US, Russia cooperate on securing spent nuke fuel

October 23, 2008
US, Russia cooperate on securing spent nuke fuel
Posted by Jonathan Landay - McClatchy Blog

Even as the United States and Russia spare over Georgia, U.S. missile defense plans and Iran, the two sides have been quietly working to ensure that nuclear materials stay out of the hands of terrorists.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, overseer of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Thursday announced the "successful" completion of a hush-hush operation in which nearly 341 pounds of spent Soviet-era highly enriched uranium fuel were transported from Hungary to a secure facility in Russia.

The shipment was the largest of four shipments of spent HEU reactor fuel removed from facilities in former Soviet bloc countries and deposited in secure facilities over a year-long period. The other three countries are the Czech Republic, Latvia and Bulgaria. The NNSA explained that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union supplied HEU fuel to research reactors run by its allies and republics.

The NNSA said it worked closely with Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, the International Atomic Energy Agency and EURATOM, the European nuclear agency, to transport the spent HEU from Hungary to Russia.

The material was loaded into 13 special casks, transported under high security by rail to the Slovenian port of Koper, shipped in a special cargo vessel to a secure seaport in Russia and then taken by train to a secure storage site.

So perhaps the state of U.S.-Russian relations is better than generally believed. On the other hand . . .