MOSCOW, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's state-run corporation Rosatom has signed contracts worth $3 billion in total to supply low-enriched uranium to Japan and France, Russian civil nuclear power corporation Atomenergoprom said on Friday.
"By the end of 2009 other deals, worth up to $2 billion in total, could be signed," Atomenergoprom's press service said.
A source at Techsnabexport, a company affiliated with Atomenergoprom, told RIA Novosti it had plans within the next few months to sign one or two new contracts with the United States for the provision of "high-tech enrichment services."
Russia shipped a batch of low-enriched uranium to the United States in mid-September, bringing to 11,000 tons the total exported under a 1993 bilateral agreement.
The Megatons to Megawatts agreement (also known as the HEU-LEU agreement) aims to convert 500 metric tons of high-enriched uranium (HEU), the equivalent of approximately 20,000 nuclear warheads, from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is then converted into nuclear fuel for use in U.S. commercial reactors.
