Megatons to Megawatts Reaches Milestone

Our friend Charles Yulish at USEC sent us a note this week to remind us of a very important milestone achieved this week by "Megatons to Megawatts":

Megatons to Megawatts (M2M) program—elimination of the 10,000th nuclear warhead—the half way mark in this program.

250 metric tons of HEU from Russian warheads has been diluted and recycled into fuel for American power reactors -- 10 percent of America’s electricity is produced using M2M fuel.

Nuclear power plants are helping to make the world safer by using this fuel, which is derived from warhead material that is diluted in Russia and shipped to America for use in the nation’s nuclear power reactors.

The fuel is no longer bomb-grade, and can’t be used as a weapon. It is identical to the low enriched fuel produced in U.S. and other facilities and safely transported globally for more than half a century.

USEC Inc. is the U.S. executive agent operating this program, at no cost to American taxpayers.

The program will continue through 2013, when 500 metric tons of Russian warhead material, equal to 20,000 nuclear warheads, will have been eliminated by the Megatons to Megawatts process.

Click here for our original piece on the program earlier this year. And congratulations to everyone at USEC for a job well done.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Electricity, USEC, Nonproliferation

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