Russia shuts down last weapons-grade plutonium reactor
By IANSThursday, April 15, 2010
Moscow, April 15 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Russia Thursday shut down a reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium - the last of its kind in the world.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had announced the imminent shutdown of the reactor, which has been operational in the Siberian city of Zheleznogorsk since 1964, at the nuclear summit in Washington on April 12-13.
At the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed the Plutonium Disposition Protocol, which stipulates that Russia and the US would each dispose of 34 tonnes of excess weapons-grade plutonium.
During the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union operated 13 plutonium reactors, but in the 1990s, the Russian defence ministry stopped purchasing the plutonium produced and most of the reactors were shut down by 2008.
The US has shut down all 14 reactors it used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
–IANS/RIA Novosti
