Valery Yazev, Chairman of State Duma Committee on Energy, Transport and Communication

– We advocate large-scale development of nuclear power industry in the Central-European region of the country

We believe that the fuel-energy balance of the country must be urgently and drastically improved, i.e. we must reduce the consumption of gas for the production of electricity and increase the coal and nuclear components. In Kursk, Moscow region and Cenral-European part of Russia, coal production is problematic, so, we believe that there we should develop nuclear power engineering. We have proved that our position is right, that this is the only right way and we will seek relevant official decision.

I hope that the United Russia party, who has 600 votes in the parliament, will support us. We are shortly to adopt the budget for the next three years and we want to include these projects therein so that we don’t need to revise the budget after approval.

Economic Development Ministry supports the development of nuclear power engineering. At first, they said that Kursk’s RBMK reactor is dangerous as it is a Chernobyl-type reactor. However, I would like to note that this particular RBMK is much safer than its Chernobyl predecessor. It is absolutely safe and can work on another type of nuclear fuel — fuel we have in abundance in our country. So, I think we’ll find supporters in the Government.

I hope that after Mar 31 the 5th unit of Kursk NPP will be included in the General Scheme for Nuclear Facilities Deployment till 2010.