NNSA completes 50th shipment under threat reduction program

From GSN Magazine: NNSA completes 50th shipment under threat reduction program

Almost 200 lbs of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) left Uzbekistan in the 50^th shipment of the dangerous nuclear fuel under a threat reduction agreement between the U.S. and Russia.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said on Nov. 1 it had successfully removed of 72.8 kilograms (160 lbs) of spent HEU fuel from the Institute of Nuclear Physics (INP) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, a former territory of the Soviet Union. The HEU will be stored in a specialized location in Russia.
HEU can be used to make nuclear weapons and the U.S. has been working to reduce and protect vulnerable nuclear and radiological material located at civilian sites worldwide.
The Nov. 1 shipment is the 50th under NNSA’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) cooperative program with Russia to return Russian-origin HEU. Since the program began 10 years ago, NNSA said it and its Russian counterparts have cooperated to successfully return more than 1,900 kilogramsl or over 4,000 lbs  of Russian-origin HEU to Russia  --  enough material to stock 75 nuclear weapons, said NNSA. The agency said the program has completely removed all Russian-origin HEU from six countries.
The HEU in the 50^th shipment was securely transported by air to a specialized facility in Russia, said NNSA. The complex operation was the culmination of a multi-year effort between the NNSA, Uzbekistan, numerous Russian partners including the nuclear regulator and the Russian Federation’s Nuclear Energy State Corporation (ROSATOM), and the International Atomic Energy Agency, said NNSA.
 “In the wrong hands this material could be used to make a nuclear weapon,” said NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino. “This shipment and our ongoing partnership with Russia demonstrate the positive effect our efforts have on the global effort to secure, consolidate and minimize the use of highly enriched uranium across the globe.”
NNSA said its GTRI program and Uzbekistan’s INP share a long history of cooperation on nuclear and radiological security issues. This is the seventh shipment of HEU from INP since 2006 and marks the complete clean-out of all HEU from the facility, said NNSA. GTRI also worked with INP to convert its research reactor from HEU to low enriched uranium (LEU) use, and to secure radiological sources that could be used for a dirty bomb, it said.