Rosatom plans to approve strategic development program next year

MOSCOW. Oct 15 (Interfax) - Rosatom state nuclear energy corporation expects to present its strategic development program up to 2045 next year, company CEO Alexei Likhachev said at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

"We agreed that we would approve a strategic program next year, the year of the 80th anniversary of the nuclear industry, our strategic development program up to 2045, until the centenary, for another 20 years," he said.

Plans for developing nuclear generation in the country are currently reflected in the draft general plan for placing electric power facilities. According to the document, new nuclear generation with capacity of about 28.5 GW is planned to be introduced by 2042. It is assumed that power units with VVER-TOI and VVER-S reactors will be introduced where high unit capacity is impossible. Moreover, the general plan mentions low- and medium-capacity technologies, as well as "developing closed nuclear cycle technologies with the introduction of RBN-type power units."

There are plans to decommission 10.37 GW of nuclear capacity of RBMK-1000, VVER-440, VVER-1000, EGP-6, BN-600 units. The main volume of decommissioning will be in 2031-2042 at 8.34 GW, and another 2 gigawatts will be in 2025-2030.

The document indicates that the corresponding forecast was developed based on data from Rosatom.

The share of nuclear power plants in the structure of generating capacities of Russia totaled 11.69% in 2023 according to the draft general plan, and the figure is proposed to increase to 15.3% by 2042. It is assumed that in this case, the share of thermal power plants will decrease from 65.62% to 56.55%, and the share of hydroelectric power plants will be 20.65%. Renewable energy sources should be up to 7.5% in the generation structure.