You're reading: Ukraine sends highly enriched uranium to Russia

Ukraine has sent a "significant portion" of its highly enriched uranium stock to Russia, in line with a deal with the United States aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

Kiev, which voluntarily gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited when the Soviet Union collapsed, agreed with Washington in April to get rid of the stocks entirely by 2012, and convert its civilian nuclear research facilities to operate with low enriched uranium fuel.

"Ukraine has fulfilled its obligations by removing a significant portion of these nuclear materials," the ministry said in a statement.

"In line with the United States’ obligations… Ukraine has received an equivalent amount of low enriched uranium for the needs of… scientific and research facilities." A ministry spokeswoman said the material had been sent to Russia.

A nuclear summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama in April vowed to lock down the world’s remaining supplies of highly enriched uranium within four years.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, said in a statement that 50 kg (111 lb) of uranium had been removed from three sites in Ukraine.

The agreement is designed to make it harder for militants to get hold of fissile material that could be used in an atomic bomb. The United States has said it would provide financial and technical assistance to Ukraine and was likely to store some of the highly enriched material on U.S. soil.

"The removal of this highly enriched uranium from Ukraine is a major milestone that brings us one step closer to achieving President Obama’s goal of securing all nuclear material around the world within four years," NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino said in the group’s statement.

NNSA and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) helped to coordinate the project to ship the material out of Ukraine, said an official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog in Vienna.

IAEA MONITORING

John Kelly, special programme manager for fuel repatriation at the IAEA, said there had been three shipments to Russia by aircraft from three research reactors in Ukraine in the last nine days or so, carried out under tight security.

"They were all successful … The fuel is already in Russia," he told Reuters. "This is highly valuable material."

In return, there had been two shipments to Ukraine of low-enriched uranium. Highly enriched uranium is usually defined as material enriched to a purity level of 20 percent or more. Around 90 percent enrichment is needed for bombs.

Kelly said the NNSA had provided funding and technical assistance and that the IAEA had helped to organise contracts for the transport.

Last week, the IAEA said about 2,500 kg (5,500 pounds) of highly-radioactive spent atomic fuel, including 13 kg of HEU spent fuel, had arrived safely in Russia after a secret trip under heavy security from Serbia. Serbia became the sixth country to eliminate all its highly enriched uranium since April 2009, when Obama set out his vision for ridding the world of nuclear weapons in a speech in Prague, the NNSA said.