DHAKA: The portfolio of Russia’s state nuclear power corporation- ROSATOM’s foreign contracts reached $101.4 billion last year. Head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko informed the Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Moscow on Tuesday, May 6, 2015.

Kiriyenko said, “We finished the year with $101.4 billion in the book of foreign orders, i.e. we grew by $34 billion. It was not an easy task amid the attempts of restrictions and political pressure.”

"The reliability indicators of Russian nuclear power plants are about twice better than that of our colleagues both in Europe and the United States. At the same time, Rosatom has set the task of cutting costs at least by 10% annually," Kiriyenko added.

He further informed that ROSATOM has been able to reduce the cost price of Uranium fuel considerably. Practicing of a transparent purchase system helped ROSATOM to save US$ 654 million during the year 2014 and the total of US$ 4.8 billion since its introduction.

Talking about Russia’s domestic nuclear power sector, Kirienko informed that the share of nuclear power in the country’s overall power generation rose from 15% to 17% during 2014 when civil nuclear power industry had generated a record 182 billion kW/hr.

ROSATOM presently have nuclear power projects in various countries worldwide including Bangladesh. The corporation is working on setting up two nuclear power units, each of minimum 1,000 MW capacity at Rooppur in Pabna. Main construction of the project is expected to begin in 2016 and the first unit to be commissioned in 2021.

BDST: 2031 HRS, May 7, 2015
IH/AKA