Russia Plans International Nuclear Joint Venture and Nine Plant Projects in 2007

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Following the policy trend of the Russian government to integrate and rationalize elements of heavy industrial sectors into competitive giants in global markets, the country’s nuclear energy industry is merging the various independent and quasi-independent companies in the sector into one state company, Atomprom.

Announcing that Rosenergoatom (Moscow), the state’s nuclear power generating monopoly, is planning to begin the construction of nine nuclear power units in 2007, the company’s General Director Sergei Obozov said in Moscow in the first week of September, ”Next year we will work under entirely new conditions prompted by the market. We have once again to prove our business efficiency. During the transitional period to Atomprom, in which we see ourselves as the core, we have to prove our soundness by improving nuclear plant safety.”

If the new industry plan is fully implemented, Atomprom will absorb the civilian units of Rosatom, including TVEL, the nuclear fuel producer and supplier, Tekhsnabexport (Tenex), the state-owned uranium trader, and Atomstroiexport, Russia’s lead organization for the implementation of intergovernmental agreements on the construction of nuclear facilities abroad.

Currently, Rosenergoatom runs a total of 31 power-generating units at Russia’s ten nuclear power plants. Under the plan, all of Russia’s nuclear power generation will be amalgamated by Rosatom including uranium production and enrichment and the building and export of nuclear products.

On the same day as the plant building plan was aired, Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Nuclear Power (FANP), told the Ria Novosti agency in London that a major nuclear power plant building program will be implemented over the next 25 years. The FANP is currently holding talks with foreign companies on establishing a nuclear joint venture based in Russia. The scope of the long-term building plans covers 42 to 58 power units for Russia’s domestic needs by 2030 and 40 to 50 units abroad in the next 30 years.

Russia is planning for 300,000 megawatts from the new domestic plants to cover a projected energy deficit in the next 30 years. Kiriyenko said that energy consumption in Russia had already grown by 5.5% instead of the 2% planned for 2006. In the same week, Moscow’s Mayor Yury Luzhkov warned that the city’s energy deficit this winter could reach 20%. This could mean that some businesses would have to shut down for days in repetition of last year’s problems during a spell of Arctic weather.

Kiriyenko said that his agency was meeting with senior officials from the British government and was also in talks with the world’s leading companies on establishing a joint venture to develop and produce nuclear engineering products. The FANP had established a joint venture with Gazprombank, a subsidiary of energy giant Gazprom (Moscow), to purchase assets in the sector.

The choice of a site for the center and all legal and organizational issues could be resolved by the end of the year. This week, he will discuss the project with Mohamed Elbaradei, Director General of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), said Kiriyenko. The IAEA would control the site and foreign experts would have free access.

When the initiative for the project was first floated by President Putin in January, it was seen as a way to defuse the crisis around Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Putin said then that international centers offering nuclear fuel services, including enrichment, without discrimination should become a key element in the infrastructure. All concerned parties would have equal access to nuclear energy, and under the IAEA nonproliferation requirements would be reliably observed.

With several European countries conducting a review of nuclear power there was no alternative to this energy source in the long term Kiriyenko said. He qualified this by adding that until the Russian domestic price of natural gas exceeded $80 per 1,000 cubic meters, double the current level, nuclear energy would remain uncompetitive.

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