Agenda: the draft federal targeted programme Ensuring Nuclear and Radiation Safety in 2016–2020 and up to 2030; the draft federal law On Ratifying Articles of Association of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Excerpts from Dmitry Medvedev’s opening remarks:
Government meeting
Let’s start with the draft federal targeted programme for ensuring nuclear and radiation safety until 2020 and up to 2030.
This is a key aspect for ensuring national growth and security. More and more nuclear facilities are continuing to expend their service life. Russia has been a nuclear power for a long time, and these factors are influencing the current system for ensuring nuclear safety.
Over the next 15 years, we will have to mothball and dismantle numerous facilities and reclaim their territories. We should also expand our infrastructure for storing spent fuel from nuclear power stations, and for the processing and disposal of radioactive waste.
We also need to upgrade the system for monitoring and guaranteeing nuclear and radiation safety. Our main priority is to preserve the health of industry workers. It is our duty to prevent radiation factors from impacting people and the environment.
This federal targeted programme (FTP) has been drafted in continuation of a similar FTP, effective since 2008 and set to expire this year. We have managed to establish a well-balanced system of control at nuclear facilities and to virtually eliminate all the main risks of radiation and environmental disasters.
We have accumulated substantial experience of decommissioning research reactors, scrapping ships that carried nuclear waste, and we have made many other decisions regarding the storage of radioactive waste.
We’ll also discuss the ratification of articles of association of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, stipulating the establishment of this bank. After this document is approved, Russia will become the bank’s majority shareholder together with China and India. The bank has a statutory capital of $100 billion. Russia will contribute equal shares to its statutory capital for a period of five years. Russia’s involvement in this project will make it possible to use the bank’s assets for implementing investment projects here, primarily in the Russian Far East and Eastern Siberia. This will help strengthen relations with Asia Pacific countries, currently a highly important issue for us.
