Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday approved a new Russian nuclear power station that has worried ecologists, with officials saying that the first stone would be laid this week.
Putin agreed to the construction of the nuclear power station in Russia's Baltic territory of Kaliningrad on the border with the European Union, the government said.
"The first stone will be laid tomorrow (Thursday)," a spokesman for Russia's nuclear energy state corporation Rosatom, Sergei Novikov, told AFP.
"This is the first project which is open to private, including foreign, capital," he said.
Talks with foreign companies on their possible participation in the project, were ongoing, Novikov said, but declined to be more specific.
Citing a decree from February 20, the statement posted on the government website said the proposal by Rosatom had been agreed upon with the country's energy, natural resources and economics ministries.
The first block of the power station, to be built in the Kaliningrad region's Nemansky district, is set to become operational in 2016 and the second one in 2018.
The site is just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Lithuania's border and has local residents and ecologists worried.
A survey by the Kaliningrad Express newspaper showed that 43 percent of residents opposed the nuclear plant, while 26 percent said they supported it but had safety concerns.
Rosatom, which wants to supply Kaliningrad and also surrounding European Union nations, has said that the project is fully safe.
"The project, its configuration is in absolute agreement with the European standards," Novikov said.
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