OPTIMIZED OPTIONS FOR ACCELERATED DOWNBLENDING OF EXCESS RUSSIAN HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM

One of the most successful U.S.-Russian cooperative nuclear projects has been the U.S.-Russia Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement, which has eliminated over 250 metric tons worth of highly enriched uranium (HEU), representing the destruction of over 10,000 Russian nuclear weapons. Building on research presented in 2005 on accelerating Russian blend down activities, this paper will present the findings of an optimization analysis to refine and evaluate options to blend down HEU beyond the current rate of 30 metric tons per year. The key bottleneck identified in the previous analysis was the availability of enrichment capacity to produce the slightly enriched uranium with which the HEU is blended to make the low enriched uranium (LEU) product. The options considered in the optimization analysis are defined so as to reduce the enrichment capacity necessary to achieve the LEU output, thereby reducing cost and schedule requirements. Among other techniques, the use of U.S. uranium tails to produce the slightly enriched blend stock is considered. This paper will present not only the notional costs and schedule of blending and related operation in Russia, but also the transportation, storage and other costs outside of Russia for certain options.