The Kiev arbitration court ruled last week that Energoatom chief executive Serhy Touloub, whose company is verging on bankruptcy, could not decide to issue the bonds without the agreement of an arbitration panel, which was just named, the weekly InvestGazeta reported Wednesday.

Energoatom confirmed the report.

According to InvestGazeta, the court decision "could cross out" Energoatom's controversial plan to build two new K2R4 nuclear reactors next year at the nuclear power stations of Rivne and Khmelnitsky.

The new reactors would be built to replace the Chernobyl reactor, closed in 2000 four years after the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.

To finance the new reactors, the state-owned Energoatom planned to issue in July a first series of three-year bonds, totaling 300 million hrviniasmillion dollars), on the domestic market.

A second series of the bonds, totaling 200 million hrvinias, were to be issued in the final quarter of the year.

Ecology organizations have battled the construction of the two K2R4 reactrs, which are now three-quarters completed and which, according to the opponents, do not meet European safety standards.

The Ukrainian government has negotiated for years, without success, a loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to complete the project.

Energoatom manages four other Ukrainian nuclear power stations which provide nearly 45 percent of the nation's electricity.

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