Rosatom, Ukraine and Thermal Columns

Russia and the Ukraine are haggling over the rising cost of Russian natural gas, but this further item from RIA Novosti in the same story caught my eye as well:

The Russian Agency for Nuclear Energy (Rosatom) plans to call for leveling off prices of uranium fuel delivered by the Russian TVEL company to the nuclear power plants in many countries, including Ukraine. TVEL buys uranium in Ukraine at world prices but provides thermal columns for its nuclear plants at a privileged price, resulting in a loss of $150 million a year.

Rosatom suggests that prices of Ukrainian raw material and Russian fuel should be leveled off in 2007. This can have negative consequences for Ukraine, because TVEL is currently supplying nearly 100% of fuel requirements of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Comments

Kevin McCoy said…

Do you suppose that "thermal columns" might be a mistranslation, Eric? Maybe it should be something more like "fuel elements". After all, fuel elements produce heat, and in many reactor designs they have a columnar shape. It's hard to see why the price of a thermal column should be related to that of uranium, but it's easy to see a relationship between the prices of fuel elements and uranium.

December 8, 2005 at 8:54 AM

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