March 17, 2014

NNSA ANNOUNCES CZECH REPUBLIC HEU CLEANOUT

By ExchangeMonitor

Approximately 150 pounds of highly enriched uranium has been removed from a research reactor in the Czech Republic in a multi-national effort led by the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Russian-origin material was removed from the Czech Republic’s Nuclear Research Institute in Rez and taken to Russia, where it will be downblended into nuclear fuel. With the shipment, all highly enriched uranium has been shipped out of the Czech Republic; the Czech Republic is the 10^th country to be cleaned out of HEU since President Obama announced a four-year goal to secure vulnerable nuclear material in April of 2009. A total of 180 kilograms of HEU has been removed from the Czech Republic by the NNSA’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative in six shipments since 2004.

The Obama Administration announced the Czech Republic cleanout on April 5, the four-year anniversary of President Obama’s landmark nuclear security speech in Prague. The NNSA said more than 1,400 kilograms of HEU and plutonium have been secured by the global community since Obama’s speech. “Since President Obama laid out his nuclear security vision in Prague in 2009, the United States and our international partners have made remarkable strides in reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism by securing, consolidating and eliminating weapons-usable nuclear materials,” acting NNSA Administrator Neile Miller said in a statement. “Today we can say without a doubt that the world is safer from nuclear terrorism than it was four years ago. This shipment of HEU from the Czech Republic is an important part of our continuing efforts to ensure that terrorists never acquire a nuclear weapon, and our work moving forward will make us even safer.”

Comments are closed.