A U.S. nuclear storage facility today will receive the final shipment of decommissioned nuclear warheads from Russia, NPR reports. Since 1993 the Russian uranium has been generating 10 percent of all electricity consumed in the U.S., part of a deal struck with the former Soviet state when its nuclear industry, crippled by arms reduction agreements, was struggling to make
ends meet. Negotiations began when a U.S. official visited Russia in the early 1990s and found bomb-grade uranium from thousands of decommissioned warheads lying around in crumbling storage facilities. Concerned that the radioactive material was unsecured and vulnerable to theft, the U.S. asked to buy it. Russian officials reluctantly agreed to convert roughly 500 tons of bomb-grade uranium into nuclear fuel and sell it to the U.S. Experts say it was a win-win scenario: Russia made a substantial profit ($17 billion), U.S. power plants could buy the uranium at a good price, and 20,000 bombs’ worth of radioactive material was converted into relatively clean electricity. The deal will go down in history as one of the greatest diplomatic achievements ever, one expert told NPR.
Russian uranium ready for shipment to U.S.