Japan to Purchase Contracted Kazakh Uranium, Kazatomprom Says via Bloomberg

Kazatomprom (KZAP), the state nuclear company in the world’s biggest uranium-producing nation, said its Japanese customers will take delivery of the fuel they agreed to buy even as the country idles its atomic stations.

The supply contracts with Japan haven’t changed, Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Shkolnik told reporters in Almaty, Kazakhstan, today without identifying the buyers.

Kazakhstan said in October it planned to start commercial sales of uranium to Japan in 2012, a year after a record earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. All but two of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors are idled either for scheduled maintenance or because of damage from the March 11 disasters, with the government yet to win public support for their restart.

By this summer, Japan plans to draw up a new energy policy that may call for a shift to fuel alternatives. Future cooperation with Japan will depend on the decisions made by its government, Shkolnik said, without elaborating.

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