Valery Shantsev, Governor of Nizhniy Novgorod

— Nizhniy Novgorod can host several NPPs

Governor of Nizhniy Novgorod region Valery Shantsev believes that the region can host several NPPs. One example is Paris: that city has 5 NPPs in its suburbs.

During the press-conference following the enlarged conference of the regional Fuel and Energy Ministry on Feb 6, Shantsev said that today Nizhniy Novgorod region produces just 43% of its demand and NPPs can solve the problem of energy shortfall there.

“We have many projects for NPP building and nuclear power industry development. Why should we sell our projects to the West? Why can’t we use them ourselves? The Rosatom management has offered us participation in the nuclear development program and we are going to discuss this possibility in the near future,” Shantsev said.

As was reported earlier, the Nizhniy Novgorod authorities first spoke about energy shortfall in the autumn 2005. In the autumn 2006 the governor of the region asked the head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko to consider the possibility of an NPP construction in the northern districts of the region. In 1980s the Soviet authorities started to build an NTPP in Nizhniy Novgorod (then Gorky). Presently, that facility bottles alcohol. Kiriyenko said that it is impossible to resume the construction there.