Viktor Opekunov, Chairman of State Duma Sub-Committee on Nuclear Energy

– 2006 has been a year of global historic decisions for Russia’s nuclear power sector

Everything began with the message of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly. In his message, President Putin instructed the Government to ensure the energy safety of Russia and to increase the capacity of the nuclear power sector and its share in the country’s total energy balance to 25% by 2030. The message was followed by a whole number of fundamental decisions. On June 9 President Putin ratified «The Strategy for the Development of Russian’s Nuclear Power Industry.»  The Government adopted two federal target programs: «The Development of the Nuclear Arms Complex» and «The Development of the Nuclear Industry Complex.» The latter suggests building two GW units a year till 2015 — a total of 10 new reactors with a total capacity of 11 GW and 10 more undergoing projects. By 2015 the total capacity of the Russian NPPs should be 33GW.

The programs were followed by a bill «On the Peculiarities of the Management of the Property and Shares of Organizations Using Nuclear Power and On Relevant Changes to Some Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation.» On Dec 6 the State Duma approved it in the first reading. This bill provides for serious measures for reforming the sector and uniting its enterprises into a vertically integrated corporation — Atomprom.

The key events of the year were the victories of TVEL Corporation in the international tenders for supplying nuclear fuel for Temelin and Loviisa NPPs and the victory of Atomstrojeksport in the tender for building Belene NPP in Bulgaria. These victories have proved Russia’s high competitiveness in the world. The Belene victory is the first victory of the Russian nuclear power engineers on the European NPP construction market since the Soviet times.

One more important event is the conclusion of the Russian-Kazakh agreement on the establishment of three JVs for the peaceful use of nuclear power. The first JV is Akbastau, a facility that will be set up by Tekhnabeksport and Kazatomprom for extracting Kazakh uranium for Russia-manufactured reactors.

The second Russian-Kazakh JV (relevant contract was signed on Oct 12) will enrich Kazakh uranium at a special facility at the Angara Electrolysis Chemical Factory (Irkutsk). In fact, this is the first JV set up in the framework of the international center for uranium enrichment. The sides have also set up «Nuclear Power Plants» JV, a project aimed at designing and promoting innovative projects of small and medium reactors on the markets of Kazakhstan, Russia and third countries. The JV is supposed to design a new-type VBER-300 reactor for future NPPs in Kazakhstan.

It is important that Russia has preserved its position on the construction of the Bushehr NPP and I hope that nobody will prevent us from launching its 1st unit next year.

Such a boom is due to drastic reforms in the sphere. If formerly it was hard for the power engineers to get enough money for a BN-800 project, in 2007 they will get 18bln RUR and in 2008 — as much as 54bln RUR.

I believe that 2006 was very fruitful for the nuclear power sector.