He said the safety of the Russian nuclear power plants is one of the three best in the world and they operated in the proper way. The only thing, which raises concerns, is the accumulation of the spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste at some nuclear power plants. This can lead to the situation when the reactor storage pools are filled up and cannot accommodate all spent nuclear fuel from the reactor during reloading. Zheleznogorsk Chemical Combine received licence for the new dry storage facility, but the construction works have not begun in full scale. If such tempo is kept, some reactors can face serious problems in 2007, Malyshev added.

Malyshev also mentioned about the increase of the technological incidents in the operation of the research reactors (26 in 2003, 31 in 2004), marine reactors (21 in 2003, 26 in 2004), nuclear sites (30 in 2003, 39 in 2004). The nuclear power plants, however, experienced fewer incidents last year (51 in 2003, 46 in 2004), MK-Novosti reported.