Vietnam Signs Reactor Conversion Deal With U.S.

Vietnam and the United States have agreed to a plan to modify a Vietnamese nuclear research reactor to use low-enriched uranium fuel and to transfer the site’s current supply of highly enriched uranium to Russia, the Energy Department announced yesterday (see GSN, March 8).

“We commend the government of Vietnam and applaud their leadership in taking this significant step to protect nuclear material,” Thomas D’Agostino, acting administrator of the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a press release (National Nuclear Security Administration release, March 19).

The announcement followed contract talks earlier this month in Vienna between Vietnam, Russia and International Atomic Energy Agency officials to set the details for the fuel removal.  The reactor’s fuel assemblies currently use uranium containing 36 percent of the uranium 235 isotope, well below weapon-grade (Greg Webb, GSN, March 19).

The project to convert the reactor at Dalat to use low-enriched uranium fuel would be funded by the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, a U.S.-Russian effort to repatriate highly enriched uranium that the two nations distributed globally to nuclear reactors during the Cold War (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2006).

Under contracts signed this week, the United States would provide a new batch of low-enriched fuel for the reactor.  In addition, Vietnam would implement security upgrades at Dalat and other sites with radioactive materials (NNSA release).

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