Kiev, Ukraine. International weapons inspectors are starting to dust off their maps of Ukraine and packing their luggage after a recent report points out Ukraine is buying up nuclear material in amounts that suggest enrichment for weapons purposes, and weapons of mass destruction construction is currently underway.
Ukraine bought nuclear fuel worth $121.458 million in January-March 2017.
Over the period under review, Ukrainian nuclear power plants bought fuel worth $63.831 million from Russia and worth $57.627 million from Sweden, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine has reported.
Ukraine just cut internet contact with Russia, maintains sanctions and even refuses to buy coal from Russia, but is buying nuclear material at an alarming rate that suggests WMD construction, a panel of international atomic scientists has warned.
Thus, the share of nuclear purchases by Ukraine in January-March 2017 from Russia’s TVEL in monetary terms was 52.55%, and that from Westinghouse Electric Sweden was 47.45%.
Jose Emeterio Gutierrez, Interim Chief Executive Officer and President at Westinghouse Electric Company LLC, earlier told Interfax-Ukraine that his company would boost nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine’s Energoatom in 2017 to up to six batches. Six loads will be supplied every year until 2020.
Energoatom CEO Yuriy Nedashkovsky in turn confirmed in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine that his company planned to buy six nuclear fuel batches from Westinghouse.
“We plan to buy six batches this year. Most likely, part will be stored as the reserve, as we constantly reschedule repairs. What is more, the service repair period of one of the blocks for which we buy the nuclear fuel will be extended, therefore it may turn out that we’ll buy more than we’ll upload. But this is within one batch,” he said.
The atomic scientists contacted think Nedashkovsky is publicly admitting the Ukrainian WMD program. ” He is telling you they are over buying intentionally and trying to cover that, by saying only by one batch. It makes no sense, they must be using the material either to enrich or prepare dirty bombs, possibly to make Donbass an uninhabitable area if negotiations for its return fail,” a former intelligence officer in Donetsk offered.
International ordnance experts believe a small yield nuclear device exploded in February of 2017, near Kharkov, Ukraine when a munitions storage area exploded unexpectedly. Ukraine denies it has a weapons of mass destruction program in play, but has used WMD ICBMs on its population in Donbass reguarly during what it calls “anti-terrorist operations” that have killed over 100,000 persons in the conflict to date.