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Russia and US name nuclear industry cooperation projects

Head of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko named among them the project of an international fast research reactor
Head of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko ITAR-TASS/Alexander Astafyev
Head of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko
© ITAR-TASS/Alexander Astafyev

WASHINGTON, December 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia and the United States have identified co-operation projects in the field of nuclear energy, head of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters on Tuesday.

He said that at talks with US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz on the same day the sides “devoted much time to the prospects of the Russian-US scientific and technical cooperation agreement, which was signed in Vienna in September.” According to him, the parties “compiled a list of mutually interesting projects.”

Kiriyenko named among them the project of an international fast research reactor. “We regard it as a matter of co-operation. It is too early to say yet how long it will take to implement such projects, the nature of these projects is more important. And we have a list of them,” he said.

US Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman for his part confirmed that Moscow and Washington had already had a list of projects for co-operation. He said the sides had decided to involve in the work their leading experts in the field of nuclear energy, so that they could chose the most promising options that might yield concrete results, beneficial to both countries.

Poneman and Kiriyenko attended a reception at the Russian Embassy in Washington on the occasion of the completion of the Megatons to Megawatts program, also known as the HEU-LEU. The final batch of nuclear fuel, extracted from Russian nuclear warheads within the program, was sent on Tuesday from the port of Baltimore (Maryland) to a processing plant in Paducah (Kentucky).

The Russian delegation representatives said that USEC Corporation, purchasing fuel under this program for further processing and delivery to US nuclear power plants, would make the payment for the final nuclear fuel batch in January 2014.