Epress.am News from Armenia
Chair of the RA State Nuclear Safety Regulatory Committee Ashot Martirosyan, meeting with journalists in Yerevan today, compared Armenia’s Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant (MNPP) with Japan’s Fukushima.
“Our nuclear power plant has two contours, whereas there’s had one. And when the pressure in their plant went up, their reactors were forced to emit large quantities of radioactive gas to the surrounding environment. If a similar situation were to occur in our NPP, it’s not radioactive gas that will be emitted from the reactor, but from the steam generators, where there is clean water and no radioactivity,” he said, adding that Fukushima consists of boiling water reactors (BWR), which does not satisfy current demands.
According to Martirosyan, though the MNPP is equipped with more safety systems, it’s still not enough and additional work has to be carried out to increase safety levels.
The state nuclear safety committee chair said that since 1993, $120 million US overall has already been spent on safety systems and another $20 million US will be spent till all the work expected to increase the nuclear facility’s safety is completed.
Martirosyan said all issues connected with the construction of a new nuclear facility are currently frozen and they are waiting for the final results of the analysis of the Fukushima accident, after which most likely they’ll take measures to ensure the new facility meets more rigorous requirements.
“So that the new nuclear power plant meets the requirements which will be set by the international community, taking into account lessons from Fukushima,” he said.