MOSCOW () -- Work is to resume on a nuclear power plant that will utilize liquid radioactive wastes from a military facility that made plutonium for the first Soviet atomic bombs, officials said Wednesday.


First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, on a visit to the town of Ozersk in the southern Urals, said the government will spend 15 billion rubles ($3 million) this year to resume the plant's construction there, Itar-Tass reported.


The plant will be situated near the Mayak plant, also known as Chelyabinsk-65. The new power plant will utilize Mayak's liquid radioactive wastes from ponds in the Techa River, Soskovets was reported as saying.