Valery Menshikov, member of the Board of the Center for Ecological Policy of Russia

— United nuclear power complex is optimal management and economy system

On Jan 19 2007 the State Duma approved the third reading of the bill “On the Peculiarities of the Management of the Property and Shares of Organizations Using Nuclear Energy and On Relevant Changes to Some Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation,” called “tunnel law.” The key goal of the bill is to form a united nuclear power industry structure, which would be able to effectively function under market economy conditions. For this purpose, separate links of the technological chain of the nuclear power industry will be united into a single production complex.
 
“By implementing the bill, we are creating a single scheme, which will be optimal in terms of both management and economy,” says the co-director of the radiation and nuclear safety program of  the Center for Ecological Policy of Russia and the International Social-Ecological Union, member of the Board of the Center for Ecological Policy of Russia Valery Menshikov.

The bill has opponents. Particularly, some people say that the nuclear power sector will be privatized. “You should just read the law to see that this is not true. The nuclear power sector will constitute a complex fully controlled by the state. At the same time, the uranium extraction can be carried out by partly private big corporations. The point is that the state should retain its control over the industry and nuclear power production,” says Menshikov.