The company, responsible for building nuclear plants outside Russia, said it and the Kazakh national nuclear company, Kazatomprom, had on Tuesday signed an agreement creating a joint venture to develop the project.

"Two other memorandums were also signed to create joint ventures for cooperating in the extraction of uranium in Kazakhstan and its enrichment in Russia," Atomstroyexport's press office said.

Russia's state atomic energy agency, Rosatom, said the two countries would cooperate in particular "on the development of a new uranium field, Budennovskoye", in the south of Kazakhstan.

Uranium from this field "will probably be enriched in Angarsk" in southern Siberia, Rosatom said in a statement.

Russia is also building a nuclear power plant in Iran and has offered to enrich Iranian uranium on Russia soil as a way to ease Western concerns that Tehran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

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