ArmInfo. Rosatom State Corporation is working with Armenia on the Nairit project. This was announced by the corporation's CEO, Alexey Likhachev, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"But the trends of the last year and a half are expanding to foreign sites in Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, and we are working with Armenian partners on the Nairit project. I hope we can also provide assistance. In other words, industrial waste management regulations, a digital platform for the market and regulators, and, most importantly, domestic technologies have been essentially re-created," Likhachev said.
Furthermore, Likhachev noted, work continues on the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant. "We can't eliminate Armenia because we are extending the plant." "The management will decide which path to take, but we are present there," Likhachev said.
To carry out the environmental rehabilitation of the plant, amendments and additions have been made to the 2026 state budget of Armenia, according to which it is planned to allocate 574 million drams to the "Radioactive Waste Management" program, of which 57 million drams are for the first half of 2026, and 516 million drams for the first nine months of this year (calculated at an exchange rate of 1 US dollar = 382.65 drams).
Earlier in an interview with a correspondent. ArmInfo The late academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, academician-secretary of the Department of Chemistry and Science and Earth, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Honored Scientist of the Republic of Armenia Levon Tavadyan noted that proposals were received from the Russian side to solve the existing problem, but the problem was never resolved. The most important thing is that the initiative of Russian colleagues offers solutions related to all waste, except for the problem of disposal of ethynol varnish, of which about 1,200 tons have accumulated. This mixture is extremely dangerous due to its explosive nature. The academician emphasized that during the period when the plant was built, it was erected outside of Yerevan, and today the enterprise is part of the capital of Armenia, and the presence of such hazardous substances can lead to unpredictable consequences. "The shelf life of ethynol varnish, which is heterogeneous in composition and distribution, is several times longer than the established norm. "The substances are stored in rusty tanks and pose an extreme danger to those around them. A fire could result in a detonation, but simply burning them is impossible, just as removing the waste is impossible due to the deterioration of the containers," said Levon Tavadyan. He emphasized that the Armenian government has proposed that the National Academy of Sciences, and in particular the Department of Chemistry and Geosciences, study this issue. "A special commission was created to study the problem, and serious discussions were held with experts at the Problems Council under the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences and the Scientific Council on Seismology, Earthquake-Resistant Construction, and Natural and Man-Made Disasters, during which issues of decontamination of these substances and their disposal were considered," the academician noted.
It should be noted that the Nairit plant, built in the 1930s, was one of the six largest global producers of synthetic rubber, accounting for 10% of the global market. The plant is currently bankrupt and has been idle for a long time.
