* Exelon Corp to buy Russian uranium directly in 2014-2020
* 4th such deal since "wall" to U.S. market broken last week
* Rosatom subsidiary plans $3 bln bond to fund expansion
By Simon Shuster
MOSCOW, June 3 (Reuters) - Russia's state nuclear firm Rosatom sealed a uranium supply deal with U.S. utility Exelon Corp on Wednesday and voiced plans to issue a 100 billion rouble bond as it intensifies its global expansion.
Last week, the company said it had "broken down the wall"
into the U.S. uranium market by striking three landmark deals to
supply nuclear fuel worth more than $1 billion to U.S. power
firms PG&E U.S. anti-dumping laws, which were relaxed last year, had
previously only allowed Russia to sell the United States uranium
recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons. These sales are carried out through U.S. uranium trader USEC
Inc, which had an effective monopoly on Russian uranium imports
under the so-called "megatons to megawatts" scheme established. But Exelon will now become the fourth U.S. firm to buy the
fuel directly from Rosatom's uranium exporter Tenex, also known
as Techsnabexport. Tenex is expected to gain control of 20-25 percent of the
U.S. uranium market over the next decade as the chance to strike
direct supply deals opens up. Analysts expect U.S. uranium
prices to fall as Russian fuel pours into the market. Under all four of the contracts already signed, state-owned
Tenex will provide uranium to between 2014 and 2020. But Rosatom has not revealed the volume or price of the fuel
it will supply, saying only that it will be in line with market
prices. BOND TO FUND GLOBAL EXPANSION Russia, one of the world's biggest nuclear players, has long
been seeking to expand its clout in the sector by moving into
developed markets such as the United States, European Union and
Japan. Earlier this year, another Rosatom subsidiary,
Atomenergoprom, signed deals to cooperate with Japan's Toshiba
and Germany's Siemens, putting Russia in the centre of a nuclear
alliance stretching from Western Europe to East Asia. Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Rosatom, said seperately on
Wednesday that this subsidiary plans to issue rouble bonds worth
100 billion roubles ($3.25 billion) to fund its global
expansion. Atomenergoprom was created by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
when he was Russia's president to merge all of the country's
civilian nuclear assets and help them compete in the global
market. Its current operations include building Iran's controversial
nuclear reactor at Bushehr through another Rosatom subsidiary,
Atomstroyexport, as well as projects to provide nuclear fuel or
build reactors in India, the Middle East, Asia and at home.
Exelon, of Chicago, owns and operates more than 38,000 MW of
generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits
and distributes electricity to about 5.4 million customers in
northern Illinois and southeast Pennsylvania and natural gas to
about 480,000 the Philadelphia area.
(Editing by James Jukwey)