The United States has help Ukraine send two atomic bombs worth of weapons grade uranium to Russia through a secret process over the holidays, the Obama administration confirmed Thursday on msnbc's The Rachel Maddow Show. The elimination of more than 111 pounds of highly enriched uranium followed a pledge by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to obtain rid of all of his country's extremely enriched uranium by April 2012.
"The Ukraine, they recognize they’re division of the international community, they know how dangerous this material is," Thomas D’Agistino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, tell Maddow. The material will be blend down in Russia, representation it useless for bomb making, the connected Press said. Yanukovych decided to give up the uranium in a multinational contract announced at a nuclear security summit hosted by President Barack Obama in April.
Shipments like the one just finished from Serbia result in permanent threat reduction because they remove weapons-usable nuclear material at civilian sites. Securing the amterial will avoid it from lessening into the wrong hands, officials say. As an inducement, the United States is given that replacement low-enriched uranium that can be used for Ukraine's research reactors. The summit contract also has the United States construction a $25 million "neutron source facility" nuclear research project for Ukraine, the administration said. The facility will be capable to make 50 different types of medical isotopes, using only low enriched uranium.
"The Ukraine, they recognize they’re division of the international community, they know how dangerous this material is," Thomas D’Agistino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, tell Maddow. The material will be blend down in Russia, representation it useless for bomb making, the connected Press said. Yanukovych decided to give up the uranium in a multinational contract announced at a nuclear security summit hosted by President Barack Obama in April.
Shipments like the one just finished from Serbia result in permanent threat reduction because they remove weapons-usable nuclear material at civilian sites. Securing the amterial will avoid it from lessening into the wrong hands, officials say. As an inducement, the United States is given that replacement low-enriched uranium that can be used for Ukraine's research reactors. The summit contract also has the United States construction a $25 million "neutron source facility" nuclear research project for Ukraine, the administration said. The facility will be capable to make 50 different types of medical isotopes, using only low enriched uranium.
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