 figures). EDF expects the plant to be operational in 2025. Generic design assessment (GDA) is one of the facilitative actions set out in the Nuclear White Paper 2008 and is undertaken by the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the UK Environment Agency. GDA is a voluntary process that allows regulators to begin consideration of the generic safety, security and environmental aspects of designs for NPPs prior to applications for site-specific licensing and planning consents. Any reactor deployed in the United Kingdom must meet the UK’s robust and independent regulatory requirements. This includes meeting design safety requirements via the GDA process. The AP1000 (to be used by NuGen at Moorside) completed the GDA process in March 2017, and the ABWR (to be used by Horizon at two sites, Wylfa and Oldbury) is expected to complete GDA by the end of 2017. The HPR1000 (proposed for use at Bradwell) entered the GDA process in January 2017. For new nuclear build, Section 45 of the

NATIONAL REPORTS: UNITED KINGDOM

Energy Act 2008 requires prospective nuclear operators to submit a funded decommissioning programme (FDP) for approval by the Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The UK government published FDP statutory guidance in December 2011 to assist operators to develop their programmes. The purpose of FDP is to ensure operators set aside sufficient funds to cover the cost of decommissioning and waste management including their share of the costs of geological disposal.

The government received an FDP submission from NNBG in March 2012 and discussions were concluded in October 2015 whereby the FDP for Hinkley Point C was approved by the UK government. In the near to medium future, the uranium requirements in the United Kingdom will be difficult to predict owing to the proposed new build programme and the potential for commercial operators of existing power plants to obtain regulatory approval for life extensions beyond their current scheduled closure dates.

Uranium policies, uranium stocks and uranium prices

Uranium stocks

The UK uranium stockpile practices are the responsibility of the individual bodies concerned. Actual stock levels are commercially confidential.

Uranium prices

Uranium prices are commercially confidential in the United Kingdom.