Russia seeks slice of our yellowcake Email Print Normal font Large font Gavin Evans, Wellington October 18, 2006
Other related coverage JAMES NORMAN and JIM GREEN Sun, wind better options while Australian uranium can fuel regional tensions Advertisement AdvertisementTECHSNABEXPORT, Russia's state-owned nuclear fuel maker, will meet BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto executives this week as part of an attempt to import uranium from Australia.
The company, known as Tenex, supplies reactor operators worldwide, many of which buy Australian uranium. The lack of an export agreement between Australia and Russia barred those customers from having the material enriched and converted to fuel in Russia, Tenex director-general Vladimir Smirnov said yesterday.
"It will be a problem and a cost in the future if restrictions remain" on supplies from Australia, he said. "We hope that in the near future it will be successfully resolved."
Tenex is seeking new supplies of uranium to help fuel new power plants Russia plans to build by 2015, and to supply customers it has in Europe, Japan and South Korea. Australia has 40 per cent of the world's uranium and is seeking to tap rising demand for it. An agreement was signed in April to allow exports to China.
Rio Tinto-controlled Energy Resources of Australia and BHP Billiton run Australia's two largest uranium mines.
Executives from Tenex and other Russian nuclear agencies would also meet with officials from the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office and a Government taskforce on nuclear energy, General Smirnov said.
Supplies from BHP's Olympic Dam mine in South Australia, the world's largest uranium ore body, were fully contracted, Roger Higgins, chief operating officer of the company's Australian base metals unit, said.
A proposed $5 billion expansion, which could triple output to 15,000 tonnes a year, would not free up additional supplies for China, Russia, Japan, Korea, France or other potential buyers before late 2013, he said.
Australia needed to complete its arrangements with potential customer-countries before ERA would start talks, chief executive Harry Kenyon-Slaney said.
Increased global investment in reactors, including 10 units Russia plans to commission by 2015, risked straining supplies of fuel, General Smirnov earlier told delegates at the Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference in Sydney.
While new uranium resources were being tapped, the industry had to expand its ability to enrich uranium and convert it to fuel in a way that still prevented the technology being diverted into weapons-making, he said.
Russia, which has the world's biggest fuel fabrication capability, is restricted on where it can sell its uranium products. The 15-year-old restrictions "remain practically unchanged despite serious concerns by US and European utilities about potential shortages of enriched uranium", he said.
Consolidating enrichment at international centres would help cater to rising demand and meet concerns about weapons proliferation while also cutting costs.
"To make use of the emerging opportunities, the industry must consolidate its effort," he said. "The days of individual decision making are gone."
BLOOMBERG
CMR Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
