– The Company is three years old. Could you please tell us about your key projects? What have you achieved?

– Our project portfolio is nearly 460 million US dollars. A major part of this amount accrues to the Armenian NPP life extension and modernization project totaling 300 million US dollars. Another major project is maintenance and repair of the Bushehr NPP in Iran – about 40 million. Bulgaria’s Kozloduy NPP is another plant where we work on the service life extension and modernization of the generators at Units 5 and 6. One more major customer is the Tianwan NPP in China. Orders come from Central and Eastern Europe, too.

– You have signed a set of agreements with Armenia recently. What are they about?

– They are documents needed to start fully fledged work at the Armenian NPP. They include, first of all, two intergovernmental agreements – one of them provides for the extension of the power station service life, and the other makes available loans and a grant. Other documents comprise a framework agreement, a project management contract, a due diligence contract and an equipment modernization and supply contract signed between Rusatom Service and the Armenian NPP.

– Could you give more details – what stages does the project consist of? How is the customer work organized?

– The project consists of two stages. The first stage, technical due diligence, will take 18 months and include 16 individual programs. The first-stage deliverable will be a service life extension, or NPP modernization, program. The second stage will be modernization as such. Safety improvement is definitely our priority here. As for the customer, we get along perfectly well. We have formed two, Armenian and Russian teams and appointed people responsible for particular areas of work. We realize the nuclear plant importance for Armenia very well and do our best to complete due diligence as soon as possible. In their turn, the Armenian Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and NPP representatives give us immediate feedback on our proposals.

– What about other projects of the company?

– Other customers from Asia (Iran and China) and Europe (Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, etc.) find their own sources of finance, but this is an interesting question by and large. It is clear that our customers might have financial difficulties. We are discussing this question with financial institutions, mostly with development banks, to integrate financial solutions into our service offering as this will make our services more attractive.

– Are banks really interested in such projects?

– Nuclear projects are capital intensive, even if it is only a service life extension project. By the way, an NPP modernization project pays back faster than construction of a new power plant. I have no doubt that life extension, modernization or capacity expansion projects are attractive for banks, and existing nuclear stations are high-quality borrowers.

– Is it difficult to work in Iran? Unlike Armenia’s, the country’s nuclear industry is at its development stage.

– It is true. Armenia has long been a country with nuclear power and has nuclear professionals and qualified engineers. Most of them studied in Russia, and many worked at nuclear power plants in the former Soviet republics. Iran is an emerging nuclear country, but they go ahead and study hard. We see that requirements for us as contractors become more stringent. On the other hand, the Iranians want to do a larger part of work on their own, and need guidance and support. I am speaking about spare parts and components, for example. Our Iranian partners aim at planning and doing NPP maintenance and repairs independently.

– Are there any portfolio targets set by Rosatom for the next years?

– We would like to approach 500 million US dollars this year. But we realize that customers are ready to pay as much money as they have, no more. That is why we are looking for new solutions to finance NPP modernization projects.

– Could you give examples of any contracts you have won on your own?

– These are mostly supplies of spare parts and special tools or modernization of process control systems. We win over Central European and Ukrainian companies, largely due to our optimal price/quality ratio, reference products and solutions offered by Rosatom.

– How do you monitor potential orders? Where do you find potential customers and who does it?

– We have a tender monitoring system in place. As soon as the customer launches a tender, we start preparing our bid. To do it in time, we work closely with other Rosatom Group companies. This is a task of our Technical Department and the Project Management Department.

– Will you provide maintenance services to non-Russian designed nuclear stations?

– Russian-designed stations are in our focus. This is a market where Rosatom has a long track record and should have a dominant position. No doubt that we should expand into the market of Western-designed nuclear stations, but we should be down to earth. No one welcomes us there. And there is a strong prejudice against us as competitors. Equally, Rosatom would not welcome foreign companies on the service market for Russian-designed reactors, but we try to find cooperation opportunities. We might give our competitors an opportunity to jointly work at our reactors in exchange for the work at Western-designed stations. Or we could win customers by offering unique solutions, which other market players do not have. We continue improving our product portfolio by working closely with other industry companies to expand our market offering. Other Rosatom Group companies select products which seem to be the most interesting. Unique products are really in plenty, for example, a reactor vessel annealing technology recovering original steel properties. It is not a new technology – it was used in the USSR for VVER-440 reactors. Now Rosenergoatom and Kurchatov Institute work on its application for VVER-1000. We have already discussed the prospects with our French colleagues. They demonstrate interest as the recovery of reactor vessel steel properties is very important, particularly for service life extension projects. It is possible to replace almost anything – a turbine, a generator or a steam plant, but it is impossible to replace a reactor vessel.