JSC TVEL, the fuel company of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom, has signed the first contract on testing Russia’s TVS-Kvadrat nuclear fuel with a US nuclear power plant operator, Rosatom said.
TVEL Vice President Oleg Grigoryev said in May that the first Russian test nuclear fuel assemblies TVS-K would be loaded into US reactors in 2018. The World Nuclear News (WNN) portal reported previously that Russia and the United States would create a strategic alliance to introduce Russia’s TVS-K type nuclear fuel to the US market of nuclear power plants. This requires an approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
To date, Russia accounts for 17% of the world’s fuel market for nuclear power plants and fully meets the fuel needs of 76 power reactors in Russia and 14 other countries, including Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Armenia and China. TVEL’s annual export volumes exceed $1 billion. (TASS/Business World Magazine)