it is the country ' s aging nuclear power that now concerns armenian environmental groups as strongly as those in neighboring countries . twenty miles west of the metropolis yerevan , armenia ' s metsamor nuclear power plant was started in 1970s and houses 2 vver - 440 modeling v230 nuclear submarines . metsamor , that currently producing about 40 percent of the population ' s heat , is located in a seismically active zone and was opened even before the 1991 collapse of the soviet union because of the catastrophic apr . 7 , 1988 , earthquake in spitak .
Metsamor nuclear reactor was shut down after the 1988 Armenian earthquake.