Armenia Energy

Armenian solar energy enthusiasts claim that Mikhail Gorbachev has promised to underwrite production of solar systems in nuclear-power-addicted Armenia.

Diehard supporters of homemade solar energy solutions vowed on October 11 to go ahead with their plans to set up a solar panel factory in the Armenian town of Spitak, the Russian news agency Regnum reported. Gorbachev will back them if the Armenian government will not, they claimed.

Vaan Amazaspian, energy researcher and the project's key backer, said that the green energy charity Green Cross, of which the ex-Soviet leader is the founding president, pledged $8 million for the ambitious plan. Green Cross supports sustainable energy and conflict-resolution initiatives. Reports of the investment surfaced in August, but the Geneva-based NGO has not yet confirmed its alleged plans to sponsor the plant.

Amazaspian indicated that the Armenian government, for its part, had been less than encouraging about the idea of taking Spitak solar. Rather than to solar energy, the Armenian government has long given priority to upgrading, or rather replacing, the Soviet-built nuclear plant Metsamor, the country’s main energy provider.

With nuclear reactors dangerously boiling in earthquake-affected Japan, earthquake-prone Armenia is looking at Metsamor -- the Caucasus’ only, rusting nuclear power plant -- and asking "Can this happen here?"

The ripple effect of the Japan earthquake was registered as far away as in Armenia and Georgia. Mini-quakes and a mud volcano eruption that recently took place in Azerbaijan were unrelated to Japan's earthquake, however, local seismic activity watchers said.

Armenia’s nuclear officials have been quick to assure concerned citizens that Fukushima will not repeat itself in Metsamor. “Such a situation is impossible here, even in theory,” said Ashot Martirosian, head of Armenia’s State Committee on Nuclear Safety. Claiming that the plant can withstand an earthquake as powerful as Gyumri's 6.9-magnitude 1988 quake, he argued that Metsamor’s cooling system is safer than the one in Fukushima.

Former Metsamor Director Suren Azatian, however, said that Metsamor does not have the nuclear leak prevention shield that coats Fukushima reactors.
 
Plans are underway to replace the plant with a more modern facility.   

The State Department hopes to gauge US private interest in funding Armenia’s new nuclear power station in the place of rusting, Soviet-era Metsamor.


“ We are interested in having U.S. companies participate [in the nuclear project,] if possible," Daniel Rosenblum, the State Department's Coordinator of US Assistance to Europe and Eurasia, told a November 16 press conference, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

Russia has already promised to pitch in about a fifth of the estimated $5 billion construction cost for the new power station. In 2007, Washington sponsored a feasibility study for the project.

The old plant, which provides some 40 percent of Armenia’s electricity needs, was slated for decommissioning in 2017 over safety concerns, but the Armenian government may push that date back until the replacement is in place.


The government-created Armenian-Russian Mining Company plans to start uranium mining in the country’s southeast to produce fuel for the plant. But the plans are facing heated opposition from local residents and environmentalists.