Valentin Mezhevich, fist vice chairman of Federation Council Committee on Natural Monopolies

– In two years the management of Rosatom have done their best to restore lost positions in Europe and to conquer new markets

To appoint Sergey Kiriyenko as the head of Rosatom State Corporation is a logical and right decision. In the last two years he and his team have reformed our nuclear industry, consolidated its assets and paved the way for our nuclear companies into new markets.

One of the key achievements of the Kiriyenko team is that they have started to solve the ecological problems inherited from the Soviet Union. The new team has made a number of serious decisions to clean (both literally and metaphorically) our territory from radioactive spots.

One example is the resolution of the problem of Muslumovo, a village in Chelyabinsk region that suffered from the ecologically unsafe activities of Mayak plant in the 1940s-1950s. The residents of Muslumovo are believed to receive an effective radiation dose of 1 mSv a year, which is more than allowed in Russia. In the Soviet times nobody cared for those people.

Kiriyenko got things moving. In 2006 Rosatom allocated 600mln RUR (Chelyabinsk region government allocated 450mln RUR) for resettling the residents of Muslumovo to new places. The government is buying the 741 households of Muslmumovo for 1,000,000 RUR per house. The householders can spend the money to buy new houses in whatever place they like. As of Nov 1 2007, 25% of the old houses had been demolished. 

Presently, Russia is making outstanding achievements on the world nuclear market. We have successfully completed the construction of the 1st and 2nd units of Tianwan NPP in China. The project was based of state-of-art technologies. For example, the general contractor of the project, Atomstroyexport OJSC, introduced a unique “trap” for preventing release of and cooling down melted reactor core. As a result, we have built one of the best and safest nuclear power plants in the world. The Chinese perfectly understand and appreciate this and have already asked us to build two more units at Tianwan. We have made contracts in other countries, too: in Bulgaria we are building Belene NPP, in India — Kudankulam NPP; we have won the right to supply fuel to Paks NPP (Hungary). In the last two years, the management of Rosatom have made their best to restore our lost positions in Europe and to conquer new markets.

To remind, President of Russia Vladimir Putin is going to appoint Sergey Kiriyenko as head of Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation as he believes that Kiriyenko is the best candidate for the post of the head of the corporation.