Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called for more intensive efforts to develop domestic uranium deposits.
"We should not forget about our own [uranium] deposits. Our own territories should be developed," Putin said during a meeting with Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of the state-controlled nuclear corporation Rosatom.
Kiriyenko told Putin that Russia had sufficient uranium reserves, but "some of them will take time to develop."
"These are hard-to-access reserves, but we are not ignoring them in the long term," Kiriyenko said.
He said the acquisition of a controlling interest in Canada's Uranium One by ARMZ, Rosatom's mining arm, would ensure sufficient uranium production levels to meet domestic and export needs.
According to gzt.ru, Rosatom plans to deliver fuel assemblies to the United States.
Kiriyenko said on Monday that Techsnabexport, a state-owned Russian company trading uranium fuel and processing services abroad, had started negotiating long-term contracts with U.S. companies after Moscow and Washington agreed two years ago to gradually lift from 2011 anti-dumping restrictions against Russian low-enriched uranium on the U.S. market.
MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti)
