Vienna, Sep 27, 2005 -- BBC Monitoring

 

The Russian nuclear power engineering sector needs investments worth R30bn in order to double its capacities by 2020. The head of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, Aleksandr Rumyantsev, said here today that "the nuclear industry would like to get R30bn worth of commercial credits repayable on the basis of its commercial function".

He said that "by 2020 we should be producing 230bn kWh at Russian nuclear power stations". "At present we are producing 50bn kWh a year. Russia is in great need of funding to develop its power engineering capacities. Therefore, I am concerned about increasing energy production by 2020," he said. [Passage omitted: the world will need at least twice as much energy by 2050, he said. Russia has a strategy which it may implement while it is chairing G8] [In another report at 1207 gmt the agency said, quoting Rumyantsev, that Russia supports a US initiative to create a nuclear fuel bank under the aegis of the IAEA. This initiative is about supplying fuel to countries which voluntarily end their nuclear fuel cycles, he said]

Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1220 gmt 27 Sep 05

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