Rosatom's investment has increased over the past six years by about 20%, while the share of its funding from the state budget has decreased from 40% to 24%, he told Putin. "The corporation invests its money both in new products and, obviously, in the construction of nuclear power plants," he said.

"We have reached all the main construction targets both in Russia and outside the country for the previous year [and] for the first time in modern Russia, we've conducted two first criticality programmes, including for unit 4 of the Rostov NPP. With your involvement, in January we started increasing its capacity to the nominal output. Everything is on schedule," he said.

"Another first criticality procedure was conducted on unit 1 of Leningrad NPP II. It is very important to note that this will be the second Generation III+ unit in operation in Russia, meeting all the post-Fukushima safety requirements, including both active and passive safety systems.

"It is the second energy unit in Russia of this type. In February 2017, the unit 6 of the Novovoronezh NPP was put into commercial operation - a real breakthrough in global nuclear energy construction," he said.

Thanks to the addition of Novovoronezh 6, Rosatom last year set a record in electricity output by exceeding 200 terawatt hours and reaching 203 TWh, he said. The Soviet record - which included Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian and Lithuanian nuclear power plants - was 212 TWh.

"We are moving quickly towards breaking that record," Likhachov said.

"It is also very important to note that the corporation is developing not only high-capacity facilities but a whole number of small and medium-capacity sources. This year, we are launching our 'first-born', the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant," he said, adding that first criticality procedures are scheduled to take place this year.

All these projects are helping Rosatom "maintain global leadership", he said. "Despite fierce competition, we are building more units abroad than all the other countries put together."

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