Russian-American program to retrieve spent nuclear fuel prolonged to 2024

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MOSCOW. Dec 30 (Interfax) – The Russian-American program to retrieve spent nuclear fuel of Russian production from other countries has been prolonged until 2024. Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom told Interfax that Russia and the United States exchanged their notes on this agreement.

Rosatom was previously planning to round off the program in 2016. The Russian-American program is being carried out in order to bolster nuclear non-proliferation and involves retrieving spent fuel from 14 countries – Belarus, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, Germany, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Libya, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

The program was launched in 2004 and should have been rounded off by 2010, but fuel was retrieved after that from some countries where research reactors continue to run partly on HEU. The U.S., too, has retrieved spent fuel from countries where research reactors used American highly enriched uranium (HEU).

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