Rosatom is in talks to snap up almost a half billion dollars worth of uranium deposits outside the country to secure fuel reserves for Russian and foreign nuclear power stations, the state corporation’s chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, said Tuesday.
The acquisitions in Kazakhstan and three other countries, which Kiriyenko did not name, are valued at 14.2 billion rubles ($465 million) and would boost Russia’s profile on the nuclear energy market, which is resurging as oil and gas become increasingly expensive.
Prices for uranium assets plummeted more than 10-fold after stock markets collapsed last year and uranium fuel also became cheaper, Kiriyenko said.
“An opportunity has opened up to buy foreign assets that are profitable and, for now, not very expensive,” he said at a regular meeting of the Presidium, an assembly of selected Cabinet officials.
He spoke after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced at the meeting that the government added the money for the transactions to Rosatom’s equity capital.
After the purchases, Rosatom will have a “guaranteed supply of uranium for the entire program of constructing nuclear power stations inside the country and, potentially, for all foreign customers that order nuclear power stations from us,” Kiriyenko said.
He recalled a question from the prime minister of Vietnam, who asked during his recent visit to Moscow whether Rosatom could guarantee 60-year deliveries of uranium fuel for reactors in his country — should the company win a contract to build any.
“With this program of buying uranium deposits, we can guarantee this to any customer of ours,” Kiriyenko said.
Rosatom is planning to build nuclear power reactors to beef up capacity at home and is pursuing contracts worldwide in an effort to generate revenues from Russia’s advanced technology in the industry.
“Russia … has decent prospects to do so, as Rosatom has enough expertise to succeed and government support to count upon,” said Marina Alekseyenkova, head of industrials and chemicals research at Renaissance Capital.
She said the investment figure announced Tuesday was not particularly impressive by industry standards but the assistance would be useful.
Rosatom’s rivals on the highly competitive market are France’s Areva, Japan’s Toshiba and Canada’s Cameco.
The state corporation is constructing power reactors in India, Bulgaria and the controversial Bushehr station in Iran while seeking more contracts in China, Vietnam and other countries.
Rosatom accounts for 40 percent of global enrichment capacity and 8 percent of uranium mining output. Russia has about 1 million metric tons of uranium in deposits and stockpiles, enough to last for 100 years, Kiriyenko said in August.
The government also allocated an additional 800 million rubles ($26 million) for Rosatom to build a technology park outside the restricted-access federal nuclear center in Sarov, Putin said at the Presidium session.
Kiriyenko told the ministers that the Nizhny Novgorod regional government and Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Sistema holding company would pitch in investment for the project to take off. He did not put a price tag on the entire plan.
Sistema will run several production units in the park to make equipment for the Glonass navigation system and to develop state-of-the-art software, Kiriyenko said.
“The federal nuclear center has many high-tech, innovative ideas that can be commercialized,” he said. “For that, they need to be moved out of the restricted area.”
The park will employ the nuclear center employees who are being made redundant by a program to raise labor productivity and use the supercomputer center that is being set up in Sarov for nuclear research, he said.
A call to Sistema’s press service after normal working hours went unanswered.
Staff writer Alex Anishyuk contributed to this report.
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