MOSCOW. April 8 (Interfax) - Settlements under the contracts compliant with the Russian American HEU-LEU agreement, also known as the Megaton to Megawatt program, have been finalized.
The last payment arrived from the American corporation USEC in March 2014, OJSC Techsnabexport, Russia's authorized agent for selling uranium under the contract, reported. Techsnabexport fulfilled all of its commitments to supply low-enriched uranium in November 2013, when the last batch of low-enriched uranium arrived in the United States, the company said.
Overall, some 14,500 tonnes of low enriched uranium have been exported to the United States under the HEU-LEU project, yielding over $13 billion in foreign currency earnings, it said.
Russia and the United States signed an agreement to process and sell 500 tonnes of weapon-grade uranium, removed from Russian nuclear warheads (HEU-LEU), in February 1993. The downgraded uranium thus exported is intended to be used as fuel in commercial nuclear power plants. Under the agreement, Rosatom corporation's companies processed excess Russian uranium into low-enriched uranium suitable for civilian energy projects, and then exported it to the United States. The contract expired in 2013.
Russia and the United States agreed in March 2011 to continue low-enriched uranium supplies after the expiration of the HEU-LEU agreement and Techsnabexport and USEC signed a ten-year contract for uranium enrichment services worth $2.8 billion, starting in 2013.