Armenian NPP to start mothballing program
Interfax
June 10 2004
Yerevan. (Interfax) – The Armenian Nuclear Power Plant will have
a program ready to mothball the station by the end of 2004, the
country’s Trade and Economic Development Minister Karen Jshmartain
said at a press conference on Tuesday.
The topic was discussed during the fifth meeting of the EU-Armenia
Cooperation Committee in Brussels on June 4, he said.
The meeting decided to set up a working group of power engineers on
closing the nuclear power plant. The working group should review all
the financial and technical aspects of mothballing the station and
present their own program, Jshmartain said.
The European Union has not set any concrete timeframe for closing the
NPP without replacing its capacity with other sources. A project to
build an Iran-Armenia gas pipeline was discussed as an alternative
to the NPP, but the volume of gas would not be enough to replace the
energy capacity of the NPP, Jshmartain said.
The committee also discussed a project put forth by Armenia to build
a new NPP in Armenia to replace the old one.
The EU confirmed that it is ready to extend Armenia 100 million
euros to close the NPP and replace its capacity, although Armenian
specialists think that at least $1 billion is needed for this.
The Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, which has two reactors with a total
capacity of 815 megawatts, was closed in 1988 due to political and
economic reasons. The NPP’s second reactor was restarted at a capacity
of 407.5 megawatts in 1995.
ZAO Inter RAO EES, a subsidiary of Russia’s Unified Energy System,
and Armenia signed a contract in September 2003 to hand over trust
management of the NPP to Inter RAO EES.
The Armenian NPP generated 1.9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity
in 2003, or 36% of the total generation of electricity in Armenia.
The first meeting of the EU-Armenia Cooperation Committee took place in
2000 in Brussels. The committee was set up by a partnership agreement
signed on April 22, 1996.