The United States and 20 other nations are following through on a pledge made at the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit to reduce and eventually end use of nuclear weapon-grade uranium in the civilian sector.
The nations laid out a four-part agenda in a Jan. 30 joint statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency, first reported Thursday by the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM).
“The aim of the Joint Statement on Minimising and Eliminating the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Applications is for States … to commit themselves to the elements of a comprehensive plan aimed at minimising – and ultimately eliminating – the use of HEU ¡n civilian applications,” according to the statement.
The participating nations are Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Indonesia was also a signatory to the highly enriched uranium minimization “gift basket” at the fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit, but did not sign on to the IAEA document – likely because it no longer holds any HEU, IPFM said.
The United States has supported global efforts to draw down use of highly enriched uranium in research reactors and other civilian applications, with the aim of ensuring terrorists cannot obtain material that could be used to produce nuclear weapons. Its efforts have included funding development of technologies for medical isotope production without HEU and helping convert domestic and foreign reactors to more proliferation-resistant fuels.
The 21 governments made commitments in four broad areas:
- Refraining from employing HEU in new civilian facilities or programs, including research reactors, various other reactors, critical and subcritical assemblies, and production of radioactive isotopes.
- Shuttering HEU-fueled reactors, or converting them to other fuels, “as soon as economically and technically feasible.” The nations also pledged to continue development of high-density low-enriched uranium fuels and to share their knowledge and technologies, “within appropriate conditions.”
- To return all civilian highly enriched uranium to the nation of origin, or dispose of or downblend the material, “where economically and technically feasible, and where there are viable non-HEU alternatives.” The nations would also support regional anti-HEU activities and process surplus stocks of the material.
- Advancing use of low-enriched uranium for medical isotope manufacturing, including converting existing molybdenum-99 production sites to 100 percent of LEU targets by the end of this year; and emphasizing worldwide efforts to speed the process of licensing production of “non-HEU-based Mo-99 and its daughter product technetium-99m.”
