Russia approves nuclear power expansion to year 2010

The Russian government on Thursday approved plans to develop the country's nuclear power industry up to the year 2010, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said he was a "dedicated advocate" of the development of atomic power and stressed the need to "ensure tough safety precautions and to guard these most important facilities properly".

He said Russia could not manage without further atomic power development: "If we stop it, we shall put future generations in a very difficult predicament," he said.

Presenting the plans to the government the Minister for Atomic Energy, Viktor Mikhailov, said the atomic power programme included safety enhancements and measures to lengthen the life of nuclear power stations.

The construction programme included completion of new plants at Kursk, Rostov and the South Urals plant, which will consume weapons-grade plutonium.

A new generation of power plant was envisaged, he said, with a new environmentally-friendly closed fuel-cycle.

Mikhailov said the total atomic power capacity was planned to increase 14 per cent by the year 2000 and to between 30.5 and 38.5 per cent by 2010.

Mikhailov believed the plans would increase Russia's ability to export new nuclear technology and the enhance the power provision for the European region especially.

The meeting was told that in the last two years the safety alert figures at Russia's nine nuclear plants had only been bettered by Japan and Germany, the news agency said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.