OREANDA-NEWS. October 24, 2007. Russia’s uranium reserves exceed 1,000,000 tons, the head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko said during the International Energy Week conference in Moscow, reported the press-centre of Rosatom.

The reserves of undeveloped uranium are estimated at 870,000 tons.

Russia does not officially say how much uranium it has in stock.

Kiriyenko said that in order to effectively implement its nuclear energy development program Russia needs sufficient reserves of raw materials. “Some 1.5 years ago it was a serious problem.

Today, the financing of our uranium prospecting program has been increased almost tenfold and, if 1.5–2 years ago we thought that we had less than 400,000 tons of undeveloped uranium, today, we know that we have as much as 870,000 tons,” Kiriyenko said.

In fact, Russia has the third biggest uranium reserve in the world after Australia and Kazakhstan.
“Besides, we have quite a big amount of uranium in stock since the Soviet times. So, our total uranium reserve exceeds 1,000,000 tons and we can be sure that our nuclear power industry will have enough fuel for many years ahead,” Kiriyenko said.

He said that Rosatom is planning to build at least 26 new nuclear power units by 2020. “In 2011 we will start launching three new projects a year. Our minimum is to increase the share of nuclear power plants in the total electricity production to 25%, while experts say that the optimum is 30%.”