VIENNA. Sept 29 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia supports the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) idea on forming guarantee stocks of lowly enriched uranium suitable for the production of fuel for nuclear power plants and is ready to begin to its implementation this year, head of Rosatom state corporation Sergei Kiriyenko told the IAEA General Conference in Vienna on Monday.
"We are ready to get down to the implementation of the proposal already this year," he said.
"We are ready to prepare the required stocks of lowly enriched uranium," he added. It is planned that the guarantee stocks will suffice to fully load reactors with the capacity of 1,000 megawatts two times, he said. It is expected that these stocks will be entrusted to the International Uranium Enrichment Center in Angarsk in line with an agreement with the IAEA.
"We think that this proposal to form the guarantee stocks of enriched uranium at the International Uranium Enrichment Center under the aegis of the IAEA will allow to test a new mechanism of the conception thanks to guaranteed deliveries," Kiriyenko said.
Currently, there is a number of ideas on the formation of guarantee stocks, he said. "It is likely that the need to look into the expediency of working out joint approaches and principles, on which would the implementation of such initiatives would be based, has matured," he said.
The creation of uranium guarantee stocks should promote the nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime and expand the peaceful use of nuclear energy; on the other hand it should not undermine market mechanisms and be dependent on political considerations and assessments.
"We hope that our proposal will be supported and will finally will allow to come to a common denominator as to principal approaches to the creation of guarantee stocks," Kiriyenko said.