Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 10
By Demir Azizov - Trend:
Russia will take out the highly enriched spent nuclear fuel from Uzbekistan by late 2014, a source in the government circles told Trend on April 10 with reference to the Uzbek-Russian intergovernmental agreement signed on April 9.
It was previously reported that the cooperation agreement envisages returning the Russian-made highly enriched spent nuclear fuel to Russia for further processing.
No more than 30 liters in the form of UO2SO4 solution and no more than 5 kilograms of uranium enriched in the U-235 isotope will be supplied from the Uzbek research reactor IIN -3M. The spent nuclear fuel will be transported to Russia for the temporary technological storage with further processing.
The agreement was signed by the head of the Rosatom state corporation Sergey Kiriyenko and the head of the state inspection on supervision for geological subsoil surveying, safe operations in industry, mining and household sectors under the Uzbek Cabinet of Ministers, Bakhtiyor Guljamov.
As a result of implementation of the agreement, there will be no highly enriched nuclear fuel in Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan and Russia signed an intergovernmental agreement in 2012 on cooperation on import of irradiated nuclear fuel from research reactors to Russia.
The irradiated fuel from Uzbekistan's research reactors is imported to Russia for recycling and replacing with low-enriched fuel and subsequently is delivered back to Uzbekistan, according to the document.
Uzbekistan is a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
The nuclear-weapon-free-zone in Central Asia was created at the initiative of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, put forward at the 48th session of the UN General Assembly in September of 1993.
This is one of the five nuclear-weapon-free-zones on the planet and the first such zone created in the northern hemisphere, which directly borders with two states possessing nuclear weapons.
Translated by N.H., L.Z.
Edited by S.I.