Ukraine must produce nuclear fuel: Yushchenko

Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko says his country should produce its own nuclear fuel, part of an effort to reduce its reliance on Russia for energy following a bitter dispute over natural gas prices.

“We must change our uranium policy – our policy on the use of uranium for peaceful purposes,” Yushchenko said on national television last night.

“We must co-operate with international allies on a serious political and economic level so that we can have a full cycle of processing and production of nuclear fuel.”

Ukraine supplies Russia with raw uranium, and then buys it back after enrichment for use as fuel for its nuclear power plants.

A full nuclear cycle means that Ukraine would be enriching uranium by itself.

Ukraine, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, in 1986 at Chernobyl, operates four nuclear power plants.

Uranium enrichment is a possible pathway to the development of nuclear arms.

Yushchenko, however, insisted his country, a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, had only peaceful intentions.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, but the government renounced nuclear weapons and transferred some 1,300 nuclear warheads back to Russia for disarming.