OREANDA-NEWS. June 21, 2011. Director General of ROSATOM Sergey Kirienko and Head of the Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office Robert Floyd exchanged letters constituting a memorandum of understanding concluded as per Article 12 of the Intergovernmental Agreement between Russia and Australia concerning peaceful uses of atomic energy.

The document allows Russia to import uranium from Australia and process it at Russian enterprises, a correspondent who attended the letters exchange ceremony said.

“By exchange of letters we launch the memorandum of understanding. All these (intergovernmental agreement, memorandum, exchange of letters – IF) have created a legal basis for our cooperation,” Sergey Kirienko said.

On his part, R. Floyd said that a legal basis as such cannot be a productive basis for the cooperation. I hope now we will be developing our interaction, he said. He also noted that today’s exchange of letters gave us an opportunity to start the broadest cooperation.

At the same time, the head of ROSATOM added that this cooperation was broader than capabilities of Russian companies to procure uranium for needs of the Russian enterprises.

The intergovernmental agreement concerning cooperation in the peaceful uses of atomic energy was signed by Russia and Australia in 2007, however, it is only today that the mechanism of safeguards that the Australian uranium is to be used for peaceful purposes at Russian enterprises has been adopted.