Interfax News Agency, May 25, 2000
Nuclear Plants May Generate A Third of Russia's Electricity by 2030
Russia should be generating up to third of its electricity at nuclear plants
by 2030, the Ministry of Atomic Energy said in a report on the nuclear
industry's development to 2030 and 2050.
At the same time, only a quarter of the country's electricity will be generated
using gas, the report, which was discussed at Thursday's cabinet session, says.
Nuclear plants, or NPPs, will be generating 160 billion kWh of electricity
by 2005, 205 billion kWh by 2010 and 235 billion kWh by 2020. In 2000-2001,
NPP power generation should increase by 20 billion kWh to 140 billion kWh.
The ministry believes Russia has the uranium reserves and infrastructure
to quadruple the capacity at nuclear power plants.
One of the priorities is to prolong the life of power generating units
by 10 or 20 years, and to build new NPPs to phase out the use of gas
and heating oil in European Russia.
Russia could become less reliant on gas by using the Ignalina NPP in
Lithuania, for example. This is under-utilized at present, but could one day be
churning out up to 16 billion kWh of electricity per year for Belarus and northwest
Russia.
Russia plans to spend 17.5 billion rubles by 2005 upgrading and
extending the service life of its first generation nuclear power generating units.
It would cost 65 billion rubles to complete the five units that are already nearly
built or half-built. The total investment requirement to 2010, including the cost
of preparing to add new capacity after that year would be something like 380 billion
rubles, or between 7 billion rubles and 60 billion rubles per year. Some of this could
be raised by increasing electricity prices to approximately 1 cent per kilowatt-hour.
And a special off-budget investment fund could be set up to collect those
funds earmarked in the tariffs for products and services of natural monopolies,
including some of the proceeds from gas exports.
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