(Reuters) – Russia’s Rosatom expects its 2022 exports growth at 15%, while its foreign order portfolio has remained stable at $200 billion, the state nuclear energy company’s Chief Executive Officer Alexei Likhachev told the Russian Izvestia newspaper.
“[Exports will grow] by about 15%. But one must understand that this is far from the limit,” Izvestia quoted Likhachev as saying in remarks published early on Monday.
The growth comes, among others, from contracts already being implemented, supplies of fuel, enriched uranium products, as well as conversion services, Likhachev said. It also includes the construction of 23 nuclear power units at projects in a dozen countries, he added.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine 10 months ago, Rosatom has avoided Western sanctions, although the United States was weighing them earlier this year.
“Even in such conditions, our portfolio of foreign orders for 10 years ahead is stable at the level of $200 billion,” Likhachev said. “This year we will overcome a psychologically important barrier in the supply of our products abroad in the amount of $10 billion.”
Rosatom has been in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency about a safe zone around Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which Russian troops captured in March.
In August, Rosatom and its Finnish partner Fennovoima have filed claims for billions of dollars in damages from each other over Fennovoima’s decision to cancel a planned nuclear power plant in Finland.
The Fennovoima consortium, in which Russia’s state-owned Rosatom has a 34% minority holding, in May terminated a contract for Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant in the cape of Hanhikivi in northwest Finland, citing delays and then increased risks resulting from the war in Ukraine.
Earlier in December, Rosatom said that the Dispute Review Board (DRB), an arbitration panel that settles international contract disputes, ruled the Finnish termination to be “illegal”.
Fennovoima said on its website on Dec. 15 that the Board’s recommendation was neither final nor binding and that the consortium had filed a notice of “dissatisfaction” with the Board.
(Reporting in Melbourne by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)