OREANDA-NEWS. On Jan 25 2008 TVEL OJSC and Kurchatov Institute signed an agreement for cooperation and joint commercialization of their technologies for the needs of the industry and energy sector. The signing of the agreement followed negotiations between a delegation of TVEL, led by the president of the company Y.Olenin, and a group of directors of Kurchatov Institute, led by the director of the institute M.Kovalchuk. During the meeting the sides exchanged information about their projects.

TVEL and Kurchatov Institute have been cooperating for many years already: they have jointly designed fuel for reactors of different types and purposes, enhanced its efficiency, improved fuel cycles. The agreement will give a new status and new impulse to the cooperation between TVEL and Kurchatov Institute. The sides have formulated four basic directions of their cooperation:

1. Jointly enhancing the efficiency and safety of fuel and fuel cycles.
2. Jointly producing superconducting materials for ITER project.
3. Jointly studying the problem of isotope uranium enrichment and use of laser excitation.
4. Jointly using pure compounds of hafnium and producing them at TVEL plants.

One of the most promising projects is the establishment of a production of low-temperature superconducting materials of new generation on the basis of TVEL plants. In order to enter the foreign market, which is already full of such materials, it is necessary to improve the price/quality ratio of our products. For this purpose, the sides are actively applying innovative technologies, particularly, nanotechnologies, and developing new ways to enhance the parameters of national superconducting materials.

TVEL and Kurchatov institute have agreed to conduct a series of joint seminars on a number of topical problems of the energy sector.