The end of Russian 'nuclear renaissance'?

According to the Russian government, the number of new nuclear reactors planned to be built by 2015 will be cut by 60%. But even that number of nuclear units will be hard to build. As environmental groups have been saying for years, Russia's nuclear aspirations are far from realisation.

WISE Russia

TWO years after the Russian government approved an ambitious programme of building nearly 40 nuclear reactors, the mass media in Moscow are reporting about massive cuts in the number of power plants to be built by 2015. According to leading business newspaper Vedomosti, referring to the data of the Ministry of Energy, the number of new nuclear reactors will be cut by over 60%.

Russia may save about $25 billion (18 billion euros) with the removal of these units from the 2015 target list, Russian environmental group Ecodefense estimates. Moreover, spending this amount on construction of natural gas power plants may bring three times more electricity compared to nuclear, Vladimir Milov, former deputy energy minister of Russia, told the Nuclear Monitor.

According to the scheme of locations for energy facilities until 2020 (the state programme outlining the plan for construction of nuclear, coal, gas and hydro plants during the next decade), Rosatom, Russia's state atomic power agency, planned to put online 13.2 GWt of new nuclear capacity by 2015. This is equal to 13 units of the VVER-1000 reactor or 11 units of the VVER-1200. Under the scaled-down plan, only 5.2 GWt of new nuclear capacity is planned to be added. But even that reduced number of reactors will be hard to build, environmental campaigners say.

The scheme of locations for energy facilities until 2020 was approved by the Russian government in 2008. Environmental groups organised protests on the day of approval in more than 20 cities, because the plan included an increased number of nuclear and coal plants, which would increase the risks for public health and the environment. Campaigners also protested because the government excluded environmental groups from the decision-making process, which resulted in an anti-environmental and poor-quality document.

Reducing the number of nuclear reactors to be built in the next five years is good news but is actually just a reflection of reality. When the plans were approved in 2008, it was already clear that Russia cannot afford to build dozens of reactors during the next decade. First of all, Rosatom doesn't have enough heavy machinery capacity to produce reactors even for domestic plans, yet there are also foreign contracts in China, India and Belarus.  And the Russian nuclear industry said it will try to win more contracts in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Why did the Russian government approve a programme that cannot be implemented?

It looks like Rosatom just decided that an increased number of reactors on paper will bring them more funds from the federal budget. But now plans and funding will be reduced, which will affect both planned and under-construction reactors, Milov told the Nuclear Monitor.

The Russian 'nuclear renaissance' may well be over, even before it started. And this is good news because reactors are expensive, inefficient and dangerous, just as they were 24 years ago when Chernobyl happened.

Currently there are 31 nuclear reactors in operation in Russia producing 16% of all electricity. Several of the oldest and most dangerous reactors - such as RBMKs and VVER-440 - obtained extended licences when the planned operational lifetime was over. 

WISE Russia is the Russian office of the World Information Service on Energy. This article is reproduced from Nuclear Monitor (No. 707, April 15, 2010), which is jointly published by WISE and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS).

*Third World Resurgence No. 236, April 2010, p 2