MOSCOW, October 3 (RIA Novosti) - Expenses to repair Russia's largest hydropower plant wrecked in August have been approved at 21.6 billion rubles ($717 mln) for 2009-2010, the Russian energy minister said on Saturday.
The August 17 disaster at the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant on Siberia's Yenisei River destroyed a turbine hall and killed 75 people.
"The budget for work to repair the Sayno-Shushenskaya hydropower plant has been approved at 5.6 billion rubles ($186 mln) in 2009 and 16 billion rubles ($531 mln) in 2010," Sergei Shmatko said.
Shmatko said although no federal funds were stipulated in the 2009-2010 budget of RusHydro, the plant owner, various sources of funding, including an additional issue and borrowings, were being considered.
"I believe the project to repair the Sayano-Shushenskaya station is very economically promising," the minister said, adding that the final decision to choose a bank would be made on the market basis.
He said a feasibility study for the plant's repair was being finalized, with the preliminary expenses estimated at some 40 billion rubles ($1.3 bln).
The Russian energy minister said the country's largest energy equipment producer Power Machines had been chosen as equipment supplier for the repair. However, he said, other companies, including foreign ones, could deliver secondary equipment.
"I believe it would be useful to involve foreign companies using such large dams or equipment producers to find the most objective cause of what happened," Shmatko said.
