MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. The private ownership of US nuclear power plants prevents the industry from meeting current challenges in nuclear power engineering, Alexey Likhachev, CEO of Russian state nuclear power corporation Rosatom, said in an interview with Expert magazine.

"The world has an example of private ownership of nuclear plants: the United States. And it demonstrates that such an [exclusively private sector] approach is incapable of meeting the contemporary challenges and tasks facing the nuclear power sector," Likhachev said.

In the nuclear energy executive’s view, what’s necessary is an approach that encourages the consolidation of private and public efforts, which is virtually impossible to achieve without government support for developing the nuclear power sector. This pertains primarily to process upgrades on a scale that private investments simply cannot ensure, he added.