Tweet
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
The Jamestown Foundation
Aug 8 2005
ARMENIAN NUCLEAR PLANT TO FUNCTION FOR ANOTHER DECADE
By Emil Danielyan
Monday, August 8, 2005
Armenia appears to have decided to keep its vital nuclear power
station at Metsamor operational for another decade, despite
persisting Western concerns about the safety of the Soviet-built
facility. The authorities in Yerevan, reluctant to set a date for the
plant's inevitable closure until recently, have deferred the decision
over the past few months.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei, ascertained their intentions during a
recent visit to Yerevan. "I think the Armenian authorities would like
to continue to operate the reactor for around ten years," El Baradei
said after talks with President Robert Kocharian and other senior
Armenian officials on July 28.
This will hardly please the United States and especially the European
Union. They have for years been pushing for a quick decommissioning
of Metsamor, saying that it is located in a seismically active region
and that its sole operating reactor is inherently flawed. But the
United States and the EU seem to have no option other than continuing
to work with Yerevan in further boosting the plant's safety during
its final years of operation. They are also clearly conscious of the
fact that it meets as much as 40% of Armenia's energy needs.
Built 35 kilometers west of Yerevan in 1977, the nuclear plant was
promptly shut down by Soviet authorities following the December 1988
earthquake that devastated much of northern Armenia. Metsamor's
closure was hardly felt until the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the outbreak of wars in Karabakh and elsewhere in the South Caucasus.
Those events plunged Armenia into a crippling energy crisis that
forced its first post-communist government to reactivate one of the
plant's two reactors in 1995. The move, coupled with a radical reform
of the Armenian energy sector, not only ended the power shortages but
also enabled the landlocked, resource-poor country to export to some
of its neighbors.
The West opposed Metsamor's reactivation from the outset, but
eventually had to come to terms with it. The Americans and Europeans
have each spent tens of millions of dollars on measures to improve
the plant's operational safety over the past decade. In return for
the large-scale assistance, the administration of Armenia's former
president Levon Ter-Petrosian reportedly promised to decommission it
in 2004. However, Kocharian never felt bound by that pledge and his
government insists that Metsamor is safe enough to continue its
operations.
Kocharian told El Baradei that his administration is committed to
further improving safety standards at Metsamor. The Vienna-based IAEA
has regularly inspected the plant and has not reported serious
violations so far. El Baradei commended the Armenian authorities for
their "good" cooperation with the UN's nuclear watchdog.
Armenian energy officials say Metsamor's VVER-440 light-water reactor
is more advanced than any of the RBMK-1000 reactors of the Chernobyl
nuclear station that exploded in 1986. Their European counterparts,
however, believe VVER-440 is one of the most dangerous facilities of
its kind in the world. The European Commission said in a report last
March that the closure of all Soviet-built nuclear facilities remains
"a key EU objective."
The Armenian government may have coped with Western pressure well,
but it clearly cannot avoid setting a date for the nuclear plant's
closure anymore. Deputy Energy Minister Areg Galstian told
journalists on June 23 that the government is already preparing for
the start of the decommissioning process, which he said would be
complete before 2016. The process promises to be very costly.
According to Galstian, its first stage alone requires $44 million
worth of expenditures. That includes the construction of a second
storage site for nuclear waste.
Yerevan hopes that Western donors will foot most of the
multimillion-dollar bill. It has contended all along that Armenia
cannot afford to halt the Metsamor reactor before developing
alternative sources of power generation. Yet it appears that the
problem is not so much the availability of those sources as their
production costs. Thermal power plants already account for 40% of
electricity production in Armenia and can substantially increase
their output at any moment. The problem is that the electricity
generated by them is much more expensive than nuclear energy.
The Armenian authorities borrowed $150 million from the Japanese
development agency last March for a complete reconstruction of an old
thermal plant in Yerevan. Its production costs are due to fall
dramatically as a result. The authorities are also looking for a
foreign investor to complete the protracted construction of a new
gas-powered plant in the central town of Hrazdan. The two facilities
are expected to be the main recipients of Iranian natural gas that
will be delivered to Armenia through a pipeline currently under
construction.
The pipeline is a key component of a 20-year energy sector
development plan that the Armenian government approved on June 23.
The plan also envisages the construction of new hydroelectric
stations across the country.
The government's decisions on the issue are also bound to be
influenced by the fact that Metsamor's finances are managed by
Russia's state-owned power monopoly, Unified Energy Systems, in
accordance with a 2003 swap agreement that settled the plant's $40
million debt to Russian nuclear fuel suppliers. The deal enabled
Metsamor to balance its books and secure fresh fuel deliveries. It
remains to be seen at what cost.
