Pashinyan discusses Rosatom's VVER-1000 offer for new Armenian reactor

Rosatom's offer and a promised decision

Nikol Pashinyan met Alexei Likhachev, the head of Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom, to discuss extending the life of the second unit at Metsamor and Russian proposals for a new unit in Armenia, the prime minister's office said, World Nuclear News reported.

Armenia is negotiating with the United States, Russia, France, China and South Korea over the replacement and is seeking the best offer. No supplier has been chosen.

Strana Rosatom, the company's in-house publication, reported that Likhachev said most of the work planned up to 2031 for the extension to 2036 is already complete. He offered a unit based on the VVER-1000 design, the model Rosatom is also building in India and Iran. Armenia is also studying whether to run the existing reactor from 2036 to 2046. Likhachev said that is technically feasible but the investment could reach hundreds of millions of dollars for safety and automation upgrades, reactor re-annealing and expanding and repairing spent nuclear fuel storage facilities. Pashinyan said the final decision would be "of an exclusively economic nature", taking account of price, quality, safety, deadlines and guarantees.

Moscow has pitched the project before. Mikhail Kalugin of the Russian Foreign Ministry said a high-capacity Rosatom plant could cover Armenia's needs for decades, "if not a century", and hold down tariffs for consumers.

One reactor, a third of the power

Metsamor's only working reactor is a VVER unit that started operating in 1980. World Nuclear News gives its capacity as 376 MWe; Azatutyun puts it at 400 megawatts and says it generates roughly a third of Armenia's electricity.

Its life has been extended twice, after capital repairs mostly carried out by Russian specialists, and it is due to be decommissioned in 2036, Azatutyun reports. World Nuclear News says the site's first unit is now being decommissioned. Yerevan says it is extending the plant's operation to 2036 while it plans a replacement.

The neighbours' pressure

During a visit to Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan exclave, Ilham Aliyev told Azerbaijani state television that the plant is "obsolete and poses a danger to the entire region". The Azerbaijani president said Armenia would face a serious energy crisis if the plant closed, and offered Azerbaijani electricity carried on a US-run transit corridor, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).

Russia pushed back on 22 August. Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, called reports of threats to the plant an attempt to split Russian-Armenian cooperation in the energy sector. She said the IAEA has confirmed the plant's reliability and that closing a domestic nuclear station only increases a country's dependence on others for power. Azerbaijan says it is ready to supply electricity to Armenia after the closure, and Turkey has also long demanded that Metsamor shut.

Modular plans and the VVER offer

Armenia has said the new plant will be modular, while Rosatom's proposal is for a unit based on the VVER-1000 design.

Arman Yeghoyan, a Civil Contract MP, told a briefing that 2036 is the maximum permissible period of physical operation, set by documents rather than by any government. He said the Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement, signed in 2017, notes that the plant should be replaced with equivalent capacity.

Government critics dismiss the replacement plans as a smokescreen for ending the country's reliance on nuclear energy.

What happens next

Pashinyan told parliament that within a year his government "must finally decide with whom and which nuclear power plant we are going to build". He did not rule out Metsamor staying in operation after 2036.