U.S. TRANSPARENCY MONITORING OF HEU WEAPONS COMPONENT CONVERSION AT TWO RUSSIAN OXIDATION PLANTS

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 low enriched uranium (LEU) for use as power reactor fuel. HEU components from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons are shipped to two oxidation plants located at the Siberian Chemical Enterprises (SChE), in Seversk, and the Mayak Production Association (Mayak), in Ozersk, Russia. The HEU components, all specific details of which are either classified or sensitive Russian national security information, are transported in sealed transport containers. At SChE and Mayak the HEU components are first destroyed by machining them to HEU metal shavings. The HEU metal shavings are burned to HEU oxide in furnaces, the burned HEU oxide is purified using a chemical purification process, and the purified HEU oxide is then packaged and shipped to other facilities to complete the processing. 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. This paper presents an overview of the processing of HEU components to oxide at SChE and Mayak and the U.S. transparency procedures that have been implemented at these two facilities in order to provide confidence that the nonproliferation goals of the HEU Purchase Agreement are met.