Russian uranium will be directly supplied to the United States

Russian uranium will be directly supplied to the United States
17:51 | 07/ 05/ 2008

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Tatyana Sinitsina) - The last day of Vladimir Putin's presidency, May 6, was crowned with an impressive achievement - Russia and the United States signed an agreement on civilian uses of nuclear energy.

This is an extraordinary event - the two sides waited for it for over 18 years. Experts consider this document very important and believe that it can take bilateral energy relations from the political to the economic sphere.

The agreement was signed by the head of Rosatom (Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency), Sergei Kiriyenko, on the Russian side, and by the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, William Joseph Burns, on the American side. This is a framework agreement, which creates a legal foundation for normalizing bilateral cooperation in civilian uses of nuclear energy. The Russian company Tekhsnabexport will be able to directly supply U.S. nuclear power plants with uranium produced from plutonium.

Few people know that almost half of American nuclear power plants run on Russian fuel, and have already become addicted to it because of its high quality and cheap price. This practice started in Soviet times, during perestroika. Russians were not charging exorbitant prices, which was attractive to American nuclear business, but serious trouble started in 1991. It was provoked by Russia itself, which supplied a lot of uranium to the world market, thereby sharply reducing prices. This resulted in an anti-dumping campaign against Russia, which led to trade restrictions and a prohibitive 112% tax by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

As a result, Russian uranium is currently being supplied to the United States only through the USEC Corporation, an American intermediary. Supplies were delivered under the Russian-U.S. HEU agreement, which is valid until 2013 (the agreement on the conversion and sale of uranium extracted from nuclear weapons). This situation was not good for either side - both Americans and Russians understood that it was better to deal with each other without intermediary agents.

Two years ago, Kiriyenko started talks with the Americans in order to get direct access to Tekhsnabexport's American partners. At the same time, the matter was brought to court, which was a success - uranium conversion was recognized as a service rather than product, and could not be subject to an anti-dumping investigation. The court ruled that the 112% tax would become invalid in 2011. Obeying the verdict, USEC cancelled the anti-dumping investigation against Russian uranium supplies, which had lasted for 18 years.

Credit for this goes to the two presidents - Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush. Acting in the interests of their countries, they instructed their governments after the St. Petersburg summit in 2006 to find a way out of this predicament. Yet, the Americans did not hurry too much. The way out was found only two years later, on the last day of Putin's presidency.

Vladimir Zhidkikh, a member of the sub commission on nuclear energy of the Federation Council Committee on Natural Monopolies, said, "In the past, the development of mutually advantageous partnership between the United States and Russia in civilian uses of nuclear energy was inhibited by political restrictions, but now fears of the Iron Curtain no longer restrict their cooperation."

The world community welcomes any agreement on cooperation between the two great powers (which are seen as rivals anyway) because this is a gesture in favor of peace. Apart from the pragmatic bilateral component, the new agreement has a global achievement - it reduces the risk of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.