Enriched uranium, from Serbia to Russia

The International Atomic Energy Agency is touting its role in the transfer of nuclear material from Serbia to a more secure facility in Russia. The fuel repatriation mission used trucks, trains and ships to move the fuel rods – some containing Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) – out of Serbia, where they posed both security and ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is touting its role in the transfer of nuclear material from Serbia to a more secure facility in Russia.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is touting its role in the transfer of nuclear material from Serbia to a more secure facility in Russia.

The fuel repatriation mission used trucks, trains and ships to move the fuel rods – some containing Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) – out of Serbia, where they posed both security and environmental risks. Decades after the Soviet Union had built and fuelled the research reactor at the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, the condition of the fuel had deteriorated, spurring a coalition of international partners to repackage the fuel elements and ship them back to Russia. Vinca´s first shipment of HEU fresh fuel was returned in 2002, and today´s delivery of spent fuel is the last of the reactor´s inventory.

A BBC reporter had access to the transfer and provided some interesting color:

About 3,000 Serbian police have been drafted in for the operation. The roads have been cleared of traffic and police line the route.

With a helicopter buzzing overhead, the convoy heads north toward Subotica near the Hungarian border. It arrives at dawn and the containers are unloaded on to a train at a depot outside the town.

The next morning the train, with a few officials in a special carriage, heads over the border into Hungary where the security guards are changed.

Restrictions meant the material could not be flown and transporting it by land directly proved impossible because some countries did not want it to cross their borders.

Arranging the transfer apparently involved years of talks, coordinated by the IAEA. File the whole thing under the heading Useful Things International Organizations Do.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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