Nuclear twist: when Russia's old warheads warm US homes

Nuclear Power Daily ^ | 4/11/2010 | AFP via Nuclear Power

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

enmity on the melt, uranium from what once were Russian nuclear warheads is used to heat and light American homes, thanks to the Megatons to Megawatts Program -- a successful example of nuclear non-proliferation. The 20-year agreement was signed back in 1994 between Russia and the United States.

"Megatons to Megawatts is the most successful non-proliferation program in history," argues Philip Sewell, senior vice-president at USEC, a private US company that runs the agreement that turns highly enriched uranium into lightly enriched uranium.

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the administration of George H.W. Bush started negotiating how to get rid of stocks of nuclear arms dismantled in the former Soviet Union.

In 1994, the United States and Russia cut a practical-minded deal to turn 500 metric tonnes of highly enriched uranium, the equivalent of 20,000 nuclear warheads, into weakly enriched uranium that could be used in US nuclear power plants.

The deal so far has made it possible to reprocess 15,000 nuclear warheads stockpiled in the Russian federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan between 1950-1987.

When it expires in 2013, the program will have handled 20,000 nuclear warheads, and supplied the United States with about 10 percent of its annual power use, or half of its nuclear energy.

[The Antiyuppie]

“Nuclear twist: when Russia’s old warheads warm US homes”

...to 72 degrees, not 7,200,000, fortunately.