The White House on Thursday released a specific accounting of U.S. highly enriched uranium holdings as of Sept. 30, 2013. This was the first such release in 15 years, according to a fact sheet issued on the first day of the Obama administration’s fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit.
The possibility that terrorists might access nuclear weapon-usable uranium has been a major concern around the globe for years, and the United States has led efforts to wean the world off the material and nuclear reactors that use it.
The United States, from 1996 to 2013, reduced its HEU stocks from 740.7 metric tons to 585.6 metric tons, the White House said. That was a drop of more than 20 percent, and another 7.1 metric tons of HEU have since been downblended under the Department of Energy’s materials disposition program.
Of the HEU holdings as of late 2013, 499.4 metric tons were for national security or non-national security programs such as nuclear weapons, naval propulsion, nuclear energy, and science, the fact sheet said. Within the other 86.2 metric tons, 41.6 metric tons was ready for potential downblending to low-enriched uranium or disposal as low-level waste, while 44.6 metric tons was in spent reactor fuel.
In a separate fact sheet, the White House expressed support for a 2014 congressional mandate that the Navy and Department of Energy look at setting up a program to develop low-enriched uranium fuel for U.S. naval reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers.
“The United States has studied the feasibility of using low-enriched uranium in naval reactors and documented the conclusions from these studies in public reports to Congress that were issued in 1995 and 2014. These studies concluded that existing naval reactor designs are not conducive to using low enriched uranium due to the significant impact this would have on reactor lifetime, size, and ship costs,” the White House said. “However, the 2014 report to Congress concluded that the potential exists to develop an advanced fuel system that could increase uranium loading beyond what is practical today while meeting the rigorous performance requirements for naval reactors. Such an advanced fuel system might allow using low enriched uranium fuel with less impact on reactor lifetime, size, and ship costs.”
