Inter RAO interested in buying Siberian Chemical Combine's power plant
TOMSK. Dec 17 (Interfax) - Russian energy company Inter RAO UES is considering buying the Severskaya Combined Heat and Power Plant (CHPP), which is currently a structural subdivision of OJSC Siberian Chemical Combine (SKhK), which is in turn part of Russian nuclear fuel company OJSC TVEL, SKhK said in a press release.
"At the moment, the regional authority and Inter RAO UES are expressing interest in acquiring the Severskaya CHPP. The option of the facility remaining within the Rosatom structure is also not being ruled out," it said.
On December 13, an SKhK working group convened for the first time to discuss raising the efficiency of the company's CHPP. Those who participated in the gathering included TVEL's Senior Vice President for Finance, Economics and Corporate Management Andrei Golovlev, General Director of SKhK Sergei Tochilin, Deputy Governor of the Tomsk region for Industry and the Fuel and Energy Complex Leonid Reznikov, Chief of the Administration of Seversk Igor Volkov and representatives of Inter RAO and OJSC TGK-11 .
"At the meeting, the reasons behind the inefficiency of the CHPP, whose losses totaled 850 million rubles in 2011, were considered. In 2012, after a series of measures were carried out to raise the efficiency of the plant, losses were reduced to 250 million rubles," the press release said.
In 2013, SKhK plans to spend over 300 million rubles on the modernization of its CHPP.
The working group will meet again at the start of next year.
As reported, TVEL is looking into merging its power generating facilities into a single structure.
SKhK's CHPP has electrical capacity of 699 MW and heat capacity of 1,870 Gcal. Over the next two to three years, Russian State Nuclear Energy Company Rosatom will invest 4-4.5 billion rubles to finish reconstructing the CHPP. Earlier, at the end of 2009, it finished reconstructing SKhK's CHPP for $285 million as part of a U.S.-Russian intergovernmental agreement to stop producing weapons plutonium at SKhK's two existing nuclear reactors. As a result, the CHPP's installed electrical capacity rose 60% to 654 MW, and its installed heat capacity jumped 80% to 1,760 Gcal.
Siberian Chemical Combine manages five nuclear material enrichment factories and a combined heat and power plant. It is one of four Russian uranium enrichment combines included in TVEL, which is part of Rosatom. By 2014-2015, all of Russia's uranium conversion capacities are to be concentrated at the site of SKhK.