Fortum, the Nordic region's No. 2 utility, will buy "hundreds of millions of euros" of nuclear fuel from Russia to supply the Loviisa power plant in Finland.
Fortum will buy between 20 and 21 tons of low-enriched uranium for its two reactors at Loviisa, said Ossi Koskivirta, the utility's purchase manager for nuclear fuel. The contract with Russian nuclear-fuel company Tvel will start in fall 2008 and last until the end of the plant's operating life, the companies said Thursday in a joint statement.
"The offer from Tvel was the best one,'' Koskivirta said Thursday. The contract is worth "hundreds of millions of euros,'' he said.
Power companies are boosting their use of nuclear fuel after oil and gas costs surged over the past five years. Russia is reorganizing its nuclear industry to take advantage of the renewed interest.
Tvel is already contracted to sell fuel to Loviisa's second reactor until 2007, with British Nuclear Fuels supplying the first. The tender for a long-term contact for both reactors took place in 2005, Fortum said Thursday in a statement.
"This was a complicated tender, and our win comes as another confirmation of the high level of Russian technology in the nuclear field,'' Anton Badenkov, head of Tvel, in a statement.
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