Russia is seeking investment in new nuclear power stations and joint uranium mining ventures in South Africa, Russia's natural resources minister said on Thursday. Yuri Trutnev would not specify how much money Russia was willing to spend in South Africa, which wants to ensure stable energy supplies for its booming economy and ease concerns over power shortages.

"Exactly as much as would be needed if we hopefully win a tender," he told a news conference, when asked how much money his country was prepared to pour into nuclear energy and mining in Africa's biggest economy. South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the two sides were still in early discussions on the issue. "We agreed and Russia is willing to work with us right from the mining right up to nuclear energy, right through the chain. So if we ask them to also do nuclear stations, they are willing," she said after talks with Trutnev.

"We are only now going to get into the specifics but we have agreed that we will cooperate right through, so those details will be worked out as we go along." Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's atomic energy agency (Rosatom), who is accompanying Trutnev, told Russia's Interfax news agency on Wednesday that the South African market "is open for us". Russian officials said state-run run Tekhsnabexport (Tenex), Russian firm Renova and South Africa's Harmony Gold had signed a memorandum to boost cooperation during the visit.

Tenex was also seeking to extend to 2020 the terms of a contract under which Tenex supplies low-enriched uranium to South Africa, Interfax reported. South Africa, which operates Africa's only nuclear power station, said this month it planned to build a second nuclear power station in a bid to boost energy supplies as power demand soars.

President Vladimir Putin said last year during his first trip to the African state that Russia had signed a deal to supply fuel to South Africa's Koeberg nuclear power plant, about 50 km (31 miles) outside Cape Town. Russia is reorganising its civilian nuclear sector as it seeks to widen sales of nuclear technology abroad, expanding into the energy-hungry markets of Asia and Africa. South Africa's mining minister, Buyelwa Sonjica, told Reuters on Tuesday that major producers in South Africa and Russia were in talks about cooperating to process uranium for sale on the international market.

South Africa has earmarked uranium as a strategic mineral and will start stockpiling the sought-after nuclear fuel, in part to ensure it can power an ambitious multi-billion rand expansion of its nuclear power industry.
(Planet Ark, 23/02/2007)