Valentin Mezhevich, First Vice Chairman of Commission on Natural Monopolies of the Federation Council

— The Federation Council will approve the bill on the formation of Atomenergoprom

Senator Mezhevich is sure that the Federation Council will approve the bill suggesting uniting civil NP enterprises into a state full cycle company Atomenergoprom.

“There will be many questions, but the bill will certainly be approved,” Mezhevich told journalists on Friday.

He noted that without this law it will be hard to implement the program for increasing the share of nuclear power production in the country’s total energy balance.

As was reported earlier, on Dec 6 the State Duma approved the first reading of the presidential bill on nuclear power reforms: 368 deputies voted “pro,” 58 – “contra,” 1 deputy abstained. The head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko appeared with a report. He told the MPs that the formation of a vertically integrated company (holding) is the only way to improve the situation in the nuclear power sector and to bring it together. “In fact, we are integrating the completely disintegrated nuclear power sector,” Kiriyenko said.

The bill “On the Peculiarities of the Management of the Property and Shares of Organizations Using Nuclear Energy and On Relevant Changes in Some Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” suggests setting up a single state-owned holding Atomenergoprom. The enterprises comprising the holding will be corporized, but will be fully owned by the state, i.e. federal state unitary enterprises will be restructured into joint stock companies and all of their shares will be given to Atomenergoprom.

All the decisions will be based on governmental directives. One of the key novelties of the bill is that Russian legal entities will be allowed to own nuclear materials, installations and storages of no military purpose. The list of such entities will be determined by the President.

On June 9 Vladimir Putin signed a “Strategy of Russia’s Nuclear Power Sector Development.” The Strategy suggests a complex of measures, particularly, increasing the share of nuclear power sector in Russia’s energy basket to 25% by 2030. One of the key initiatives of the bill is the approved bill.

The objective of the reforms is successful rivalry on the world market. The change of the form of ownership should help to improve private-state partnership in the nuclear power sector and to provide a legislative basis for the real situation in the sphere.

Polit.ru