MOSCOW, September 26. /TASS/. Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom and its Finnish partners expect to receive a license to build the Hanhikivi-1 nuclear power plant (NPP) in Finland in 2019.

"The project of building the Hanhikivi-1 NPP is now at the stage of licensing. The construction license is being obtained by the contractor and the future NPP operator Fennovoima. The Finnish partners in the project, Fennovoima, name 2019 as a target for obtaining the license to build the NPP, and the Russian partners share this opinion," according to materials prepared in the run-up to the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Finland on September 26.

Earlier, the Rusatom Energy International, a company that manages Rosatom’s foreign NPP projects, said it expected to obtain the license in 2018, although their Finnish partners have been clear that the license should be expected no earlier than 2019.

Currently, various preparatory works are under way at the site of the future NPP.

The contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Finland’s Hanhikivi peninsula, in the municipality of Pyhajoki was signed by Russia’s Rusatom Overseas (incorporated in the state nuclear corporation Rosatom) and Finland’s Fennovoima in December 2013. A ten-year fuel contract was signed with Russia’s TVEL (also incorporated in Rosatom) in the same month.

In the summer of 2015, Fennovoima lodged a license application with the Finnish authorities for the construction of Hanhikivi-1 after it acquired a more than 60% share in the project, one of the application’s terms.

It was originally planned that the licensing process would be over in 2018 but in 2017 Fennovoima said it would most probably be done only in 2019. The plant, equipped with one Russian-designed VVER-1200 pressurized water reactor with a capacity of 1200 MW, is expected to be commissioned in 2024.