Washington: The United States and Russia today will sign a trade deal to significantly increase exports of Russian uranium to fuel American nuclear power plants, the US Commerce Department said.

For years, the US government has restricted Russian uranium shipments, fearing Russia would dump uranium in the US market and financially hurt the major American uranium supplier, USEC Inc.

The higher Russian exports, which start around the middle of the next decade, would be allowed just as analysts believe uranium supplies will tighten in the 2011-15 period, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade group for the US nuclear industry.

This agreement will provide US utilities with a reliable supply of nuclear fuel by allowing Russia to export, while minimizing any disruption to the United States domestic enrichment industry, the Commerce Department said.

US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency Director Sergey Kiriyenko will sign the deal at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington on Friday evening.

Final terms of the deal have not been released. Under the draft agreement reached last November, Russian uranium exports would increase slowly over a 10-year period beginning in 2011, when shipments would be allowed to reach 16,559 tonnes.

Exports would then increase about 50 percent annually over the next two years and increase more than tenfold from 41,398 tonnes in 2013,when the current Megatons to Megawatts program expires, to 485,279 tonnes the next year.

Source : UNI