Fifty-five Years Have Passed Since The Commissioning In Moscow Of The First On Eurasian Continent Power Plant's Energy Block

Tuesday will mark 55 years since the commissioning in Moscow of the first on the Eurasian continent atomic power plant's energy block. It was designed and built by Soviet scientists on the outskirts of the USSR capital, in a surprisingly short period of time -- 3.5 years, in one of the buildings of the Nuclear Power Engineering Institute. For the first time, academician Igor Kurchatov and the institute's staffers carried out a self-supporting nuclear chain reaction. They used for this purpose the uranium-graphite experimental reactor. "When Joseph Stalin knew about this success of Russian scientists, he was so agitated that could not say a word for several minutes," the scientists recall. Then he instructed them to make the reactor a super secret facility. RIA Novosti was told on December 24th at the Russian scientific centre "Kurchatovsky Institut" that "the creation in the USSR of the first atomic power plant (APP) turned the world technical progress to a fundamentally new way, and the second half of the 20th century was marked by the development of nuclear power engineering in Russia." A total of 10 APPs are operating in our country at present, and they generate more than 15 percent of the general electric power production. In 10-15 years this figure is expected to double, and in the country's north-eastern regions the APPs already now generate up to 40 percent of the overall electric power production, stressed Russian nuclear power engineers.