US Secretly Sends Ukraine's Uranium to Russia

The US carried out a secret operation this week in which 110 pounds of highly enriched uranium—enough to make two atomic bombs—were sent from Ukraine to Russia, as part of the Obama administration’s not-at-all secret push to secure the world’s nuclear material. Russia intends to blend down the uranium and make it useless for bomb making, the AP reports.

The US, meanwhile, will give Ukraine some replacement low-enriched uranium for use in its research reactors, along with a new $25 million “neutron source facility,” which will produce 50 types of medical isotopes using that non-weapon-grade fuel. The US nuclear administration’s chief praised Ukraine for ensuring its bomb-making material didn’t fall “into the wrong hands.” (More enriched uranium stories.)