Skip to main content

DOE to Remove Highly Enriched Uranium From Nuclear Weapons Stockpile

Image
By Janice
The U.S. Department of Energy announced on Monday that its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will remove up to 200 metric tons (MT) of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the coming decades from the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. This would be the largest amount of special nuclear material to be removed from the stockpile in the history of the nuclear weapons program. The HEU will cease to be used as fissile material and instead will be prepared for other uses.

“The President’s decision to reduce the nuclear weapons stockpile by nearly half—to the smallest size since the Eisenhower administration—enables us to dispose of a significant amount of weapons-grade uranium,” Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said. “This is material that will never again be a part of a nuclear weapon.”

DOE will dispose of the additional HEU in the following ways:

*About 160 MT will be provided for use in naval ship power propulsion, postponing the need for construction of a new uranium high-enrichment facility for at least 50 years.
*About 20 MT will be down-blended to low enriched uranium (LEU) for eventual use in civilian nuclear power reactors, research reactors or related research. Down-blending this material will eliminate its potential usefulness to terrorists.
*Approximately 20 MT will be reserved for space and research reactors that currently use HEU, pending development of fuels that would enable the conversion to LEU fuel cores.
UPDATE: Click here to read the text of Secretary Bodman's announcement, which came during a speech at the 2005 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference.

Technorati tags: , , , ,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more