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1. The fifth nuclear reactor of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS-5) at Rawatbhatta, with a capacity of 220 MWe, reached criticality at 12.51 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009. This is the 18th nuclear power reactor to be commissioned in the country. With its commissioning, the total nuclear power-generation capacity now stands at 4,340 MWe.

The reactor would start working at full capacity by the end of December 2009 or the first week of January 2010.

Mr. Jain said, “Commissioning of the sixth reactor at RAPS is in the final stage. We will be ready for loading the fuel into the reactor in the first week of December. Ten days after the fuel is loaded, RAPS-6 will go critical.” It would also use fuel from Russia as part of the Separation Plan and, hence come under the IAEA safeguards. RAPS-6 would start generating its entire 220 MWe in February 2010.

The fourth reactor at the Kaiga Atomic Power Station in Karnataka would be commissioned before the end of this financial year, that is, before March 31, 2010, Mr. Jain said.

However, Kaiga-4, with a capacity of 220 MWe, will use indigenous natural uranium fuel from Jaduguda in Jharkhand.

2. Russian uranium miner Atomredmetzoloto JSC (ARMZ) has offered to buy Toronto-based Khan Resources, which owns a controlling stake in a uranium project in Mongolia.

The Dornod project is expected to have a mine life of 15 years, and could produce an average of three-million pounds of the nuclear fuel, at $23,22/lb, according to the study

3. The Russian uranium mining company Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ) plans to buy uranium assets in Namibia

In 2008, Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ), Russia’s leading uranium producer, planned to increase production in Russia and Kazakhstan by 12% to 4,300 metric tons (for 2009)

ARMZ manages all of Russia’s uranium mining assets and also participates in uranium production in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan. The company is developing cooperation with Armenia, Canada, Mongolia, Namibia and Ukraine. It is owned by Atomenergoprom, which is part of Rosatom.

ARMZ aims to increase uranium production six-fold (up to 20,000 tons per year) by 2024 and become the world’s leader in uranium mining.

Russia’s total uranium reserves are significantly more than 1 million tons, the head of the Rosatom nuclear corporation said.

Sergei Kiriyenko said Russia had 575,000 tons of recoverable uranium reserves and 875,000 tons of proven reserves.

He added that including uranium stocks in storage, total reserves exceeded 1 million tons.

He did not specify how much uranium was currently in storage, saying that the information was classified, but indicated that there was sufficient uranium supplies to run current and future nuclear power plants for the next 60 years.

Kiriyenko said new uranium fields would be developed, in particular one in South Yakutia