2017 marked the 30th anniversary of the first delivery of uranium products to the USA – it was carried out from the former USSR. Under the contract of providing uranium enrichment, services concluded in October 1986 with the US-based company SWUCO Inventory Storage Corporation, the Russian party exported about 70,000 SWUs to the USA, which was used for nuclear fuel fabrication.
For 20 years of its three-decade presence in the US market, the Company was taking an active part in the unique Megatons to Megawatts Program. Under the Russian-US intergovernmental agreement dated 1993 on utilizing the HEU extracted from nuclear weapons, TENEX was rendering uranium enrichment services to the USA between 1994 and 2013. The total scope of these services amounted to about 90 million SWUs. In the same period, the US nuclear power plants generated ~7 trillion kW/h of electric power using the Russian LEU.
Due to the flawless execution by TENEX of its contractual obligations under the Megatons to Megawatts Program, the US utilities made certain of the Russian exporter’s reliability, which created a solid foundation for further development of direct contract relations that have always been the focus of the Company’s attention.
The US generating companies actively supported the Russian party’s efforts on overcoming the anti-dumping restrictions introduced in 1992, and in 2008 the Americans opened access for commercial deliveries of Russian uranium products in volumes agreed upon with the US Department of Commerce.
The export portfolio of TENEX currently comprises of 25 contracts worth approximately US $6.5 billion, which is made up of 19 American companies with deliveries scheduled up to 2028. The volumes of Russian uranium product supplies agreed upon for the period to late 2020 – 20% of the annual scope required by reactors of the US NPP’s (~3 million SWUs) – have been used up to 95%. The limits for the period of 2011-2016 have been completely consumed.
The Company values the longstanding relations with its US partners and is confident in their further steady development.
NOTE: SWU means “Separative Work Unit”, a standard unit for measuring the efforts required for separation of uranium isotopes (U235 and U238) during the enrichment process.