The HEU Agreements provide for the conversion of approximately 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium contained in Russian nuclear weapons into low-enriched uranium for use as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors.
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Instead client countries would have a guaranteed access to low enriched uranium to fuel civil nuclear reactors.
We are continuing research on the feasibility of converting research reactors in the United States and Russia to low-enriched uranium fuel.
So, they essentially proposed building a new facility for uranium enrichment in Russia with Iranian management, Iranian financial participation, that would be devoted exclusively to producing highly enriched uranium nuclear fuel for the Iranians.
It recently confirmed it had resumed the conversion of medium enriched uranium into oxide fuel to slow down growth of its stockpile.
And France agreed to transform the higher-enriched uranium into metallic nuclear fuel.
The idea was for Iran to ship 1, 200kg of its low-enriched uranium overseas to produce fuel for a research reactor, thus leaving the country for a while with too small a stockpile with which to make a bomb.
U.S. and United Nations officials have documented what they describe as serious limitations in Iran's ability to quickly and efficiently produce the enriched uranium required to either fuel a nuclear power reactor or to build an atomic weapon.
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Japan's reactors are almost all fueled by enriched uranium, not plutonium-based fuel.
If these tests are successful, Khazaneh said, "then the next tests, with fuel rods containing enriched uranium, will take place near the end of 2009, " ISNA reported.
With the plan that Russia has developed, which Iran has thus far refused to accept, in which Russia provides the enriched uranium and also takes the spent fuel.
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Reza Khazaneh, a former adviser to the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO), told the semi-official news agency the tests will be carried out using "dummy" fuel rods without enriched uranium.
The plan envisages Iran's low-enriched uranium being shipped overseas for processing into fuel.
The authority has also proposed moving other material called "exotics", which includes fuel containing highly-enriched uranium, from Dounreay to Sellafield at a later date.
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Nuclear reactor fuel is enriched to 3-5% Uranium-235.
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Does Iran expect to get the 20% enriched fuel rods from another source, while its own uranium is under Turkish guard?
The IAEA said Iran had continued its production of 20% enriched uranium, though the majority of the uranium had been converted to fuel, which is not material that can be used for a weapon.
The other is an agreement on a proposal to take Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) and send it to Russia and France for conversion into fuel rods for use in Iran's small research reactor in Tehran, which produces isotopes for cancer treatment.
Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium is bigger: only about half of it would be needed to produce the equivalent fuel load for the medical reactor.
's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in late December that Tehran had amassed 232 kilograms of uranium enriched to the 20% level but that almost 100 kilograms of that amount is being converted into fuel plates to power Tehran's research reactor.
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