DOE to Remove Highly Enriched Uranium From Nuclear Weapons Stockpile

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: Nuclear Energy, Security, Uranium, Department of Energy, Nonproliferation