Kazakhstan and IAEA sign accord to create intl LEU bank
ASTANA. Aug 27 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have signed an agreement to establish an international low-enriched uranium (LEU) bank.
The document was signed by Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrisov and IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano in Kazakhstan's capital Astana on Thursday, an Interfax correspondent reported.
Representatives of the UN Security Council's permanent member states, including the United Kingdom, China, Russia, the United States and France, as well as the project's donor countries - European Union states, Norway, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates - were present at the signing ceremony.
In addition to that, Kazakh Energy Minister Vladimir Shkolnik and Amano signed a technical agreement detailing specific measures that should be taken to create such a bank.
A technical agreement on the facility operator's services, which will be provided as part of the bank's placement in Kazakhstan, was concluded between JSC Ulba Metallurgical Plant CEO Yury Shakhvorostov and head of the LEU bank project in Kazakhstan Terry Wood.
The LEU bank will be located on the premises of the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Ust-Kamenogorosk.
Its physical stockpile will amount to 90 tonnes of LEU, which is sufficient to operate a 1,000-Megawatt light-water reactor.
The bank is financed fully by volunteer contributions and does not affect the IAEA budget. Donor contributions amount to around $150 million, enough to run the bank for at least a decade. The donors are the Nuclear Threat Initiative ($50 million), the United States ($49.54 million), the United Arab Emirates ($10 million), Kuwait ($10 million), Norway ($5 million), and the EU (up to 25 million euros).
Kazakhstan proposed hosting an international nuclear fuel bank under IAEA aegis in 2009.
The Ulba Metallurgical Plant, which is part of Kazakhstan's national atomic energy company Kazatomprom, makes pellet fuels for nuclear power plants.
