All of the highly enriched uranium in Hungary has been removed thanks to a joint effort between the United States, Russia, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Hungary, the Department of Energy said yesterday. The HEU cleanout—the 12th completed by the NNSA’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative—was completed in three shipments over the last six weeks as 49.2 kilograms of HEU was shipped to Russia, where it will be downblended into low enriched uranium that can be used in nuclear power reactors. A total of 239.2 kilograms of HEU was transported from Hungary to Russia since the HEU cleanout began in 2008. the cleanout was made possible when the Budapest Research Reactor at Hungary’s Atomic Energy Research Institute was converted from using HEU to LEU in 2009. “The removal of Hungary’s remaining HEU inventory shows the overwhelming response of the international community to President Obama’s call to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement. “We know that in the wrong hands, just small amounts of these materials could be used to create a weapon of mass destruction. This operation in Hungary and our ongoing partnerships with countries around the world help to ensure that terrorists never obtain a nuclear weapon.”
Jobs