Toshiba Corp., Japan's biggest maker of nuclear reactors by capacity, is in talks to buy a stake in a uranium mine in Kazakhstan from Marubeni Corp. to secure fuel.
Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Omori and his counterpart at Marubeni, Takashi Hashimoto, said the two Tokyo-based companies are in negotiations and declined to give further details.
Toshiba plans to buy 22.5 percent of the mine, located in southern Kazakhstan, for billions of, yen the Nihin Keizai Shimbun reported Friday, without saying where it got the information.
Buying the stake may help Toshiba secure a share of nuclear fuel supply in a country that aims to be the biggest producer of uranium by 2020.
Toshiba, which in October paid $4.16 billion for control of nuclear-plant maker Westinghouse Electric Co., is also in talks to sell a stake in the unit to state-run Kazatomprom in the country.
Marubeni owns 55 percent of the uranium mine venture. Kazakhstan, the world's third-biggest uranium miner, is spending $848 million to assemble fuel rods and overtake Canada and Australia as demand surges for nuclear power, Kazatomprom's President Mukhtar Dzhakishev said last month. It plans to buy a 10 percent stake in Westinghouse by the end of this year.