Rosatom to help Armenia eliminate chemical waste at Nairit plant

YEREVAN, December 18. /ARKA/. Rosatom (Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation) is ready to start a project it has designed to eliminate chemical waste at Nairit enterprise in Yerevan, which was once the largest producer of synthetic rubber in the Soviet Union, Russian news agency Tass reported.

Andrei Lebedev, head of a Rosatom department in charge of environmental projects, was quoted by Tass as saying that the department will start the project once it receives the Armenian side's accord.

Lebedev said that during his visit to Yerevan, Alexei Likhachev, Rosatom CEO, handed over to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan an analytical report on the results of the extensive work carried out in a short period of time.

He said that Russian specialists not only made an inventory of those wastes, which were accumulated on the territory of the former chemical plant, but also outlined various proposals for the development of the site after bringing it to a safe condition.

One of the flagships of the chemical industry of the USSR, Nairit was ia monopolist in synthetic rubber production. In 1989, under pressure from the environmental movement, Nairit was shut down and fell into decay.

A few years later the government of the already independent Armenia decided to re-launch it, but the markets were already lost.  Over the past decades the enterprise had changed hands and accumulated huge debts; from 2010 it began to stand idle and bankruptcy proceedings were initiated. Nairit was declared bankrupt by a court in Yerevan in 2016 because of its failure to pay electricity bills totaling 1.24 billion drams. --0--