Government cash for Rosatom

16 April 2009

[RIA Novosti, Itar-Tass, 15 April] The Russian government is to allocate a further 50 billion roubles ($1.5 billion) of additional capitalization to state nuclear corporation Rosatom to keep the country's nuclear growth on track. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced the allocation in response to a request from Rosatom director general Sergei Kiriyenko. Speaking at a conference on the development of Russia's nuclear industry Putin described the construction of 26 new nuclear reactors to reach the country's target of generating 25-30% of its electricity from nuclear energy as "difficult, but realistic tasks" given the current economic climate. Meanwhile, Kiriyenko told the conference that the first unit of the new Baltic nuclear power plant in the Kaliningrad region would start up in 2016. This would appear to put the project back in line with original plans: last year, the commissioning date was brought forward from 2016 to 2015. 51% of the new plant is to be state-owned with the remainder belonging to private investors, including foreigners.

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