Press Release: U.S. Department of Energy's representatives had visited Ulba Metallurgical Plant

On August 6-8th, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) representatives had visited OJSC Ulba Metallurgical Plant (Ust- Kamenogorsk). The delegation included scientists from the U.S. leading scientific centers - Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (MIT) as well as specialists of American commercial enterprises - nuclear fuel suppliers, such as Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas (GNFA) (joint venture of General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba), RWE Nukem Inc. The head of delegation was Mr.James Noble Director of the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention Programme (IPP).

The purpose of the visit was the assessment of the project for American uranium-containing concentrates processing at OJSC UMP.

During the visit the American specialists became familiar with history and present of the plant, visited production buildings where the uranium-containing concentrates processing is carried out and studied the output of first industrial lots of concentrates processing in detail. Special attention was given to the environmental, radiation and nuclear safety issues of the project. According to the preliminary opinion of American experts the project is being implemented successfully. The quality of the technology developed at UMP and excellent labour management at plant allowed to state that the processing of uranium-containing concentrates at UMP is quite effective and all production risks (environmental, nuclear, radiation) are reduced to a minimum. American specialists have noted high level of technological culture of production.

The head of delegation Mr J. Noble said that 'the project for uranium-containing concentrates processing at UMP is the good example demonstrating that joint operation of American and Kazakh scientists and specialists leads to a creation of mutually beneficial commercial partnership relations'.

Demonstration project is financed by the IPP programme of the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. industrial partners in order to assist Kazakh scientists, who worked under the Soviet nuclear weapon programme, to re-direct their experience toward the independent industrial production.

At the end of the visit the parties exchanged by the views on the issues of further extension of collaboration between OJSC UMP and American companies with support and direct participation of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Note, that the project for uranium-containing concentrates (scraps) processing is the first main project of the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention programme. The second one will be aimed at the CuBe master alloy production capacities improvement.