OREANDA-NEWS. January 22, 2009. The chairman of the Supervisory Board of Basic Element company Oleg Deripaska believes that the use of nuclear energy will help to solve global energy problems.

“If we are serious about meeting the challenges of energy security and climate change, we cannot allow the ambitions of doubling nuclear capacity by 2030, expanding it to new markets and developing new types of reactors to fade,” Desipaska says in his “A nuclear response to our energy problems” article in Financial Times.

“What we also know is that nuclear power emits virtually no greenhouse gases. The complete nuclear power chain – including the mining of uranium, shipping fuel, constructing plants and managing waste – produces about the same amount of carbon dioxide as the full life-cycle emissions of wind and solar power. The current 440 nuclear power reactors worldwide would increase the annual amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere by up to 600m tonnes if the power had to be generated by fossil fuels.”

“The new generation of lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactors that we expect to come on stream in Russia after 2015 will make nuclear even more competitive, delivering safe, reliable and emission-free energy at the lowest possible cost.”

As was reported earlier, Russian Machines OJSC (100% subsidiary of Basic Element) and Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corproatioon are planning to design a reactor of fourth generation — lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactor.

The capacity of the reactor will be 100MW. The designing of the reactor may take 5–7 years with as much as USD 1bln to be invested in its at the initial stage.

At the same time, Deripaska points out that “nuclear power, of course, should not be viewed as the only answer. We need to invest right across the board so we can obtain more energy from other low-carbon sources. But we have to be realistic about what these can offer. No renewable source yet has the capacity to generate the amounts of power needed to replace large fossil fuel plants.”