MOSCOW, April 30 (UPI) -- On April 22 in Yerevan, Russia and the former Soviet republic of Armenia signed a treaty to set up a joint venture for the exploration and mining of uranium and other minerals in Armenia.

The company is being established on parity lines and will be registered within the next three months.

It was signed by Vadim Zhivov, general director of the Atomredmetzoloto uranium holding, and Armenia's Environmental Protection Minister Aram Arutyunyan.

ARMZ manages all of Russia's uranium assets and runs some projects in Kazakhstan.

Today, AMRZ ranks second in the world for uranium reserves. This is the result of the nuclear industry's restructuring, and in particular the pooling of its core plants under one umbrella.

With the focus on nuclear power, Russia is now planning its uranium future carefully to warrant the successful development of its nuclear industry.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has left Russia high and dry, with many well-researched fields outside its boundaries, mainly in Central Asia in the former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

For now, Russia has only one uranium-containing deposit, in the Chita Region, with its Streltsovsky mining and chemical plant. Its total reserves are estimated at 150,000 metric tons of ore. Other fields in Eastern Siberia have a further 70,000 metric tons of explored raw materials. Altogether, the proven reserves amount to 615,000 metric tons. This figure also includes 344,000 metric tons from Elkon, the largest recently explored Russian field located in the north of Yakutia-Sakha.

Russia's uranium-bearing provinces present a challenge for developers. The largest of them -- the Aldanskoye deposit -- can be developed only by sinking. The ore occurs at a depth of 300 meters -- nearly 1,000 feet -- and mining is unprofitable.

During authoritarian times that problem did not exist: northern uranium was obtained by the free labor of prisoners, including political ones. In Chukotka, for example, they supplied the material for the first atomic bombs. As prison camps closed down, uranium mining in the northern latitudes stopped.

Now a search is on for an economically feasible way of opening up the mothballed mines. This has become economically feasible as global energy prices have soared since the 2003 Gulf War.

Uranium prices are increasing throughout the world; over the past three years they have doubled, and not surprisingly. One cubic centimeter of uranium is equivalent to 60,000 liters of gasoline, 110 to 160 metric tons of coal, or 60,000 cubic meters of natural gas.

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Next: The future uses and demand for uranium

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(Sergei Golubchikov is an associate professor at Russian State Social University. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of RIA Novosti.)

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