MOSCOW, May 21 (RIA Novosti) - A top Russian nuclear expert said Monday the world price for raw uranium may continue growing at the same pace as in past years, driving prices up at least 10 times more.

"The price of raw uranium has grown 15 times in the past years, from $20 to $300 per kilo. I think it may still grow by another order of magnitude," Yevgeny Velikhov, head of the key Russian nuclear Kurchatov Institute, told a RIA Novosti news conference.

"The global energy market is very turbulent. The uranium price can hit any mark at a time of crisis," he said, citing growing nuclear energy activity around the world amid shrinking reserves that are widely seen as harbingers of a global uranium deficit by mid-century.

Uranium is used as fuel in nuclear power plants to produce electricity and heat. It is also used as a nuclear weapons material.

Russia has repeatedly called for the deregulation of the international nuclear fuel market and, in view of controversies surrounding Iran and North Korea, has launched a campaign to help countries around the globe to build nuclear research centers and power plants to discourage them from acquiring nuclear technologies that might lead to nuclear weapons.

Most recently, Russia's nuclear power agency signed a deal with Myanmar, a southeast Asian country governed by a military regime, to build a 10-MW nuclear research reactor there and train Myanmaran nuclear scientists.