Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
5/29/2015
In a capstone to the successful ‘Megatons to Megawatts’ program, President Barack Obama this week terminated an executive order that had been intended to ensure payments to Russia under the program would not be impacted by lawsuits. Under the “Megatons to Megawatts” program, 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium was removed from Russian nuclear weapons, and converted it to low enriched uranium for use in U.S. commercial nuclear reactors. Executive Order 13617, issued in 2012, had been intended to prevent payments to Russia under the program 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,” the White House said in a letter to Congress this week.
The Megatons to Megawatts program was completed in 2013, and its letter to Congress this week, the White House said that all payments to Russia under the program have been completed. “With the successful conversion of 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium extracted from Russian nuclear weapons into low enriched uranium, the transfer to the United States of that low enriched uranium for use as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors, and the completion of all payments to the Russian Federation, there is no further need for the protective blocking imposed by Executive Order 13617,” the letter says.
