Simply Politics and News

[ergo sum]

If you don't think these agreements were worth more than a few worries about Iran at the time, you don't understand how much good the Clinton Administration did in protecting you from nuclear terror.

According to the Energy Policy Committee report, signed by Curtis and Mi khailov on February 7, the sides continue to make progress in implementing their HEU agreement, which requires the United States to purchase over a period of 20 years 500 metric tons of HEU that has been removed from dismantled former Soviet nuclear warheads and blended down to low enriched uranium (LEU) suitable for use in commercial nuclear reactors. In 1995 and 1996, the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), the executive agent of the agreement for the U.S. government, purchased the LEU equivalent of 18 metric tons of HEU from Russia.

The committee report referred to an amendment to the HEU agreement, reached in November 1996, that establishes set prices and quantities for the LEU shipments through the year 2001, thereby allowing the USEC to purchase the LEU equivalent of an additional 132 metric tons of HEU over the next five years. (See ACT, November/December 1996.) As part of this amendment, Russia has been awarded an advance payment of $100 million against future deliveries and enhanced transparency measures have been successfully concluded to help assure that the LEU blended down in Russia is actually derived from dismantled nuclear weapons instead of existing HEU stockpiles.