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.