Rosatom realigns Tenex

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Tenex would be incorporated into Rusatom Overseas. Tenex is, however, to become part of Rosatom's international business development division, which also includes Rusatom Overseas.

Alexey Grigoriev, general director of Russian uranium enrichment company Techsnabexport (Tenex) since 2007, has stepped down to pursue another post within the nuclear power industry. The move comes as plans are announced to incorporate Tenex into Rosatom's international business unit.

For almost 40 years, Grigoriev has been involved in the export of Russian nuclear fuel cycle services for the world atomic industry. Having started his career in 1975 in the Ministry for Foreign Trade, he then worked in Italy as commercial director of Enital (a Soviet-Italian joint venture) between 1983 and 1987. Grigoriev was commercial director and deputy general director of Tenex between 1996 and 2002, and became the firm's first deputy general director in 2003. He was appointed as director general of Tenex in October 2007.

Sergei Kiriyenko, head of state atomic energy corporation Rosatom, praised the work that Grigoriev has done. He commented, ""Alexey Antonovich gave us almost forty years of his professional life and the advances which Tenex boasts today, in many ways, are to his personal merit."

International focus

Kiriyenko also announced that Tenex is to become part of the division responsible for the international business development of Rosatom. He said that the main reason for the decision for the move was Tenex's highly professional team with unique competencies in selling uranium enrichment services and enriched uranium on the international market. At a meeting with Tenex staff, he told them, "You have shown excellent results in terms of productivity growth, on the conclusion of new contracts for uranium supply to foreign energy companies, so we have taken the decision to develop the company, making it the base for the foreign trading house of Rosatom in the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle."

Tenex's first deputy general director Lyudmila Zalimskaya will become acting head of the company. Once it becomes part of Rosatom's international business unit, responsibility for Tenex will be assumed by Rosatom deputy director general Kirill Komarov.

Rosatom spokesman Sergey Novikov said that the company's international business development division comprises a group of "self-sufficient companies" which are "absolutely equal and have different tasks and purposes." As well as Tenex, the division includes Rusatom Overseas, which is tasked with the promotion of products, services and technologies of the Russian nuclear industry to the global market.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News