MOSCOW, MARCH 31. /RIA NOVOSTI / -- Alexander Rumyantsev, head of the Federal Nuclear Energy Agency, hopes to prolong the HEU-LEU contract, he told journalists at the press conference in Moscow.
"We have a set of ideas how to extend the contract", he said.
He recalled that the HEU-LEU contract operates within the framework of the Russian-American agreement, under which high-enriched weapons-grade uranium from Russian warheads is processed into low-enriched uranium to be shipped to the United States as fuel for nuclear power plants.
"Politically speaking, it is an important agreement", he said.
The Russian-American HEU-LEU agreement has been in operation since 1994. Since that time Russia has exported to the United States fuel processed from 160 tonnes of weapons-grade uranium. The HEU-LEU contract is operable until 2013.
