America now imports 50 per cent of its nuclear fuel from Russia

UN, May 23, 2005 -- BBC Monitoring

Channelling the destructive power of nuclear warheads into the peaceful production of electricity is the purpose of the Russian-American intergovernmental agreement on HEU-LEU [high-enriched uranium and low-enriched uranium], which has now been in force for over 10 years. A joint presentation of the project, which is also known as "megatons into megawatts", took place at UN headquarters on Monday [23 May] in the framework of the review conference of the parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

The representative of Rosatom [Federal Agency for Atomic Energy], Vladimir Kuchinov, described the current year as a crucial one in the implementation of the agreement. He said that this summer it should cross a kind of quantitative "equator", once 250 tonnes of Russian HEU has been reprocessed into LEU for delivery as fuel to American nuclear power stations. The energy contained in the fuel which results from the dismantling of 10,000 nuclear warheads is equivalent to 4,000 supertankers carrying oil or 12m railway trucks laden with coal. Russian nuclear fuel meets 50 per cent of the needs of Russian nuclear power stations, which generate 10 per cent of the USA's electricity. Every year Russia receives 700m dollars from the implementation of the project, which, because of its commercial nature, does not cost the US taxpayer anything. This revenue is spent on improved security at Russian nuclear power stations, conversion and environmental rehabilitation of areas which were contaminated as a result of previous nuclear activities. The agreement is expected to have been fully implemented by the year 2013, by which time 500 tonnes of HEU will have been reprocessed and 20,000 warheads destroyed. [Passage omitted]

Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 2158 gmt 23 May 05

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