Rosatom looking for additional investors for SVBR-100 reactor project

MOSCOW, April 17 (Itar-Tass) - The Rosatom state corporation looks for additional financing for the project of SVBR-100 lead-bismuth fast reactors, the director general of Rosatom's Science and Innovations company, Alexander Dub, told reporters on Thursday. "The project is slowed because there are non-budget financing problems," he said. Technical substantiation for the project would be completed this year, but construction would be delayed until the financial problems were solved. The company planned to look for other partners for the implementation, he added. The lead bismuth cooled fast reactor (SVBR-100) may become the world's first fourth-generation medium-capacity commercial reactor with coolant of heavy metals and may account for 10-15 percent of the world low and medium capacity atomic energy market. It is a pilot project for Russia in the high technology atomic energy field to be implemented with a commercial partner. An engineering company was established in 2009 to carry it out. Rosatom and Irkutskenergo became its owners (50 to 50 percent). AKME Engineering is a joint company set up with equal shares of the state corporation (Rosatom) and the private energy company EvroSibEnergo belonging to En+Group (Irkutskenergo has belonged to En+Group since November 2011). The company was set up to develop and commercialize nuclear complexes with SVBR-100 reactors. Construction of a test SVBR power unit is planned for 2016, and its startup is planned for 2017. It is one of projects of the Russian presidential commission for modernization and technological development of Russia's economy in the field "New Technological Platform: Closed Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Fast Neutrons Reactors" within the federal programme New Generation Nuclear Energy Technologies for the 2010-2020 period. Learn more on itar-tass.com