People's deputies Yaroslav Zheleznyak and Lyudmila Buimister at a meeting of the temporary special commission of the Verkhovna Rada dedicated to the activities of Energoatom openly lobbied for the interests of Turboatom General Director Viktor Subbotin.
The latter is notorious for his attempts to save his bankrupt Megabank at the expense of a state company.
Economic analyst Boris Kushniruk drew attention to this in his blog.
He said that instead of discussing issues of effective use of public funds, deputies manipulated the topic of Energoatom’s purchase of a turbine rotor for the second unit of the Khmelnytsky NPP.
A new rotor is necessary for the power unit to operate at full capacity. However, Energoatom announced a tender several times, but then canceled it. This, as Kushniruk explained, has an objective reason.
To replace the turbine, the power unit must be shut down for several months. This can only be done outside the heating season, when there is enough power in the power system for generation. But Energoatom was unable to announce the tender on time due to the fact that Ukrenergo adjusted the electricity generation plan several times.
Therefore, the relevance of the tender shifted depending on the planned repair period. But the people’s deputies were not embarrassed by the likely shortage of electricity. They were only concerned about one thing, which they repeated many times, very loudly interrupting their colleagues - why doesn’t Energoatom want to buy a turbine from Turboatom? It seemed that they were taking a very biased position,” Kushniruk wrote.
The expert recalled that Energoatom has negative experience of cooperation with Turboatom. Several years ago, nuclear scientists ordered similar equipment from the company for another power unit, but in the first days of its use, the turbine blades were damaged, which almost led to a disaster.
“In the energy industry of the past, there were many accidents of turbine installations, when poorly manufactured blades were torn off from the rotor, which during operation rotates them at a speed of 3000 rpm and scatters them as if from a sling, piercing the turbine housing, the roof and walls of the turbine hall - the heavy iron blades fly to 1.5 km around the station. This did not happen, but Energoatom had to shut down the power unit and throw away the blades manufactured by Turboatom. The general director of Turboatom, Viktor Subbotin, is trying to hide this information by negotiating with law enforcement,” explained Kushniruk.
According to the expert, Subbotin strives to get this order at all costs in order to use the money received to pay off the debts of his bankrupt Megabank. While the motives of people's deputies Yaroslav Zheleznyak and Lyudmila Buimister raise certain doubts.
“Let me remind you that Zheleznyak only recently began to take an interest in the work of Energoatom and he has fairly transparent intentions to influence the determination of the personal composition of the governing bodies of this company during its corporatization. With Buimister, everything is also more or less clear. The media, analyzing the “dark” moments of her biography, wrote quite convincingly that she may still have a Russian passport and is connected with the Russian special services. Is it because these people’s deputies in their speeches forget that such a turbine for the Khmelnitsky NPP can be manufactured with guaranteed quality, for example, by the American company General Electric, which operates all over the world? “Turboatom” in its current state and with the current leadership, unfortunately, cannot definitely ensure this,” concluded Kushniruk.
The economic analyst called on Servants of the People to stop using the work of the VSK to lobby for someone’s private interests.
