“Armenia may not only exploit the nuclear power plant, but also extract uranium”. “Armenia may not only use uranium for its own purposes, but also export it”.
“Armenia is completely changing its political weight as an energy-producing country in the atomic energy field by having its own radioactive material”.
These were some of the announcements made by Vardan Ayvazyan, Environmental Protection Minister of Armenia, and head of the Russian Atomic Energy Federative Agency Sergey Kirienko during a joint press conference on Monday. Based on the results of geological research during the years of the Soviet Union, Armenia has nearly 30,000 tons of uranium reserves. According to Kirienko, the known uranium reserves may increase by two-fold after conducting new research.
Kirienko visited Yerevan with the invitation of Environmental Protection Minister Vardan Ayvazyan to establish a uranium-research company to conduct research on uranium in Armenia and to sign some agreements. On Monday, the director of “Rusatom” also met with Armenian Prime Minister Serge Sargsyan and President Robert Kocharyan. The Prime Minister said that the Armenian side is ready to receive the Russian experts and do everything possible to implement the foreseen projects on time and with quality. This new Armenian-Russian transaction had been initiated in January 2007 when Armenian President Robert Kocharyan met with Vladimir Putin in Sochi. That was the infamous meeting during which the Russian President expressed his concern that it was a shame that Russia places second in Armenia in investments. Kocharyan expressed the hope that they would soon fix that error and Russia would be first on the list. Besides that, Putin announced that Russia has interests in Armenia’s mine industry and is ready to co-operate and make investments in this field as well. After those announcements, discussions were underway in Armenia. Some people started discussing which mines Putin had an eye on, especially since all the large mines are already more or less owned and exploited.
While Armenians were making predictions on whether our Russian big brother had his eye on the gold or molybdenum mines, suddenly it turned out that Armenia also has uranium and rather great amounts of reserves. After privatizing nearly 80% of Armenia’s energy, the communications field and other large factories, Russia has now dug deep into Soviet archives to find out Armenia’s other rich reserves that it can take, and it found a rather juicy piece-the uranium ores. And since Russia’s wishes quickly become a reality in Armenia, it is clear that the uranium ores must quickly become the proprietorship of that country.
Russia currently has interests in the mines of the Syunik Marz of Armenia. At the beginning of the year, the Russian atomic energy federative agency had already presented to the Armenian side the 2007 joint activities project for geological research, investigation and exploitation of the uranium mines. For the initial stage, it is foreseen to found a joint company in Armenia, which will conduct the geological research of the ores and give a preliminary evaluation for extraction. In that joint company, the Armenian side will be represented as “Geoeconomics” CJSC, while the Russian side will be represented as the “Chemical Technology Pan-Russian Scientific Research Institute”.
As mentioned, based on preliminary data, there is nearly 30,000 tons of uranium in the mines of Syunik. But it is not excluded that the real amount of ores will be double that amount. In order to understand how much 30,000 tons is and what the significance of that may be, let us inform that it is necessary to have 150 tons of nuclear fuel just for the functioning of Armenia’s nuclear power plant and secure 40% of its energy output. The nuclear fuel is received from the uranium enrichment. Currently, the price for one kilogram of uranium in the international market is nearly 140 dollars. So, based on today’s prices and the preliminary data, Armenia has nearly 4 billion 200 million dollars worth of uranium reserves, which is 4 times more than Armenia’s budget. It is very possible that this number will be twice that much. No wonder why Kirienko is announcing these figures.
So, Armenia has nearly 9 billion dollars worth of uranium and you have Russia wanting to get a hold of these riches when just a couple of years ago, that same strategic ally did not forgive Armenia’s 100 million dollar debt and instead of that took a couple of large factories. That debt was in exchange for providing Armenia with nuclear fuel for its nuclear power plant. Now our clever Armenian authorities are giving the uranium mines to Russia so that they can then buy the enriched nuclear fuel and run a nuclear power plant when uranium, with its economic and political significance, is not second to oil or natural gas-as stated by Mr. Kirienko and Ayvazyan during the press conference on Monday.