Baku, Azerbaijan, June 29
By Fakhri Vakilov- Trend:
First Deputy Energy Minister and Director General of Uzbekistan's Uzatom AgencyJurabek Mirzamakhmudov told why the Uzbek side chose Rosatom to build the first nuclear power plant (NPP) in the country, Trend reports via Uzbek media.
“The choice of a partner was not a spontaneous decision or for the sake of politics. The choice was made based on the economic interests of the state. The countries that are building nuclear power plants today are Russia, the USA, China, France and South Korea. We studied the companies of these countries in detail,” he said.
He stated that the American Westinghouse was bankrupt and only now, with the support of the US government, has renewed building the reactor in the state of Georgia, but has already gone beyond the budget.
Moreover, the very procedure of concluding an intergovernmental agreement with the United States for the construction of a nuclear power plant by an American company outside the country’s territory takes from three to five years.
“Chinese companies are newcomers; they themselves attract Rosatom and other companies. At the time of our decision, the French did not have the reference station technology 3+, which is the latest technology that meets all the IAEA safety requirements formed after the Fukushima events,” he said.
In his words, Korea also builds nuclear power plants in the UAE and at home. They built them in time, but the commissioning of stations has not yet been carried out. This is due to problems with training.
"Rosatom is a company that builds modern nuclear power plants, it’s about 34-36 reactors, their number is constantly growing. They build in all countries of the world - this is Asia (India and Bangladesh), and Europe. Their technology meets European requirements, that is, they have passed all safety requirements of the European Commission," Mirzamakhmudov added.
He went on to say, "They are building NPP in Hungary and in Finland. They passed all the safety requirements of the Finnish regulator, which is the strongest regulator in the world."
The Uzbek side, according to him, also consulted with the experts of the IAEA, and they confirmed the reliability of the Rosatom technology, its safety and modernity.
Mirzamakhmudov noted that the preparation and coordination of an intergovernmental agreement with the Russian side took only six months. In a year and a half since the adoption of the decision, Uzatom and Rosatom have already reached the first engineering survey contract.
Furthermore, Uzatom attracted White & Case (USA) for legal issues, the Czech UJV Group for technical issues, and Worley, which will be engaged in engineering works within the project.
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