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Russian HEU Overview










US-RUSSIAN HEU Agreement
The Megatons to Megawatts Program

The U.S.-Russian HEU Agreement (also termed the "Megatons to Megawatts Program") is a unique government-industry partnership, under which Russia is dismantling some of its old Soviet era nuclear warheads, removing the highly enriched uranium (HEU) and blending this HEU with uranium of lower U-235 enrichment levels to produce commercial-grade, low-enriched uranium (LEU) for use in nuclear power plants.

This LEU is shipped to the USA, where it is delivered by USEC Inc. to its uranium enrichment customers and then used by customers to generate electricity.

The program was initiated in 1991 with discussions between the U.S. and Russian governments. These discussions led to a government-to-government agreement in 1993, followed by a commercial contract between USEC Inc. and Russia's Techsnabexport (TENEX) and the first shipments of LEU in 1995. In 1999, TENEX signed contracts with Cameco, COGEMA, Nukem, and GNSS to sell a portion of the natural uranium content of this LEU, after USEC decided it could use only the enrichment services contained in the LEU. In November 2003, TENEX announced that it was terminating its contract with GNSS, effective at the start of 2004; this issue is currently under adjudication in the U.S. court system and in arbitration proceedings in Sweden.

The program runs through the year 2013, at which time 500 metric tons of Russian nuclear warhead uranium (the equivalence of 20,000 warheads) will have been converted into nuclear fuel. Presently, this weapons-derived LEU provides over 10 percent of America's electricity.












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