Russia will be laying the foundation of three nuclear power plant units per year starting from 2016, and four starting from 2018-2020, head of Federal Atomic Energy Agency Sergei Kiriyenko said on Friday.

"Starting from 2016 we will be annually laying the foundation of three units, and we will think about the fourth starting from 2018-2020," Kiriyenko was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying after a Friday meeting of the agency board chaired by First Vice-Premier Sergei Ivanov.

The industry will speed up the construction of nuclear power plants without governmental funding, Kiriyenko said. "We plan to enlarge the construction of nuclear power plant units at our own expense," he said, referring to the related program.

The Russian atomic energy industry will become self-supporting and build new units with its own funds by 2015, Ivanov said.

The government will allocate 674 billion rubles (26 billion U.S. dollars) from the federal budget for the industry before 2015, which will make it self-supporting, he said.

Source: Xinhua