OREANDA-NEWS. October 28, 2011. The delegation of JSC “Techsnabexport” (TENEX) headed by General Director Alexey Grigoriev held negotiations in Beijing with the top management of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and China Nuclear Energy Industry Company (CNEIC) and has visited the site of the 4th line of the gaseous centrifuge uranium enrichment plant in Hanzhong built with Russian technical assistance.

Delegation examined the workshops of the enrichment plant and the process-flow control room and met with the group of Russian experts involved in commissioning of the enrichment cascades, and also held talks with the top management of the plant operator – the Shansy Uranium Enrichment Company.

Director of CNNC Nuclear Fuel Cycle Department Li Guanchang and General Director of CNEIC Liu Chunsheng highly appraised the standard of cooperation between the Russian and Chinese sides, highlighting the reliability of the delivered Russian equipment and the coordinated work by Russian and Chinese specialists that allowed launching the 4th line of the enrichment plant into operation by nine months ahead of the contractual obligations.

General Director of TENEX Alexey Grigoriev underlined that “the Hanzhong plant can be considered as a model of Russian-Chinese cooperation in the field of high technology”. “It is a state-of-art, compact and truly beautiful facility where together with our Chinese comrades we have worked out not only the optimal design and technological solutions, but also the principles of efficient interaction that laid a solid foundation for implementation of new bilateral projects, - Alexey Grigoriev concluded after examining the plant.

The 4th line of the gaseous centrifuge plant (GCP) in Hanzhong with capacity of 500 thousand SWU was commissioned on July 5, 2011 within the framework of TENEX-CNEIC contract for technical assistance in the construction of gaseous centrifuge plant in the People’s Republic of China. The 405 plant site of the Shansy Uranium Enrichment Company (SUEC) of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) was commissioned 9 months earlier than the date scheduled under the contract, while the entire process of construction and commissioning was completed within a record short timeframe of 27 months.

After commissioning of the 4th line total enrichment capacities built in China with Russian technical assistance reached 1.5 million SWU.