During his speech at the National Assembly of Armenia, the Minister of Energy of Armenia Armen Movsisyan announced that his country started exploration of its “extensive uranium deposits”, reported vlasti.net. According to the Minister, current data predict that existing uranium reserves in Armenia will satisfy the needs of the country’s sole nuclear power plant in Metsamor (which annually requires about 150 tons of nuclear fuel), and will also leave enough for export. Development of these deposits will allow Armenia to significantly decrease the republic’s dependence on uranium imports, reported Novoye Russkoye Slovo (NRS), citing the Energy Minister, and will also help in the construction of a more modern nuclear power plant (the currently operating second bloc of the Metsamor plant will exhaust its operational capacity in 2016). NRS cited Minister Movsisyan as saying that his government does not plan to process the uranium in Armenia, but will send it to other countries that have more experience in this field.

This information was originally published on February 9, 2007 (www.nrs.ru; www.vlasti.net) 

-- 03/09/2007