OVERVIEW OF TRANSPARENCY UNDER THE U.S.-RUSSIAN HIGHLY-ENRICHED URANIUM PURCHASE AGREEMENT

Under the Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU) Purchase Agreement , the United States is purchasing 500 metric tons of HEU from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons in the form of 15,000 metric tons of low enriched uranium (LEU) for use as power reactor fuel. Five facilities at four sites in Russia process HEU under the Agreement. The LEU is purchased by the U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC) and shipped to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant in Ohio, and then to the five U.S. nuclear fuel fabricators for fabrication into fuel for commercial power reactors. Transparency measures are being implemented at U.S. and Russian facilities that process uranium under the Agreement in order to provide confidence that the nonproliferation goals of the Agreement are met. Transparency procedures are contained in sixteen implementing annexes that have been negotiated in a series of Transparency Review Committee (TRC) meetings, the latest of which met in Moscow in February 1998. This paper summarizes the history of policy development and negotiation of transparency measures that are being implemented at U.S. and Russian facilities that process Uranium under the HEU Purchase Agreement.