Russia and France have been cooperating in the civil nuclear industry across a variety of projects for more than 40 years. Started from a uranium enrichment contract signed between TENEX and Electricité de France (EDF) in 1971, the cooperation has turned into a longstanding partnership targeted at the civil nuclear development in the world. The first joint project of Elemash and the French-German company Areva GmbH was carried out more than 20 years ago. In 1994, the manufacturing processes were certified to produce Areva NP fuel assemblies with reprocessed uranium for pressurized water reactors. Two years later, the first four fuel assemblies were manufactured for the Obrigheim Nuclear Power Plant (Germany). In 2013, an official ceremony took place at Elemash to mark the shipment of the 3,000th fuel assembly manufactured under the contract with Areva.
The agenda of the current meeting included negotiations, reports of the attendees and technical tours to Elemash production facilities. Speaking about the seminar, Areva Vice President Ingo Koban said that the partners discussed different aspects of cooperation, solved a number of quality issues and explored new areas of common interest on the way towards stronger partnerships between nuclear fuel manufacturers and consumers.
“The ties between our companies are decade-long. We have completed many successful projects and are carrying out many others in the long term. Changing market environment and new conditions push us towards ongoing improvement of our relations and make us maintain a dialog so that our cooperation gains momentum through solving all the issues jointly and finding new common grounds,” he added.
Elemash (a Rosatom Group company) is a major global producer of nuclear fuel. The plant manufactures fuel assemblies for VVER-440, VVER-1000, RBMK-1000 and BN-600 reactors, as well as nuclear fuel powders and pellets for foreign consumers. Another Elemash product is fuel for research reactors.
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In 2014 alone, Rosatom Group’s export shipments to France amounted to 367 million US dollars while imports from France were only 113 million US dollars in the same year. Supported by longstanding partnership between France and Russia, Paris was selected as headquarters of Rosatom’s regional office in Western Europe.
