Sergey Kirienko, head of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency of Russia
Photo: Андрей Махонин
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U.S. Starts Canceling Uranium Duties
The U.S. Department of Commerce and Rosatom, the Russian Atomic Energy Agency, have signed draft changes to the agreement on canceling antidumping investigation of Russian uranium deliveries to the United States. Confirmation of the amendments will permit Russia to deliver uranium to the U.S. by direct agreement beginning in 2011. The Russia will be able to provide uranium enrichment services to U.S. power companies and gradually increase deliveries so that it will have a definite market share by 2013, when the HEU-LEU (highly enriched uranium – low-enriched uranium) agreement expires.
The antidumping investigation that resulted in a 112-percent duty being imposed on Russian uranium was begun in 1991, when cheap Russian uranium caused prices on the world market to collapse. In 1994, Russia and the U.S. signed the HEU-LEU agreement, under which highly-enriched uranium from Russian nuclear weapons was processed into low-enriched uranium for delivery to the U.S. Forty-four percent of U.S. atomic energy plants run on HEU-LEU fuel.
The antidumping duty practically prohibits U.S. uranium imports from Russia outside HEU-LEU. All uranium imported under the agreement is bought by the intermediary United States Enrichment Corp. at a fixed price. Tekhsnabexport won a suit against the Department of Commerce in U.S. international trade court on September 26 to have the duty declared illegal. The court rules that Russian low-enriched uranium had to be freed of the duty within tow months. The American side requested and received a one-month extension of that deadline, but did not appeal the decision.
Now the U.S. Enrichment Corp. has begun construction of its own enrichment plant, which will be completed by 2012. It has stated the intention of appealing the cancellation of the duty on Russian uranium to the U.S. Supreme Court. A more immediate obstacle to the uranium trade between the two countries is the absence of a agreement on the peaceful use of atomic energy. That agreement may be confirmed by the U.S. Congress in January, however.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 06, 2007
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