(Hayastani Hanrapetutyun, July 29; Statement by the Armenian
president's press service, July 28; RFE/RL Armenia Report, July 28,
March 28; Haykakan Zhamanak, June 24)
The Jamestown Foundation
Aug 8 2005
ARMENIAN NUCLEAR PLANT TO FUNCTION FOR ANOTHER DECADE
By Emil Danielyan
Monday, August 8, 2005
Armenia appears to have decided to keep its vital nuclear power
station at Metsamor operational for another decade, despite
persisting Western concerns about the safety of the Soviet-built
facility. The authorities in Yerevan, reluctant to set a date for the
plant's inevitable closure until recently, have deferred the decision
over the past few months.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei, ascertained their intentions during a
recent visit to Yerevan. "I think the Armenian authorities would like
to continue to operate the reactor for around ten years," El Baradei
said after talks with President Robert Kocharian and other senior
Armenian officials on July 28.
This will hardly please the United States and especially the European
Union. They have for years been pushing for a quick decommissioning
of Metsamor, saying that it is located in a seismically active region
and that its sole operating reactor is inherently flawed. But the
United States and the EU seem to have no option other than continuing
to work with Yerevan in further boosting the plant's safety during
its final years of operation. They are also clearly conscious of the
fact that it meets as much as 40% of Armenia's energy needs.
Built 35 kilometers west of Yerevan in 1977, the nuclear plant was
promptly shut down by Soviet authorities following the December 1988
earthquake that devastated much of northern Armenia. Metsamor's
closure was hardly felt until the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the outbreak of wars in Karabakh and elsewhere in the South Caucasus.
Those events plunged Armenia into a crippling energy crisis that
forced its first post-communist government to reactivate one of the
plant's two reactors in 1995. The move, coupled with a radical reform
of the Armenian energy sector, not only ended the power shortages but
also enabled the landlocked, resource-poor country to export to some
of its neighbors.
The West opposed Metsamor's reactivation from the outset, but
eventually had to come to terms with it. The Americans and Europeans
have each spent tens of millions of dollars on measures to improve
the plant's operational safety over the past decade. In return for
the large-scale assistance, the administration of Armenia's former
president Levon Ter-Petrosian reportedly promised to decommission it
in 2004. However, Kocharian never felt bound by that pledge and his
government insists that Metsamor is safe enough to continue its
operations.
Kocharian told El Baradei that his administration is committed to
further improving safety standards at Metsamor. The Vienna-based IAEA
has regularly inspected the plant and has not reported serious
violations so far. El Baradei commended the Armenian authorities for
their "good" cooperation with the UN's nuclear watchdog.
Armenian energy officials say Metsamor's VVER-440 light-water reactor
is more advanced than any of the RBMK-1000 reactors of the Chernobyl
nuclear station that exploded in 1986. Their European counterparts,
however, believe VVER-440 is one of the most dangerous facilities of
its kind in the world. The European Commission said in a report last
March that the closure of all Soviet-built nuclear facilities remains
"a key EU objective."
The Armenian government may have coped with Western pressure well,
but it clearly cannot avoid setting a date for the nuclear plant's
closure anymore. Deputy Energy Minister Areg Galstian told
journalists on June 23 that the government is already preparing for
the start of the decommissioning process, which he said would be
complete before 2016. The process promises to be very costly.
According to Galstian, its first stage alone requires $44 million
worth of expenditures. That includes the construction of a second
storage site for nuclear waste.
Yerevan hopes that Western donors will foot most of the
multimillion-dollar bill. It has contended all along that Armenia
cannot afford to halt the Metsamor reactor before developing
alternative sources of power generation. Yet it appears that the
problem is not so much the availability of those sources as their
production costs. Thermal power plants already account for 40% of
electricity production in Armenia and can substantially increase
their output at any moment. The problem is that the electricity
generated by them is much more expensive than nuclear energy.
The Armenian authorities borrowed $150 million from the Japanese
development agency last March for a complete reconstruction of an old
thermal plant in Yerevan. Its production costs are due to fall
dramatically as a result. The authorities are also looking for a
foreign investor to complete the protracted construction of a new
gas-powered plant in the central town of Hrazdan. The two facilities
are expected to be the main recipients of Iranian natural gas that
will be delivered to Armenia through a pipeline currently under
construction.
The pipeline is a key component of a 20-year energy sector
development plan that the Armenian government approved on June 23.
The plan also envisages the construction of new hydroelectric
stations across the country.
The government's decisions on the issue are also bound to be
influenced by the fact that Metsamor's finances are managed by
Russia's state-owned power monopoly, Unified Energy Systems, in
accordance with a 2003 swap agreement that settled the plant's $40
million debt to Russian nuclear fuel suppliers. The deal enabled
Metsamor to balance its books and secure fresh fuel deliveries. It
remains to be seen at what cost.
(Hayastani Hanrapetutyun, July 29; Statement by the Armenian
president's press service, July 28; RFE/RL Armenia Report, July 28,
March 28; Haykakan Zhamanak, June 24)