Nuclear keeps going11:24 24/03/2011
Russia and the United States have started talks on setting up a jointventure to enrich uranium, the head of the Russian state nuclearcorporation Rosatom said on Thursday.
The uranium enrichment facility will be built on U.S. territory with Russian technology.
"Building such a facility... is a long way away, which cannot becovered in one day, but today we started moving in that direction,"Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko said.
He said the deal was a "landmark" development in the context of therecent accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, hit by blastsand fires after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake.
"When two states, leaders of the global nuclear market, sign along-term deal in such a situation - this gives a certain answer aboutthe future development of the global nuclear energy sector," he said.
During Kiriyenko's visit, Russian state-controlled nuclear equipmentexporter Techsnabexport (Tenex), fully owned by Rosatom, signed a $2.8billion ten-year deal with USEC to supply low-enriched uranium. Underthe deal, Russia will supply USEC with 21 million separate work units(SWU) over a period of ten years starting from 2013.
WASHINGTON, March 24 (RIA Novosti)