Senior U.S. and Armenian officials discussed the Armenian government’s declared plans for a new nuclear plant on Friday three weeks after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian signaled readiness to let Russia build it.
Pashinian repeatedly said until this month that his government made a strategic decision to replace Armenia’s aging nuclear plant at Metsamor with a facility equipped with small modular reactors (SMRs), a new and relatively untested technology offered by the United States. He and U.S. Vice President JD Vance finalized a U.S.-Armenian agreement on nuclear energy cooperation when they met in Yerevan in February.
“American technology is going to be coming to this country,” Vance announced after the talks.
Two days after meeting with the head of the head of Russia’s Rosatom nuclear corporation, Alexei Likhachev, Pashinian indicated on October 1 that he is no longer interested in SMRs and thinks Armenia needs a much more powerful reactor proposed by the Russians. He told Likhachev that Yerevan will decide “soon” which foreign country or company should implement its ambitious nuclear project.
The Rosatom chief spoke last week of a “signal that our proposal to construct a gigawatt-class VVER-1000 [power-generating] unit within the shortest possible timeframe has been received extremely positively” in Yerevan.
The issue was high on the agenda of U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Shawna Wilson’s talks with Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Infrastructures and Territorial Administration Narek Apitonian.
According to an official Armenian readout of the talks, Apitonian pointed to the appointment earlier this week of a new acting director of an Armenian state company tasked with building the new nuclear facility. He was reported to express hope that “this appointment will give new impetus to the process of constructing a new nuclear power unit, including the work being carried out with relevant U.S. companies.”
It was not clear whether those companies might still be contracted by the Armenian government for the plant’s construction. The U.S. Embassy in Yerevan did not immediately issue a statement on Wilson’s meeting with Apitonian.
Pashinian’s apparent change of heart on the issue was construed by local observers as an attempt to placate Moscow ahead of his planned crunch talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the future of Russian-Armenian relations. The Armenian premier again hardened his tone against the Kremlin on Thursday following the release of a Eurasian Economic Union report recommending Armenia’s suspension from the Russian-led trade bloc. Such a development would almost certainly lead to more Russian economic sanctions against Yerevan.