Russia OKs nuclear merger

MOSCOW, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- The Russian government will own 100 percent of the shares of a new Russian nuclear energy holding.

The creation of the state holding company Atomprom was approved by the Russian parliament Wednesday at the first reading of the draft law. The joint-stock venture will merge existing companies in the nuclear energy sector like Rosatom and Atomstroiexport.

"Today, two-thirds of nuclear energy sector enterprises are join-stock companies," said Sergey Kiriyenko, head of Russian atomic agency Rosatom.

The comments were reported by the Itar-Tass news agency.

The goal of Atomprom is to be able to compete in the world market with growing multinational companies like Westinghouse-Toshiba and Areva-Siemens. Kiriyenko said Russia's individual companies have been unable to be successful on their own since moving from dealing with big companies in separate countries to transnational companies.

"To compete with these companies, the Russian nuclear sector should be represented by a big, vertically integrated company capable of representing Russian interests," Kiriyenko said.

Atomstroiexport has three nuclear power stations in the works but Kiriyenko said once the companies are merged Atomprom will be able to significantly increase the number of Russian reactors and stations.

Only three reactors were opened over the last 15 years but under the new system, two are expected to be built every year.

"The issue of nationalization has not been discussed," Kiriyenko said. He also projected that privatization would not be an issue, as its illegal.