Ukraine's Energoatom extends enriched uranium contract with Urenco to 2035

MOSCOW. Nov 29 (Interfax) - The president of Ukraine's NNEGC Energoatom, Pyotr Kotin and the CEO of the UK's Urenco, Boris Schucht signed a contract on Monday for enriched uranium supplies for Ukrainian nuclear power plants until 2035.

The agreement includes an option to renew the contract to 2043, Ukrainian media reported, citing an Energoatom statement on Telegram.

"Energoatom has reached a new important strategic agreement with our reliable partner Urenco and will have stable supplies of enriched uranium for nuclear fuel manufacture for decades to come," Kotin was quoted as saying in the statement.

Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galuschenko said the country is working on increase production of nuclear fuel, one of the components of which is enriched uranium.

After Ukraine stopped using Russian nuclear fuel, Westinghouse became the sole supplier of fuel assemblies for Energoatom's power plants and Urenco supplies the enriched uranium used by Westinghouse to produce them, Energoatom said.

Current contracts for supplies of nuclear materials, including enriched uranium, which Energoatom and Urenco signed in August 2019, expire in 2025, so it was important for Energoatom to renew them, the Ukrainian company said.

Urenco Group, which enriches uranium using gas centrifuge technology, has enrichment facilities in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and United States and supplies fuel for nuclear power plants in 15 countries. The group has a 29% share of the world uranium enrichment services market.