MOSCOW (AP) - Having shed the trauma caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Russia has launched an ambitious program of building new nuclear reactors at home and hopes to win a contract for constructing one in Finland, top nuclear officials said Friday.
"We are going to make a big surge forward after a long period of stagnation," said Oleg Sarayev, the head of the Rosenergoatom consortium in charge of Russia's nuclear power plants.
In March 2001, Russia launched its first new nuclear reactor since the Chernobyl catastrophe, at a plant in the southern Rostov region.
Rostov's 1,000-megawatt reactor is of the VVER-1000 type that uses pressurized water to cool its fuel rods instead of the less-stable graphite used in RBMK reactors, like the one that exploded at Chernobyl.
A reactor at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, at that time a part of the Soviet Union, exploded in 1986, contaminating a huge area and sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. The explosion, the world's worst nuclear accident, is believed to have eventually killed some 8,000 people.
The catastrophe caused a public backlash against nuclear power and forced Soviet and then Russian nuclear officials to shelve their plans for expanding the industry.
But with the memory of the Chernobyl disaster fading and energy shortages becoming increasingly common, regional authorities throughout Russia are welcoming the construction of new nuclear plants, which spark little in the way of public protest.
Sarayev said Friday that reactor No. 3 at the Kalinin power plant in western Russia is nearing completion, and another three reactors at the Kursk, Balakovo and Rostov power plants will follow. In a separate effort, Rosenergoatom is also modernizing the oldest of Russia's 30 existing nuclear reactors to extend their lifetime, Sarayev said.
He claimed that Russia's nuclear safety standards were tougher than in the West, and said that most Russian plants meet strict norms and regulations.
Deputy Nuclear Power Minister Valery Lebedev said that Russia was competing against companies from the United States, Germany and France to build a nuclear reactor in Finland. "There is a good chance that we will win, taking into account the fact that the Soviet Union built a nuclear reactor in Finland which is considered one of the safest in the world," Lebedev told reporters.
Russia has also signed contracts to build nuclear power plants in China, India and Iran.
The dlrs 800 million deal with Tehran has vexed the United States, which fears it could help Iran build atomic weapons. But Russia has brushed off U.S. concerns, saying Iran won't acquire weapons material from the project.