Russian plane lands at Moscow with enriched Uranium from Germany

Moscow, Dec 18 (UNI) A Russian cargo plane carrying about 330 kg of enriched Uranium from Germany today landed at an airport near here.

The Uranium was supplied to the Rossendorf nuclear research center, shut down in 1991, as part of the bilateral cooperation agreements between the former Soviet Union and former German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Russian Federal Nuclear Power Agency (Rosatom) said in a statement.

The 1.31 million dollars relocation, funded by Germany, falls under the Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return (RRRFR) programme, designed to reduce global stockpiles of highly enriched Uranium.

The shipment includes about 268 kg of highly enriched Uranium and 58 kg of low-enriched Uranium, planned to be used at one of Russia's nuclear power plants.

Since 2004, Russia has also repatriated new highly enriched Uranium from Soviet-built plants in eight other countries, including Serbia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Libya, Latvia, Poland and Uzbekistan.

Rosatom delivers nuclear fuel from research reactors built in Russia in compliance with the Russian-US inter-governmental agreement of May 27, 2004 on the return of nuclear fuel with assistance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Under the agreement, Russia and the US have already scrapped 433 kg of highly-enriched Uranium.

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