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Russia’s Uranium Supplies to U.S. Restricted till 2020
After a few years of negotiations, Russian and the United States have finally signed the long-awaited intergovernmental agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The document opens the U.S. market for Russia’s uranium and nuclear facilities. At the same time, the restrictions on nuclear fuel supplies will remain in force till 2020, and people in Russia’s engineering community don’t view this agreement particularly advantageous.
General Director of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko and the U.S. Ambassador to Russia Williams Burns inked the civilian nuclear cooperation pact May 6, 2008. The agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which discussion started far back in 2006, will legalize the respective economic relations of countries, paving way for Russia’s companies to the U.S. market of nuclear-power engineering.
But Russia’s manufacturers of nuclear equipment expect no breakthrough. “New contracts are always welcome,” said people in Power Machines that supplies turbines to nuclear plants and in Atomenergoprom that controls the supplier of boiler equipment, specifying that they haven’t deliberated on potential equipment deliveries to the U.S. market. Off-the-record, representatives of both companies strongly doubt the chances of supplying Russia’s equipment to the U.S. power plants (although they may cooperate with the U.S. companies in some other countries), pointing out that the new agreement is primarily vital for nuclear fuel deliveries.
But the document imposes a number of restrictions exactly on uranium deliveries. Russia, for instance, will be able to independently launch its nuclear fuel on the U.S. market no sooner than in three years and the size of the first deliveries won’t be significant - just 16.6 tons of uranium in 2011, which won’t suffice even for a single loading of 1,000MW nuclear plant.
The sanctioned amount will widen to 485 tons in 2013. Given that the United States annually consumes roughly 20,000 tons of uranium, Russia’s supplies will cover no more than 2.5 percent of the market. Russia will be able to meet 20 percent of the U.S. requirements in 2014 (with no new reactors taken into account) and the restrictions will be finally lifted in 2020.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 07, 2008
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