Russia touts Siberian uranium enrichment centre

ANGARSK, Russia, Aug 8 (Reuters) Deep in a Siberian pine forest lies President Vladimir Putin's answer to a quandary: how to cash in on global demand for nuclear fuel without giving countries the technology to build bombs.

Russia is setting up an international uranium enrichment centre at a Soviet-built plant just outside the settlement of Angarsk, more than 5,100 km east of Moscow.

Putin has proposed the centre as a way to allow countries -- such as Iran -- the means of developing civilian nuclear power without handing them the technology to make nuclear weapons.

Response so far has been modest with only Kazakhstan -- a close ex-Soviet ally of Russia -- actually signing up.

But during a journalists' visit to the plant, a top secret establishment in Soviet times, Russian nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko said a host of countries were showing an interest in buying a stake in the centre -- though apparently not yet Iran.

''Any country in the world can participate in the international centre, buy some shares and get guaranteed services for enrichment and they are guaranteed to get some profits from the idea too,'' Kiriyenko told reporters.

''But they will not get access to one thing -- Russian enrichment technology. And that is entirely correct as that is dual use technology,'' he said.

Holding a stake in the centre would mean a country could secure a supply of enriched uranium that would provide the fuel rods to power its nuclear plants. It would not know the technological process by which it had been produced, however.

Demand for nuclear fuel has soared as countries seek to develop atomic power stations as an alternative to oil, gas and coal fired plants.

But the world's official nuclear powers -- also the biggest sellers of atomic materials -- are trying to stop the spread of nuclear technology to states that could try to build atomic weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear programme.

Russia says the Angarsk plant could ease the suspicions of the United States and Israel that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Tehran, which says its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes, has however shown little interest as yet.

SECRET SOVIET PLANT A bust of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin and a hammer and sickle emblazoned on the main building's facade are a reminder of its Soviet past.

Until quite recently, the Angarsk Chemical Electrolysis Plant, set in deep forest, was off-limits to foreigners -- a harkback to times when it was a strategic facility in the Soviet Union's then secret nuclear energy programme.

Armed guards block approaches to the plant where the centre is housed. Special services patrol a double perimeter fence around the nondescript brick-built complex.

Inside are swish laboratories stocked with up-to-date foreign equipment. Dozens of Russian scientists pore over computers to test uranium enrichment.

The centre has attracted only Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Armenia -- all three former Soviet republics -- and only Kazakhstan has actually signed up.

''There are a host of other countries which are looking at cooperating in the centre, but it is not my place to name them,'' Kiriyenko said.

The international outcry over Iran's nuclear ambitions provided the accelerator for establishing the centre.

But Tehran appears to have baulked at renouncing its right to an enrichment cycle -- one of Russia's initial conditions for participation.

Russia may now have to row back on that condition, Anton Khlopkov, executive director of Moscow's Centre for Policy Studies, said.

''Russia understands the concerns of a lot of countries about renouncing rights to their own enrichment programme at some time in the future and so I sense Russia does not plan to be so strict in demanding that,'' Khlopkov said.

Khlopkov said countries such as Japan, Argentina, Canada and Australia would be willing to discuss such centres if they were not forced to renounce their future enrichment cycles.

REUTERS GT KN1728