President Barack Obama on Tuesday terminated a state of emergency geared toward curbing any potential risks posed by an accumulation of weapons-usable fissile material in Russia. Determining that it was no longer needed, Obama revoked a 2012 executive order that was issued to help protect highly enriched uranium from creditors, and to ensure that Russia received all payments due to it under a 1993-established uranium transfer program, the President wrote in a Tuesday letter to Congress. Under the “Megatons to Megawatts” program, scientists extracted 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from Russian nuclear weapons, and converted it to low enriched uranium for use in U.S. commercial nuclear reactors. The program also insulated the HEU from the hands of terrorists.
The U.S. has completed all payments to Russia, the letter states. “Executive Order 13617 and its predecessor, Executive Order 13159 of June 22, 2000, helped to ensure the preservation and proper and complete transfer to the Government of the Russian Federation of all payments due to it under the HEU Agreements, thereby protecting those assets from attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process, which would have had the effect of jeopardizing the full implementation of the HEU Agreements to the detriment of U.S. national security and foreign policy,” Obama’s letter states.