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Russian Official Suggests Building Nuclear Power Station at Reprocessing Plant

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 December 2005, 18:00 CST

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Ozersk (Chelyabinsk Region), 13 December: Russia's atomic energy industry needs a new lease of life, the head of Rosatom [Federal Agency for Atomic Energy], Sergey Kiriyenko, told a news conference at Ozersk today. He said the main reason for this was the fact that "most of our nuclear power stations were built long ago and may become obsolete". It is also essential for nuclear power stations to retain their 16-per-cent share of overall electricity production in Russia and even to increase it, he said.

Sergey Kiriyenko said the agency was working on drawing up such a programme. He intends to report on it in the next few months.

"The possible construction of a nuclear power station is a prospect for Ozersk mainly because there are highly qualified personnel here," Kiriyenko said. "But this will be an expensive project, costing about 1.5bn dollars. It is needed here, first and foremost, to boost generating capacity in the Urals region, rather than to find a quick solution to the ecological problem, which the nuclear power station cannot achieve. This project will be a long one, taking 7-10 years. But the ecological problem and the rehabilitation of territory needs to be tackled seriously right now."

Kiriyenko said that in 2006 Rosatom would increase its funding of the Mayak chemical combine by 150 per cent compared with the current year. He said the combine would receive at least R250m. "These funds must be directed, first and foremost, into ensuring that the enterprise does not make the environmental situation in the region any worse," he noted. "The main dyke of the Techa cascade of ponds must be strengthened before the end of next year in order to prevent any possibility of radioactive effluent, now kept in the ponds, seeping into the river basin. A new furnace for the vitrification of the combine's highly active waste must be commissioned by the same deadline. A no less important task is to make an accurate assessment of possible movements of subterranean water in the area of Lake Karachay, which is well known as a reservoir for highly active effluent. There must be constant monitoring here."

Referring to ecological problems which have built up over decades, Kiriyenko feels that "this task, which is vital to the state, must be resolved publicly, with extensive scientific input. An interdepartmental commission must determine ways of resolving it."

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

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