ST. PETERSBURG — Russia plans to offer investors as much as a 49 percent stake in the country's first new nuclear power plant since Soviet times, as the government seeks to upgrade the country's power supply, Rosatom said Thursday.

Rosatom held a foundation-laying ceremony Thursday for the plant in the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea, the state corporation said in a statement on its web site.

Rosatom, which plans to spend more than 11.6 billion rubles ($386 million) building the Baltic plant in the next two years, will offer investors long-term supply contracts as well as a 49 percent stake in the plant, the statement said. The company said it was holding talks with "several European companies, including from Germany," which would be the first foreign investment in a Russian nuclear power plant.

(Bloomberg)