Nuclear Heat And Power Plants Projected For Russia's North

It is planned to build nuclear heat and power facilities in 33 populated places in Russia's Northern regions. The project will materialise before 2010. This was said on Thursday by Bulat Nigmatulin, Russian first deputy minister for nuclear power. He spoke in Moscow at an international conference on problems of developing small nuclear power engineering. Nigmatulin stressed that the development of this kind of power is the only efficient and profitable decision for regions in the Extreme North. "We plan to build there small nuclear power plants of different types -- floating or in the form of small reactors carried aboard nuclear submarines or iceboats", said Nigmatulin. Such facilities are truly safe, he said. "The Kursk nuclear submarine provides a proof. Wrecked and greatly damaged in its forward compartment, the submarine preserved its nuclear reactor in serviceable condition and radioactivity around it did not exceed the norm", he said. The conference was attended by specialists from the Ministry for Nuclear Power, Rosenergoatom concern, Russian Nuclear Society, OAO Small Power Engineering company, industrial and research organisations of Russia, Japan, France and the United States.