The first meeting of the headquarters for the small-scale nuclear power plant (SSNPP) project took place at the future construction site on Wednesday, the press service of the Uzbek Atomic Energy Agency said.
The director of the Atomic Energy Agency, Azim Akhmedkhadzhaev, and the First Deputy General Director of the Russian state corporation Rosatom, Andrei Petrov oversaw the signing of the Minutes of meeting on the entry into force of the contract for a six-reactor small-scale nuclear power plant, signed on May 27.
The document was signed by the director of the Nuclear Power Plant Construction Management Company of the Atomic Energy Agency, Otabek Amanov, and the director of for the nuclear power plants projects in Central Asia at Atomstroyexport, Pavel Bezrukov.
The delegation inspected the territory where work on erecting of the infrastructure of the future nuclear power plant will commence in the fall (previously it was reported about plans to carry out priority work in the summer).
The headquarters identified the priority tasks within the framework of the contract, which “will allow work to begin on the construction site within the scheduled time frame - to begin the construction of a construction camp and all the necessary infrastructure.”
The delegation also met with the governor of the Jizzakh province, Ergash Saliev.
The nuclear power plant project contract was entered into on May 27 between the NPP Construction Management Company and Atomstroyexport (the engineering division of Rosatom) during the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Tashkent.
While, a MoM was signed on amending the intergovernmental agreement on cooperation for the nuclear power plant project in Uzbekistan dated September 7, 2018.
Rosatom will be the general contractor for the construction of the plant, and Uzbek companies will also be involved in the construction.
The CEO of Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev said that the commissioning of the plant is planned “stage by stage, module by module” from 2029 to 2033. The small-scale nuclear power plant will have water-cooled nuclear reactors RITM-200N, which were used in nuclear icebreakers.
According to him, the project will be implemented with a large share of localization in Uzbekistan. “Financing from Uzbekistan, the issue of a state (Russian) loan is not on the table,” he said.
The first reactor of a small-scale nuclear power plant is planned to be launched in five years. The cost of the project is confidential information and is not subject to disclosure, the Uzatom agency said. The facility will be located next to Lake Tuzkan in the Farish district of the Jizzakh province, where the location of a large nuclear power plant was initially considered.
