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Russia, Kazakhstan plan nuclear venture |
Angarsk: Russia is piecing together a new company to own nuclear-energy assets based on a revival of Soviet-era ties with Kazakhstan and other neighboring states, officials said.
Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev, the presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan, met on Monday to discuss pooling newly formed ventures in uranium mining, enrichment, reactor construction and logistics into a trans-national holding, said Vladimir Servetnik, deputy chief executive officer of Tenex, Russia’s state-owned atomic fuel trader.
“Partners from the Soviet nuclear complex could follow,” in particular Ukraine and Uzbekistan, Servetnik said on Tuesday on the sidelines of a visit to Angarsk, site of the world’s first enrichment center.
What stake each country may have in a proposed holding company is not yet decided, he said.
Russia lost access to both uranium deposits south of its borders and to Ukraine’s reactor-turbine production after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin initiated a political rekindling of nuclear co-operation at a meeting with his Kazakh and Ukrainian counterparts in January last year. The world’s top enricher of uranium, Russia, formed four ventures with Kazakhstan, which holds world’s second-largest reserves of the radioactive metal.
The tie-ups seek to combine Russia’s under-used enrichment facilities and a shortage in uranium ore with Kazakhstan’s ambitions to build atomic reactors.
The two countries plan to sign an intergovernmental agreement on nuclear cooperation within two weeks, Nikolai Spassky, deputy head of Russia’s nuclear energy agency, said yesterday in Angarsk.
Russia plans to register by May a company like France’s Areva that offers a full cycle of nuclear services, from reactor building to fuel supply.
The new holding will operate only the four ventures with the Kazakhs and not include other Russian nuclear assets that are being organised into a separate company called Atomenergoprom, Servetnik said.
The Russian-Kazakh venture will also serve as a base for the world’s first international enrichment centre being created in Angarsk, east Siberia, next month. – Bloomberg
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