Russia to spend over $30 billion in nuclear energy development

Russia will expend one trillion rubles ($31.3 billion) to develop its nuclear power industry through to 2015. Russia’s next-generation nuclear power plants will have an improved safety design, as well as an improved water desalination system.

“Nuclear security and nuclear power production safety should be upgraded with the aid of new technological solutions,” the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department for security and disarmament Mikhail Ulyanov, said on Wednesdayas, as quoted by Itar-Tass.

A new generation of Russian nuclear power plants will include such safety features as double reactor containment, passive heat removal systems, and specialized cooling units, he said.

According to Ulyanov, Russia has started designing the reactors that not only generate electric power, but also desalinate water. Plants with such reactors may potentially become “instruments of development for many countries,” the official believes.

Ulyanov’s comments came amid discussions on nuclear nonproliferation, and in connection with Geneva Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) talks, in which Russia is participating.

The next major review of the 1970 Treaty is scheduled for 2015, with preparatory session now taking place. The NPT treaty has been signed by 190 countries.