Russia puts off ambitious nuclear reactor construction plan

Russia announced Wednesday that it will slow down the construction of nuclear reactors in coming years because of the ongoing financial crisis and dwindling electricity consumption in the country, RTT News website writes.

Sergei Kiriyenko, director of the state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, said it would be wrong to build reactors that are not needed. “Though we planned to build two units a year, now we have corrected our program to one unit a year for the next several years,” he said.

"We are implementing a program to build power units in Russia, according to a set plan. It has not changed," Kiriyenko said, adding Rosatom will have to build all those 26 planned power units, but the peak of construction has been put off for several years.

However, he said that if the situation improves the pace of construction would revert back to the initial plan, but that in the meantime export will have to make up for the work shortfall on the domestic market.

Currently, Russia's 10 nuclear power plants operate 31 reactors with a rated capacity of 23,242 megawatts. The 26 new nuclear reactors in the country will increase the share of nuclear power plants in Russia's energy balance from 16 to 25-30%.

Russia is also one of the leaders on the global Nuclear Power Project market. Russia's Atomstroiexport is the only company in the world that is building reactors in four countries at the same time: China, India, Iran, and Bulgaria - fulfilling orders that make up about 20% of the global competitive market.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday said Russia was looking to increase its contribution to the global nuclear energy market to 25%.