IAEA director general to appraise prospects of Armenian nuclear power plant

YEREVAN, July 27 (RIA Novosti, Gamlet Matevosyan) - Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei arrived in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, Wednesday.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said he was scheduled to meet with Armenian leaders and visit Armenia's nuclear power plant. The plant was put into commission in 1980 and closed in March 1989 for political reasons. The plant was reopened in November 1995 following the power crisis in the independent republic.

The plant's second unit has a first generation Russian reactor and produces 30%-40% of the country's power. Experts say the plant can function until 2016.

In September 2003, the plant came under the trust management of INTER RAO UES, a subsidiary of Rosenergoatom and Russia's RAO UES electricity monopoly.

The European Union has insisted on the plant's conservation and is ready to allocate 100 million euros for this purpose. However, Armenian experts say that some 1 billion euros are needed to create alternative energy sources in Armenia.