US Purchase of Russian Highly Enriched Uranium Recovered From Nuclear Weapons (1993)

In 1993 the United States agreed to buy five hundred tonnes of highly enriched uranium out of dismantled Soviet warheads, blend it down to reactor grade, and burn it in American power stations. The arrangement ran for twenty years and is usually called Megatons to Megawatts. For much of that period a substantial share of American nuclear electricity came from material that had been pointed at the country.

SECY-93-082, dated 31 March 1993, is how that looked from inside the regulator while it was still new: an information paper from the Executive Director for Operations to the Commissioners, opening with a reference back to three earlier papers on the subject.

After nearly one year of intensive bilateral discussions, an Agreement on Disposition of HEU was signed between the U.S. and the Russian Federation.

The rest proceeds in the same register. Background, discussion, coordination, attachments.