Last week, Energoatom signed a loan agreement for 181 million pounds with a consortium of international banks, including Deutsche Bank and Barclays Bank, the company said in a telegram on Tuesday.
The loan proceeds under the contract between Energoatom and Urenco will be used to finance the supply of nuclear materials – enriched and natural uranium hexafluoride.
The loan is for five years. The guarantee is provided by the UK government through the UK Export Finance (UKEF) export credit agency. No state guarantees are provided by Ukraine.
As reported, in November 2023, Energoatom and Urenco signed a contract for the supply of enriched uranium product for Ukrainian NPPs until 2035, with the possibility of its extension until 2043.
In addition, the parties have two contracts in place until 2025, under which NNEGC supplies the British company with nuclear materials.
Negotiations on a possible increase in purchases of uranium from the British Urenco Group were recently held with its responsible leaders by the head of the SE NNEGC Energoatom Petr Kotin, the company said on its Telegram channel on Monday.
“He (Kotin) said that any cooperation with the aggressor country, including the purchase of Russian uranium concentrate, is unacceptable for Ukraine, so Energoatom is ready to consider increasing purchases from Urenco,” the NAEK said.
Urenco Group specializes, in particular, in uranium enrichment (according to gas centrifuge technology), which is one of the technological cycles in the production of nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants. The company owns uranium enrichment facilities in Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain and the USA and supplies fuel for nuclear power plants in 15 countries around the world with a global share of about 29% in the global market for uranium enrichment services.
SOE Skhidny Mining in 2020 reduced the production of uranium oxide concentrate by 7.1% (or by 57.2 tonnes) compared to 2019, to 743.7 tonnes, according to the information from the unified public open data portal.
According to the enterprise, 93.6 tonnes of uranium concentrate were produced in January, 21.9 tonnes in February, 96 tonnes in March, 90 tonnes in April, 40 tonnes in May, 74.2 tonnes in June, and 86 tonnes in July, 77.3 tonnes in August, 58.4 tonnes in September, 7 tonnes in October, 92.5 tonnes in November, and 6.8 tonnes in December.
The deterioration of production indicators over the past two years was due to the periodic withdrawal of the company’s divisions to a forced downtime.
As reported, Skhidny Mining in 2019 reduced the production of uranium oxide concentrate by 32.1% (by 378.6 tonnes) compared to 2018, to 800.9 tonnes.
Skhidny Mining is the only uranium ore mining and processing enterprise in Ukraine and the largest in Europe.
State-owned enterprise (SOE) Skhidny (Eastern) Mining and Processing Plant (Dnipropetrovsk region) in January-September 2019 cut production of uranium concentrate by 14.9% year-over-year, to 684.8 tonnes, according to information on the unified government portal of open data.
According to the enterprise, 72.6 tonnes of uranium concentrate were produced in January, 93.7 tonnes in February, 84.3 tonnes in March, 72.9 tonnes in April, 52.2 tonnes in May, and 80 tonnes in June, in July – 72.2 tonnes, in August – 84 tonnes, and in September – 72.9 tonnes.
As reported, Skhidny Mining in 2018 increased the production of uranium concentrate 41.1% compared to 2017, to 1,179.5 tonnes.
Skhidny Mining is the only uranium ore mining and processing enterprise in Ukraine and the largest in Europe. The annual needs of Ukrainian nuclear power plants for uranium concentrate are about 2,400 tonnes, while its production by Skhidny Mining is about 1,000 tonnes.
