Feb 21 - BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

 

Rosatom [Federal Agency for Atomic Energy] is conducting talks with private investors on their participation in the construction of new nuclear power stations in Russia, the head of Rosatom, Sergey Kiriyenko, told journalists today. He explained that there could be agreements "on long-term contracts for the supply of electricity from nuclear power stations at fixed [garbled passage]".

Kiriyenko said the Russian government had instructed the Ministry of Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the Unified Energy System of Russia company and Rosatom to compile a map of locations of new nuclear power stations and to determine the priorities of territories on which new nuclear power stations will be built.

"We are ready to conclude new, long-term contracts with private investors," Kiriyenko said, stressing that nuclear power stations must belong to the state.

He said regions would compete among themselves for new nuclear power stations since this would make it possible to attract substantial resources to these regions (the cost of a single 1,000- MW power unit is about 1.5bn dollars), to provide work for engineering plants and support towns located in the zone of nuclear power station construction.

As Prime-TASS reported earlier, nuclear's share of electricity production in the country could rise to 25 per cent by 2030, compared with 16 per cent at present.