“Everything is definitely looking optimistic with the Kursk NPP – it will be built,” he told reporters.

Kirienko said that the date for the beginning of construction has not yet been set, but it has been decided that the construction of the second plant will be a substitute for the current aging plant, which has been plagued with low level incidents for the past decade.

“At the Kursk NPP-2 we will erect a contemporary energy block of the NPP-2006 project, and I think that there would be sense in building the Kursk NPP-2 not at the moment the Kursk NPP 1 is taken out of service, but at a time when it can cover the energy deficit of the central regions of Russia,” he said, according to RIA Novosti.