Ukraine plans to increase its annual uranium production to 1,400 tons within a period of three years, up 75 percent from the current 800 tons, Energy Minister Yuriy Boiko announced on Friday.

The increase is part of a 10-year plan to lower the cost of nuclear power generation, the minister said.

Boiko made the announcement against the backdrop of the Russian decision to raise the nuclear fuel price in 2007.

Russia has been the country's main supplier of nuclear fuel since the disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991.

Last year, Ukraine unveiled an energy development strategy where it will build its own facilities to recycle nuclear fuel and store nuclear waste. Under the strategy, Ukraine's nuclear power generation will be doubled by 2030. It also oriented for full self-supply of uranium by 2015, compared with the country's current capacity to supply only 30 percent of the domestic demand.

Ukraine is rich in uranium resources and equipped with the technology of producing nuclear fuel, but the country has yet to establish its own nuclear fuel production lines, according to government officials.

Ukraine currently has five nuclear power plants that provide about half of the country's electricity needs.

Source: Xinhua