ARMENIA SET TO BUILD NEW NUCLEAR PLANT BEFORE CLOSING OLD ONE – MINISTER
ArmInfo Agency, Armenia
Oct 3 2007
Yerevan, 3 October: The issue of constructing a new nuclear power plant
in Armenia is more topical than that of closing down the current one,
Armenian Minister of Energy Armen Movsisyan told Arminfo on 3 October.
He said that currently the Armenian government focuses its attention
on fund-raising to establish alternative power capacities. We will
think about closing down the old nuclear power plant after we build
a new one, said the minister. In this connection, the Armenian
government is not yet considering the Euroatom’s recent suggestion
to provide Armenia a preferential loan of 200m euro for closing down
the currently operating nuclear power plant, said Movsisyan.
The resources of exploitation of the operating second energy block of
the Armenian nuclear power plant will run out in 2016. Before that the
Armenian government intends to build a new modern nuclear power plant
with capacity of 1000 MWt with the required budget of 2bn dollars,
according to estimates. The technical and economic assessment of the
new nuclear plant is currently being prepared.
Russia, USA and the IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency]
are providing technical and consulting support to Armenia concerning
this issue.