Enec and Tenex renew MoU on nuclear fuel cycle management

The renewal of the memorandum comes within the framework of Enec's strategy of working with international companies based in countries with established nuclear energy programmes, and cooperating with responsible nations to benefit from the global cumulative experience of the nuclear energy industry, Enec said.

Al Hammadi said: "Tenex has an excellent track record and decades of experience in nuclear fuel cycle management and we look forward to continuing to explore opportunities for collaboration in the coming months and years ahead."

Since signing the original MoU in 2017, which established a framework for potential future cooperation in the field of innovative nuclear fuel cycle solutions, including the management and disposal of radioactive waste, a delegation from Enec has visited the Mining and Chemical Combine complex at Zheleznogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia.

The UAE delegation to that technical tour, in April this year, was led by Mohamed Abdalla Chookah, vice president of fuel, waste, research and development at Enec. He noted that, since the inception of the UAE Peaceful Nuclear Energy Programme, the UAE government had decided to forgo both the domestic enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of used fuel.

"The UAE is in the process of developing its long-term spent fuel management policy, and continues to review several options for managing spent fuel," he said, according to a Tenex statement.

The Enec delegation were shown a wet storage facility for used fuel assemblies, and visited a pilot and demonstration centre for the reprocessing of used fuel.

Enec is overseeing the construction of the UAE's first nuclear power plant - four Korean-designed APR1400 reactors at Barakah, in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi.

Tenex and Mining and Chemical Combine are both subsidiaries of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom.