Alexander Bevz, Executive Director of the EU-Russia Industrialists’ Roundtable

— The full launch of the 1st unit of Tianwan NPP in China is a commercial success of Russia

On Dec 9 2007 Atomstroyexport company was permitted by the National Supervisory Agency of China (NNC) to raise the capacity of the 1st unit of Tianwan NPP to 100% with electric load amounting to 1,064 MW (i.e. the Chinese energy system is getting 1.064mln KW an hour).

Executive Director of the EU-Russia Industrialists’ Roundtable Alexander Bevz has commented on the news:

This news has received big response around the world. In fact, we are ahead of the EU in almost the whole spectrum of nuclear fuel production services, but we lag behind them in safety. Of course, we cooperate with the EU on the matter and I believe that, if Russia and the EU enter into some nuclear cooperation, they will be able to successfully compete on the world market, first of all, with American companies.

At the same time, it will not be easy for us to enter the European nuclear market. Each European state has its own peculiar nuclear policy: Finland is developing nuclear power engineering, the UK is planning to build new NPPs, while Germany is going to curtail its nuclear power industry though it is also considering the possibility of prolonging the service time of their existing NPPs. I think that the EU will do its best to keep Russia off its nuclear market even though the sides are presently negotiating about trading in nuclear materials. Their nuclear companies do not work at full capacity but I think that Russia can fight for this market, especially as we have serious arguments for so doing.