Action 61

While previously some Chinese officials had questioned the proliferation relevance of facilities with small amounts of material, they have subsequently recognized the importance of civil HEU minimization. This has resulted in both domestic conversion efforts as well as international cooperation with both the United States and the IAEA on civil HEU reduction.

China made concrete contributions to civilian HEU minimization by converting Chinese-origin Miniature Neutron Source Reactors from HEU to LEU fuel. China supported the conversion of Ghana’s Chinese-designed MNSR to LEU between 2015 and 2017, with technical support from the China Institute of Atomic Energy and cooperation with U.S. Argonne National Laboratory on LEU fuel design, processing and zero-power testing. China also supported the conversion of Nigeria’s MNSR to LEU in 2018 and the removal/repatriation of its remaining HEU fuel to China, after which Nigeria became HEU-free. These projects provided practical experience for converting other Chinese-origin MNSRs and contributed to reducing civilian HEU use abroad.

French operators (CEA, Framatome) are part of the Heracles EU-funded consortium to develop alternative technologies to highly-enriched uranium. The consortium developed in particular H2020 project such as the Heracles-CP (development on sound scientific understanding of the irradiation behaviour of UMo and advancing production techniques for dispersion fuel) from 2015 to 2019, LEU FOREvER (advancing production technology for dispersion and monolithic fuels and paving the way for high density U3Si2 fuels) from 2017 to 2021 and the EU-Qualify (research on medical isotopes) from 2020 to 2026.

Framatome has started cooperation with the Technical University of Munich in 2019 for the conversion of the FRM II reactor to low enriched uranium.

Russia participated in international efforts aimed at minimizing the use of highly enriched uranium in nuclear fuel for research reactors where it is technically feasible and economically justified.

Under the Agreement between Russia and the United States Concerning the Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Extracted from Nuclear Weapons (the HEU-LEU Agreement), 500 tonnes of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium were downblended and reprocessed into low enriched uranium.

Russia conducted feasibility studies on the conversion of six Russian research reactors from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium fuel under a 2010 agreement with the United States. In 2014, Russia completed the conversion of one research reactor.

From 2004 to 2016, Russia repatriated Russian-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel from 14 countries under the Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return (RRRFR) Program

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration completed the transfer of around 700kg of HEU from the UK’s Dounreay site to the US in 2019. This was publicly announced as a non-proliferation commitment and is the most significant UK civilian HEU minimisation action of the prior cycle.

In 1978, the Department of Energy established the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program to help minimize civilian use of highly enriched uranium. The U.S. Government’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative and subsequent 2016 reorganization into the NNSA’s Office of Material Management and Minimization continued these efforts. Since 1978, at least 109 research reactors and medical isotope facilities worldwide were either converted to LEU or confirmed shutdown.

Prior to the current Review Cycle, the NNSA also achieved success in helping Mo-99 production facilities in converting to high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) and supports the establishment of domestic supplies of Mo-99 without the use of proliferation-sensitive HEU. The NNSA’s progress on this issue prompted a joint certification in 2021 by the Secretaries of Energy and Health and Human Services that there was now enough worldwide supply of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 made without using HEU to meet the needs of patients in the United States, thus triggering a congressionally mandated ban on exports of HEU for foreign medical isotope production.