Russia's Nuclear Energy Investment

The English-language news site Russia Today is reporting that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will invest $40 billion (US) in the country's nuclear energy industry over the next seven years.

After that he [Putin] expects the industry will become self-financing.

...Prime minister Vladimir Putin says Russia's budget, boosted by high oil revenues, has enough cash to finance expansion of the country's nuclear power sector.

A terrific amount of money - more than 40 billion dollars - is to be allocated from the state budget for development of the nuclear energy sector and the nuclear industry by 2015. We’ll have to build 26 major generating units in Russia in the next 12 years - about as many as were built in the entire Soviet period.

Some financial context:
At today's exchange rate, $40B (US) = 937 billion Rubles.
937B Rubles / 7 = 134B Rubles invested per year.

According to the IMF, Russia's GDP in 2007 was $1.3 trillion (US) or 30.2 trillion Rubles. Based on 2007 GDP numbers, the Russian government's annual investment in the nuclear industry translates to .44% of the country's GDP.

And what does .44% of the 2007 US GDP look like? $61 billion.

[Edit: That $61 billion outlay would be per year, though GDP is obviously a volatile variable. The point of the number crunching was to establish a benchmark comparison: what would a like capital investment mean in the U.S.]