2007 press releases

U.S. – Czech Cooperation in Nuclear Non-Proliferation

U.S. National Nuclear Safety Administration and Czech Nuclear Research Institute Remove Highly Enriched Uranium Nuclear Fuel from Czech Republic

Prague, December 10, 2007

The U. S. Embassy commends the Czech Republic and the Rez Nuclear Institute for their extraordinary leadership and cooperation to promote our common objective of nuclear non-proliferation.  With assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), 80 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in spent nuclear fuel was safely and securely returned to Russia from the Nuclear Research Institute in Rez, Czech Republic on December 8, 2007. 

"These shipments of highly enriched uranium spent fuel represent an important milestone in our campaign to reduce stockpiles of nuclear material worldwide," said NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino. 

"This is an example of the international community working collectively to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, and is the kind of concrete international security action that increases both U.S. security and that of our allies," according to U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Richard Graber.

Through NNSA’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative, the United States worked in cooperation with the Czech Republic, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The spent fuel was packaged into 16 specialized transportation casks and transported under guard from the Nuclear Research Institute to a railroad station near Rez, Czech Republic.  The casks were then loaded onto special railroad cars and shipped through Slovakia and Ukraine to a secure Russian facility, where the spent fuel will be reprocessed over the next several years.  Representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Embassy in Prague, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) witnessed the loading and departure of the final shipment. 

This shipment from the Czech Republic is in accordance with a prioritized, accelerated schedule developed in fulfillment of the 2005 Bush-Putin Joint Statement on Nuclear Security Cooperation, which specifically called for the United States and Russia to return highly enriched uranium fuel from U.S. and Russian-designed research reactors in third countries.  This is the single biggest shipment to return Russian-origin spent fuel in support of the Bratislava Joint Statement on Nuclear Security Cooperation. 

The mission of the U.S. Government’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative is to reduce and protect vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials located at civilian sites worldwide.  With the successful completion of this spent fuel shipment, a total of approximately 590 kilograms of highly enriched uranium fuel has been returned to Russia from Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Libya, Uzbekistan, Poland, Germany, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Vietnam.