There will be no radioactive operations in the Titanium Valley

24.03.2011 — News

SVERDLOVSK REGION.

Radioactive materials will not be processed in the Titanium Valley, special economic zone. Therefore, the information disclosed by the government of the Sverdlovsk Region concerning the plans for building of a monazite processing complex has been denied.

"When I came across the assumptions that there will be monazite processing facilities in the Titanium Valley, I was shocked by shortsightedness and incompetence of the person who made them", - Mikhail Voevodin, General Director of VSMPO-AVISMA, pointed out.

The representatives of the VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation have informed "RusBusinessNews" that the special economic zone, which is being established in the Sverdlovsk Region, cannot accommodate such operations, either de jure or de facto. The Russian legislation places tough restrictions on types of production facilities that are allowed in the special economic zone. The permitted types do not include monazite operations.

82 thousand tons of monazite concentrate, which contains radioactive thorium and rare-earth metals, were delivered to the Sverdlovsk Region from China after World War II. It was assumed that cheap thorium could be used for making of a nuclear bomb; however, all the attempts to extract radioactive isotope from monazite based on the post-war technology failed.