On March 14th–15th, 2017, Nikolay Spassky, Deputy CEO of State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM, and Alexey Ferapontov, Deputy Head of the Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service of Russia (Rostekhnadzor), together with Alexander Ignatov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the People's Republic of Bangladesh, held in Dhaka the next round of consultations with the Bangladeshi side on a range of issues related to the Rooppur nuclear power plant (NPP) construction.
By mutual agreement the preparation of the intergovernmental agreement on spent fuel management of the Rooppur NPP was made a central issue of the negotiations. The draft agreement was approved and initialed. The parties have agreed that they will prepare the agreement for signing as soon as possible.
The parties also coordinated their positions regarding the schedule of events related to completion of the preparatory phase contracts and the beginning of the main phase of the Rooppur NPP construction. Both sides came to a general understanding that the key objective for the coming period is to ensure the "first concrete” pouring at the power Unit 1 of the Rooppur NPP within the approved time frame. To achieve this, a special working group has been created in order to ensure current cooperation involving two regulators, the customer and the general contractor.
As part of the visit, Nikolay Spassky and Alexey Ferapontov visited the Rooppur NPP construction site where a working meeting was held. Naiyyum Choudhury, Chairman of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Regulatory Authority (BAERA), and Dr. Engr. Md Monzurul Haque, Chairman of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC), and representatives of ASE Group of Companies (a subsidiary of ROSATOM), also participated in the meeting.
The preliminary results of the scheduled work will be presented during the planned meeting of the Joint Coordination Council which is to be held in Moscow in June-July 2017.