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WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States and Russia are marking the end of a 20-year program to convert highly enriched uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons into fuel for U.S. power plants.
The final shipment arrived in Baltimore this week. The shipment was loaded last month from St. Petersburg, Russia. It was the last one under a program known as Megatons to Megawatts. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz called the program one of the most successful nuclear nonproliferation partnerships ever undertaken.
Under an agreement signed in 1993, Russia was offered financial incentives to dismantle thousands of nuclear weapons, keeping vast stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium away from terrorists and supplying electricity to the U.S.
About 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium, the equivalent of about 20,000 nuclear warheads, has been converted into fuel for U.S. nuclear reactors.
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