ORNL specialists help move Poland uranium to Russia

ORNL specialists help move Poland uranium to Russia

Sunday, August 13th 2006

Nuclear specialists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory participated in a project that removed about 90 pounds of weapons-usable uranium from Poland to a safe location in Russia, a lab official said Friday.

“ORNL personnel were involved both in the initial assessment which took place over six months ago and in the removal, which occurred earlier this week,” Larry Satkowiak, the laboratory’s director of nuclear nonproliferation programs, said in an e-mail response to questions.

The Oak Ridge experts were part of a team put together by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Global Threat Reduction.

The U.S. government is actively working with other countries to secure nuclear materials that are in vulnerable locations.

In a statement released to the news media this week in Washington, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman lauded the work in Poland.

“This is another example of the international community working collectively to reduce the threat of terrorism,” Bodman said.

The uranium removed from Poland was the highest amount secured under the program launched two years ago.

Satkowiak said the highly enriched uranium fuel was a particular concern because the material’s form would be “highly desirable for weapons use in an improvised nuclear device.”

Analysts say that nuclear terrorists, if they gained access to fissile material such as highly enriched uranium, could quickly assemble a crude weapon and detonate it on the spot – with potentially catastrophic results.

The uranium fuel was relocated from Poland to Dimitrovgrad, Russia, “for temporary safe storage,” Satkowiak said. ORNL personnel earlier were involved in a project that upgraded the safeguards and security at the storage facility at Dimtrovgrad, he said.

The nuclear material was returned to Russia because that’s where it originated, officials said.

The uranium fuel will be blended down with other stocks to reduce its enrichment – the percentage of U-235 – and eliminate the material’s weapons capability, Satkowiak said.

“ORNL also provides many of the monitors (who) oversee the blend-down of this type of material at Dimitrovgrad,” he said.

The Oak Ridge laboratory is playing an “extended role” in a number of projects that support the federal Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, Satkowiak said. In recent months, ORNL workers have assisted the relocation of uranium from vulnerable sites in Libya and Uzbekistan to Russia.

In another project earlier this year, uranium experts from the Y-12 National Security Complex worked with counterparts in Argentina to relocate uranium fuel from a reactor in Buenos Aires to a storage facility in Oak Ridge.

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