More than 150 metric tons of Russian highly enriched uranium, the equivalent of 6,000 nuclear weapons, has been eliminated to date through the U.S.-Russian “Megatons to Megawatts” program, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation said yesterday (see GSN, May 10).

Under the program, USEC purchases uranium taken from Russian nuclear weapons for use as fuel in U.S. nuclear power plants.  Since 1994, the program has provided enough fuel to power a city the size of Boston for about 230 years, USEC said in a press release.

When the Megatons to Megawatts program is completed — scheduled to be in 2013 — 500 metric tons of uranium taken from Russian nuclear weapons will have been converted into enough nuclear fuel to power the entire United States for two years, USEC said.  So far, the program has completed about one-third of its 20-year goal, USEC and Techsnabexport, the Russian agent for the program, said in a joint statement.

“Each and every day, the Megatons to Megawatts program eliminates more nuclear warhead material.  And from this warhead material we derive a valuable resource — clean-burning nuclear fuel, used to light and power our nation from coast to coast,” USEC President and Chief Executive Officer William Timbers said at a press conference yesterday in Washington.

“We have reached a milestone on the way to a better future,” said Techsnabexport General Director Vladimir Smirnov.  “The celebration today would be inconceivable without the constant cooperation of the executive agents, the goodwill they have demonstrated so many times and their constant readiness to seek mutually acceptable solutions.”

The United States and Russia signed an agreement in 1993 to create the Megatons to Megawatts program.  Russia is expected to receive $8 billion from its participation (U.S. Enrichment Corporation release, Oct. 3).

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