Czech Republic Sends Highly Enriched Uranium to Russia

The Czech Republic, with support from the United States and several other nations, last week returned 176 pounds of highly enriched uranium to Russia, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 18).

Moscow and Washington are operating a joint program to return potential nuclear weapon material to Russia from former Soviet allies.

The spent fuel had been stored at the Nuclear Research Institute in Rez near Prague.  It was shipped by train through Slovakia and Ukraine to a Russian reprocessing site. 

The Russian facility over several years is expected to blend the material down until it can no longer be used in weapons.

The U.S. Energy Department has supported repatriating Russian-origin nuclear materials to prevent their theft from what are often inadequately secured storage sites in former Soviet allied states.

“These shipments of highly enriched uranium spent fuel represent an important milestone in our campaign to reduce stockpiles of nuclear material worldwide,” said Thomas D’Agostino, head of the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration (Karel Janicek, Associated Press/PR-inside, Dec. 10).

Workers loaded the uranium into 16 specially made shipping casks which were then escorted by security personnel from the research institute to a train station near Rez, the U.S. agency said.  The material was placed inside special railroad cars for transport (National Nuclear Security Administration release, Dec. 11).

“This is an example of the international community working collectively to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, and is the kind of concrete international security action that increases both U.S. security and that of our allies,” said Richard Graber, the U.S. ambassador to Prague.

The shipment was carried out through the U.S.-Russian Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which to date has helped return 1,298 pounds of highly enriched uranium to Russia from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, Libya, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The Czech uranium that arrived Saturday in Russia was the largest quantity of highly enriched uranium shipped under the program at one time, the embassy said (Janicek, AP).

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