(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-13 11:22

China will get a stake in a 2,000-ton-a-year uranium mine in Kazakhstan in exchange for its share in a uranium-processing business, state-owned Kazatomprom said.

Output may even exceed 2,000 metric tons because of rising Chinese demand, Kazatomprom President Moukhtar Dzhakishev said at a press conference on Monday in Almaty. The Kazakh uranium miner will get access to Chinese assets, he said, without elaborating.

China wants wider access to uranium amid increased competition for the fuel from Japan and India, which are turning to atomic energy to cut their dependence on oil, natural gas and coal and reduce pollution from burning the fuels.

Kazatomprom said Monday it signed agreements in Beijing with China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group Co and China National Nuclear Corp, the country's largest producers of atomic energy.

The Chinese companies will create joint ventures with Kazatomprom to produce uranium, while enabling Kazatomprom to invest in the Chinese nuclear industry, the Kazakh miner said after the signing. The uranium will be sold to China as nuclear fuel, it said.

Kazatomprom will start selling nuclear fuel to China by 2013, it said May 31.

Kazakhstan plans to spend about $1 billion in the next four years to increase its annual uranium output to 18,300 tons, from 7,200 tons now, becoming the world's biggest producer, Dzhakishev said April 13 in Tokyo. The country has the second-largest reserves of the metal, after Australia.

Kazatomprom is also studying the possibility of producing a new nuclear fuel, based on beryllium and uranium, which has a longer life than standard uranium fuel, Dzhakishev said. Beryllium is a metallic element used as a reflector in nuclear reactors.