Verkhovna Rada withdraws from consideration bill on building Khmelnytsky NPP power units 3 and 4 – MP Zhelezniak
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine withdrew from consideration the bill on the placement, design and construction of power units Nos. 3 and 4 of Khmelnytsky NPP, MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak reported on Telegram.
"[The bill has been] already withdrawn. No votes," he wrote, specifying that the bill was first on the agenda of today's meeting for adoption as a basis.
As reported, the bill on the construction of Khmelnytsky NPP-3 and Khmelnytsky NPP-4 was registered by the government under No. 11146 in April 2024. On June 17, the energy committee of the Verkhovna Rada supported it for adoption as a basis. A few days later, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, said that the Verkhovna Rada was close to a consensus on this bill.
Before that, on June 18, the bill was also withdrawn from consideration. Member of the parliamentary energy committee Andriy Zhupanin, who categorically spoke out against the document, then admitted that the parliament took into account the resonance that arose around this document, and there are no votes in it to support it.
The MP himself called it harmful to the interests of the state, considering, in particular, the purchase of two nuclear reactors produced by Rosatom from the unfinished Belene NPP in Bulgaria.
He also spoke in favor of the need for urgent development of a decentralized energy system, rather than the implementation of "giant-block" projects for the distant future.
Zhupanin's position on Facebook was publicly supported, in particular, by head of the Bioenergy Association of Ukraine Heorhiy Heletukha, former head of Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine (GTSOU) Serhiy Makogon, and managing partner of Imepower consulting company Yuriy Kubrushko, which works, among other things, in the field of "green" energy.
In July 2023, the Bulgarian parliament delegated the country's energy minister to hold talks with the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy on the possibility of selling equipment intended for Belene NPP to Kyiv. Bulgaria refused to implement this project in 2012. Without a law on the construction of Khmelnytsky NPP, such a deal cannot be concluded.