OREANDA-NEWS. May 19, 2009. Rosatom is planning to increase its labor efficiency by 4.5 times, Director General of Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation Sergey Kiriyenko said during his meeting with President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev said that during his recent meeting with representatives of the Government and the Presidential Administration he pointed to the lack of progress in Russia’s transition to innovative development.

“I regret to say that nothing good is happening in this direction. So, I am going to address this problem myself,” Medvedev said.

“Since your industry is one of the most innovative I would like to know what you are doing to modernize it and not to lose our advantage in this field.”

“Labor efficiency is crucial for modernization and, here, we have set quite tough parameters. Our goal is to increase labor efficiency by 4.5 times,” Kiriyenko said.

“We have studied the situation in this field and have found out that we are far ahead the world’s leading companies in the size of personnel and production areas.”

Medvedev asked Kiriyenko about the salary fund in the nuclear industry. Kiriyenko said that it was quite big as Russian nuclear companies had much more employees than their western counterparts. However, the average salary was much lower than in the West.

Kiriyenko said that one of the leading companies of Russia’s nuclear power industry, TVEL Corporation, had decided to make their remuneration dependent on the implementation of their key tasks.

“As a result their labor productivity is growing 15% a year.”

Kiriyenko said that the key tasks of TVEL were to increase its income and export despite the crisis. “TVEL is systematically optimizing its personnel and has shown steady growth in labor productivity since 2005. This year it has grown by 2.5 times. The average salary is increasing while the salary fund is decreasing. In the last years it has decreased by 20% while the salary has grown from 17,000 RUR to 33,000 RUR and is supposed to be raised to 40,000 RUR. The quality is improving while the costs are dropping,” Kiriyenko said.

He pointed out that last year Rosatom managed to regain lost markets. “Last year we went back to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Finland.

One of the key priorities is the construction of new reactors. Presently, Russia is building seven reactors: the 2nd unit is supposed to be launched in 2009, the 4th unit of Kalinin NPP in 2011.
 
Then Rosatom is planning to launch the new units of Leningrad, Novovoronezh and Beloyarsk NPPs. At the latter plant we will commission the world’s first fast breeder reactor with a capacity of 800MW.

Besides, Rosatom continues to active work at 5 construction sites in India, Bulgaria and ran and is expecting victory at the tender for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Turkey.