OREANDA-NEWS. On June 18, 2007 a delegation of the owner of the project, the US Government, visited the construction site for this purpose. The delegation comprised representatives of Rosatom, US Department of Energy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the general contractor, Rosatomstroy, and Raytheon. The American delegates were led by US Department of Energy official Patricia Dedik, reported the press-centre of Rosatomstroy.

This is the first visit by such a representative US delegation to the Zheleznogorsk TPP site since its opening in Aug 2006. The official discussion of he results of the past year will take place in two months, but already today one can sum up the preliminary results of Rosatomstroy’s work.

Presently, the company is renovating the offsite railways, laying onsite railways, building a boiler, a 180-meter high chimney, a slag and ash removal system with a two-section dump, a water supply and cooling system with a spray pond, starting the construction of a fuel supply system and the reconstruction of the auxiliary building.

Shortly, the company will start building a heat network for the 4th community of Zheleznogorsk.
After visiting the site, the delegates met with the vice governors of Krasnoyarsk region Anatoly Tikhonov and Nikolay Glushkov.

The American partners summed up the results of the cooperation, highly appreciated the support of the local authorities and commended Rosatomstroy for its good work. Ms. Dedik thanked Rosatomstroy for excellent work. She said that the contractors had done a great job.

"We are very much pleased to hear such compliments", Glushkov said.

Tikhonov added: "We pay great attention to this project. The governor of the region personally controls its implementation. The construction is complying with the schedule — the general contractor, Rosatomstroy, is successfully coping with its task. We are grateful to the US side for their timely financing".

After the meeting the Russian-US delegation visited the school N2 of Sonsovy Bor, which conducted a contest of children’s safety poster this spring. The drawings turned out so interesting that the sides decided to publish a special calendar in Russia and English and to show the works to US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman.

The ZhTPP project is part of the Russian-US intergovernmental agreement on the elimination of weapons grade plutonium production, which says that the existing ADE-2 reactor can be stopped only when Sosnovy Bor TPP is ready.

During the meeting with the schoolchildren, Rosatomstroy’s PR executive Yelena Velder said that the ZhTPP project would help to improve understanding among nations, which is the key to peace and safety on the globe.

The children asked lots of questions. They wanted to know about their peers in Moscow and Washington: what they do, how they spend their holidays, what books they read.

The children asked the Americans how they imagined Siberia before the visit.

Ms. Dedik said that she could not even imagine that Siberia was so beautiful. "They told me that you even grow water-melons. This is amazing. But your key asset is your people. They are strong, beautiful, talented. Perhaps, many years after I will see the works by some well-known Russian painter and say proudly: 'It was that boy from Sosnovy Bor who took part in a safety poster contest".