Rosatom intends fully to recover costs for stalled Finland project, ready to sue - media

MOSCOW. July 5 (Interfax) - The Russian state corporation Rosatom expects to recover all its costs relating to the Hanhikivi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) project in Finland after the latter walked away from the construction contract, and is ready to apply for international arbitration, Rosatom's corporate publication "Strana Rosatom" (Rosatom Land) reported, citing its chief Alexei Likhachyov.

"Only one project - the Hanhikivi NPP in Finland - has been stopped. The situation is legally contestable, and we will turn to an international arbitration in order to recover all our expenditures in full. There was a precedent: the Bulgarian Belene [NPP] project for the stoppage of which we were awarded over 600 million euro by an international arbitration court," Likhachyov said at the company's Director Day on Tuesday.

Earlier, during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, he said that Rosatom would "use all contractual obligations on dispute resolution and international law accordingly."

In early May, Finnish energy corporation Fennovoima, 34%-owned by Rosatom, unilaterally broke a contract on the construction of the Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant with Rosatom's affiliate RAOS Voima Oy. Later, Fennovioma revoked the building license citing considerable project delays in recent years and the risks exacerbated by Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

The contract to build the Belene NPP in Bulgaria was signed in 2006, but in 2012 Bulgaria decided to abandon it. By then Russian enterprises had made the first equipment kit for Belene and had assembled a reactor. Rosatom sued the customer - Bulgaria's national electricity company NEK - for one billion euro. The Bulgarian side was preparing to challenge the suit, claiming that during the agreement period no contracts had been signed for the manufacture of reactors for the NPP.

In June 2016, an arbitration court under the International Chamber of Commerce in Geneva ruled in favor of Atomstroyexport and ordered NEK to pay 620 million euro in damages. The sum was later revised down to 601.6 million euro and paid by NEK by December 9, 2016.