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U.S.-Russian Uranium Talks Continue
// Atomic Energy
The Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) and Techsnabexport began negotiations today with a delegation from the U.S. Department of Commerce headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary Joseph Spetrini on removing barriers to Russian uranium supplies to the United States. The negotiations are expected to be lengthy, but the Russian are determined to have antidumping duties abolished, wither through negotiations or through court action. The U.S. began its antidumping investigation of Russian uranium in 1991.
After the signing in February 1993 of the High-Enriched Uranium Transparency Agreement on downblending high-enriched uranium from dismantled nuclear warheads into low-enriched uranium to fuel atomic energy plants, the U.S. has purchased Russian uranium only through that program and only through the United States Enrichment Corp., a U.S. state-owned company privatized in 1998 that supplies 44 percent of the U.S. market. All other uranium is subject to a 115-percent duty.
Both American atomic plant operators and Techsnabexport, Russia's largest atomic fuel exporter, are now confronting USEC. Techsnabexport has already filed suit in the U.S. to have the antidumping duties on low-enriched uranium removed. The current talks are intended to reach a settlement on that issue. The price of low-enriched uranium on the American market has risen from $25 per kilogram in 2000 to $110 per kg. now. Russia had earned over $5.3 billion on its High-Enriched Uranium Transparency Agreement by August 2005, and that figure is expected to rise to $7.6 billion by the time the agreement ends in 2013. Techsnabexport holds that it can earn much more than $2.3 billion in the U.S. in the next seven years. The U.S. Department of Commerce refused to discuss removing the duties on June 6, and the U.S. International Trade Commission turned down its opportunity to do so on July 18.
Russia has a stronger argument now than it did when it filed suit in the U.S. Court of International Trade in June. The European company Eurodif won an analogical case last year arguing that antidumping duties give U.S. companies an advantage. Both Eurodif and Techsnabexport state that they sell enrichment services in the U.S., not uranium and, furthermore, that the rules for the service market in energy is not identical to those for the sales market. Techsnabexport intends to use the Eurodif precedent in its arguments, but experts say that the case will extend to 2008 in any case. The talks that began today may last even longer. Techsnabexport is threatening to make American purchasers pay the duties on uranium and Rosatom has the authority to stop supplies to USEC altogether. Therefore, the talks will be delicate.
Alena Kornysheva
All the Article in Russian as of July 25, 2006
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