Nikolay Ponomaryov-Stepnoy, Vice President of RRC Kurchatov Institute, academic

— It is impossible to solve the problem of stable energy supply without nuclear power engineering

On Jan 24 Federation Council approved the presidential law “On the Peculiarities of the Management of the Property and Shares of Organizations Using Nuclear Energy and On Relevant Changes to Some Legislative Acts.” The law is aimed at reforming the nuclear power complex and setting up a vertically-integrated company Atomenergoprom comprising all enterprises of the civil sector of the nuclear power industry. Vice President of the Russian Research Center “Kurchatov Institute,” academic Nikolay Ponomaryov-Steponoy comments on the adoption of the law:
 
I think that everybody working in the sphere and those who are responsible for the energy security of the country were happy when last year the President and the Government turned their faces towards the nuclear power sector and adopted the federal target program “Development of the Nuclear Power Industry of Russia in 2007–2010 and Till 2015.” In my opinion, this is a very serious achievement: many experts say that without nuclear power engineering it will be impossible to solve the problem of stable energy supply in the near future — till 2030. Nuclear energy is an essential and inevitable component of this problem.

In order to solve this task, we should effectively organize and manage our work. The former management standards would hardly allow us to solve grandiose tasks, like building two nuclear power units a year.

Compared with other energy sources, the nuclear power industry is unique: it is “compact” and can be held in “one hand.”

The law allows us to do it, i.e. it creates a single complex that will be responsible for this task. The complex will comprise the whole industrial cycle: uranium extraction, all elements of the nuclear fuel production cycle; design and construction of reactors and NPPs, NPP operation and electricity generation; and, finally, an extremely hard task — treatment of nuclear waste.

In my opinion, centralized management will allow us to quickly organize the whole system and to set it working as a whole.