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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Russia ready to join US-led uranium fuel bank
2005-09-28
VIENNA - Russia is ready to join the United States in creating a bank of uranium fuel for countries which pledge not to make enriched uranium but wants strict regulations, the Russian atomic chief said on Tuesday. “We support this American initiative,” Alexander Rumyantsev, who is head of the Russian federal nuclear agency, said in Vienna.

But he said it should be “incorporated in international agreements” since current US-Russian efforts to turn weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) into low-enriched uranium (LEU) were governed under a bilateral, US-Russian political agreement.

The fuel bank should be overseen by the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, Rumyantsev said. “The IAEA is the organization that will have to develop the regulations and rules for such a mechanism,” he said.
'cause we all know how vigilant the IAEA is.
The United States is ready to convert HEU into LEU, which does not have a proliferation risk, and offer it to countries which give up the enrichment process, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Monday in a statement read out on his behalf.

A senior US diplomat said the offer was made in order to ”kick-start” the creation of a multinational fuel bank so that countries could have access to nuclear fuel without having the capability to make it themselves. This so-called “break-out” capability is a proliferation risk since HEU can be either fuel for reactors or bomb material. LEU, which is also reactor fuel, is not a direct bomb risk.

Both US President George W. Bush and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei have made proposals to create an international fuel service but details have never been made clear. The senior US diplomat said Bodman was trying to deliver the message “that the United States strongly supports the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

The diplomat said the exact amount of HEU the United States is ready to “blend down” is 17.4 metric tons, which is enough for hundreds of atom bombs and would make enough low enriched uranium to power 10 nuclear reactors. The HEU is an amount “currently in the US inventory but declared in excess of national security needs.” The blended-down LEU will be “available about 2009.”
Smart idea, but if it's our HEU, we should control the blend down, and if it's Russia's, they should control it. Not that I don't trust the IAEA or anything, but ...
Posted by:Steve White

#1  It's only for the four hole Toaster.
Posted by: Shipman   2005-09-28 18:41  

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