Americas

Americas

U.S. announces removal of highly enriched uranium from Ukraine

27 March 2012 19:51 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The United States announced on Tuesday the removal of all highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Ukraine, just as the second Nuclear Security Summit concluded in Seoul, South Korea, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

With the final shipment of 128 kg of HEU from two remaining sites in Ukraine completed on Tuesday, a total of 234 kg of HEU have been shipped out of the country over a two-year period, the White House said.

When they met for the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych pledged to remove all of Ukraine’s HEU by the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit.

Ukraine’s HEU was returned to Russia, where it will be downblended into low enriched uranium (LEU). Unlike HEU, LEU can not be used to make nuclear weapons.

In exchange, the United States has shipped to Ukraine replacement LEU fuel and is helping construct a state-of-the-art Neutron Source Facility (NSF) for the country, the White House said.

It said the NSF will be equipped with the most up-to-date technology to operate at the highest safety standards and will provide Ukraine with new research capabilities and the ability to produce over 50 different industrial and medical isotopes.

In his speech in Prague in April 2009, Obama called for an international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world within four years.

The two-day Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul ended on Tuesday with more than 50 world leaders calling for tighter measures to keep vulnerable nuclear materials out of the wrong hands.