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HEU Returned to Russia By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — The Czech Republic transferred 6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to Russia yesterday as part of U.S.-Russian effort to consolidate and secure nuclear weapon-usable materials that the two superpowers once distributed widely around the world (see GSN, Sept. 14). The Czech uranium had originally been supplied by the Soviet Union to a research reactor facility at Rez, near Prague, but the fuel was never irradiated in the reactor. Such fresh fuel could be particularly attractive to terrorists seeking to acquire crude nuclear weapons. The uranium was returned through a joint mission involving the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The material was loaded into four specialized transportation containers in a one-day secret operation that finished yesterday under observation by IAEA and U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration experts. It was then airlifted under guard from a Prague airport to a secure facility in Russia, where it will be blended down to a lower enrichment level, according to a U.S. Energy Department release. “The recovery, return and eventual elimination of this highly enriched uranium is an important milestone in our efforts to reduce this dangerous nuclear material worldwide,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement. “We applaud the strong leadership of the Czech Republic for taking measures to secure this material and working cooperatively with the United States, Russia and the IAEA to successfully return it to Russia.” The fuel had been kept at a Soviet-designed 10-megawatt research reactor, and in 2000, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Czech Nuclear Research Institute completed a project to improve the security of the material until it could be returned to Russia. Praising the successful mission as “a nice little Christmas present for the world,” Matthew Bunn of Harvard University’s Managing the Atom Project said today that additional progress was needed to repatriate Russian-origin HEU fuel that has been irradiated in reactors. Russia has so far refused to accept that spent material, citing the need to conduct environmental assessments prior to each shipment. The Energy Department, though, has requested without success that Moscow conduct a single environmental assessment for the entire spent fuel repatriation program. This Czech Republic mission was carried out through the U.S. Global Threat Reduction Initiative — an effort launched in May to secure stockpiles of nuclear and radiological materials around the world. As part of the initiative, the United States plans to aid the repatriation of all Russian-origin fresh reactor fuel by the end of next year and all Russian-origin spent fuel by 2010, as well as complete the repatriation of all U.S.-origin spent research reactor fuel within a decade. This fall, more than 90 nations expressed support for the initiative during a two-day meeting held in Vienna (see GSN, Sept. 22). Concerns have been raised, though, that the commissioning by Nigeria in October of an HEU-fueled research reactor supplied by China could set back the overall goals of the effort (see GSN, Oct. 1). Since August 2002, more than 100 kilograms of Russian-origin fresh highly enriched uranium has been repatriated from research reactors located in six countries, including Bulgaria, Libya, Serbia, Romania and Uzbekistan.
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