Nov 24 - Daily News Bulletin; Moscow

The Russian government may "quadruple" its budgeted funding for a project to build a fast neutron reactor (fast reactor) at the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant in 2006, a senior State Duma member said.

The Duma has allocated 1 billion rubles for the construction of the BN-800 reactor under the 2006 budget, but "we expect to build up financing during the year due to additional state revenues," Viktor Opekunov, chairman of the Duma Subcommittee on Atomic Energy, told a briefing. "Maybe to treble or quadruple it," he added.

The Beloyarsk plant already has what is the world's first and only generating unit based on a fast reactor, a BN-600.

Oleg Sarayev, deputy head of Rosenergoatom, a Russian state enterprise running nuclear power plants, said the generating unit fitted with a BN-800, which would run on mixed uranium-plutonium fuel, might be launched by 2011.

Sarayev told the same briefing that the BN-800 would cost about 20% more than ordinary reactors that are being built in Russia.

But the BN-800 is not a commercial reactor, he said. One of its purposes is to develop a closed nuclear fuel cycle technology.

Sarayev said the BN-800 would be much cheaper; however, after the technologies used are tested, it could be manufactured serially.