The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement is an agreement between the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

signed in 2000, wherein both nations agreed to dispose of significant fractions of their "excess" (beyond what they need for their

nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

)

weapons-grade plutonium Weapons-grade nuclear material is any fissionable nuclear material that is pure enough to make a nuclear weapon or has properties that make it particularly suitable for nuclear weapons use. Plutonium and uranium Uranium is a chemical eleme ...

. An amended version was signed in April 2010 and went into effect in July 2011. The US has about 90 tons of weapons-capable plutonium, while Russia has 128 tons. The US declared 60 tons as excess, while Russia declared 50 tons excess. The two sides agreed that each would eliminate 34 tons. The agreement regulates the conversion of non-essential plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel used to produce electricity. Both sides were required to render 34 tons of weapons grade plutonium, into

reactor grade plutonium Reactor-grade plutonium (RGPu) is the isotopic grade of plutonium that is found in spent nuclear fuel after the uranium-235 primary fuel that a nuclear power reactor uses has burnt up. The uranium-238 from which most of the plutonium isotopes der ...

alongside reaching the ''spent fuel standard'', that is mixed with the other more highly irradiating products within

spent fuel Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and ...

. In 2007, the US began constructing the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) on the

Savannah River Site The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reservation in the United States in the state of South Carolina, located on land in Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell counties adjacent to the Savannah River, southeast of August ...

. For financial reasons, US president

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

canceled construction of the MFFF in 2016 and proposed that the plutonium be diluted with non-radioactive material and disposed in the underground WIPP facility.Pavel Podvig
''Can the US-Russia plutonium disposition agreement be saved?''
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 28. April 2016. However, the dilution could be reversed, and the material reconverted into weapons-grade plutonium. By 2015, Russia was on track and had begun producing MOX fuel at its own MOX facility, for its

fast reactor A fast-neutron reactor (FNR) or fast-spectrum reactor or simply a fast reactor is a category of nuclear reactor in which the fission chain reaction is sustained by fast neutrons (carrying energies above 1 MeV or greater, on average), as opposed t ...

, the

BN-800 The BN-800 reactor (Russian: реактор БН–800) is a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor, built at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, in Zarechny, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. The reactor is designed to generate 880 MW of electrical pow ...

. On October 3, 2016, Russian president

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

ordered the agreement to be suspended because the US did not meet their obligations.Указ Президента Российской Федерации от 03.10.2016 № 511
(in Russian).

External links

* Agreement text: ** English �
Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Russian Federation Concerning the Management and Disposition of Plutonium Designated as No Longer Required for Defense Purposes and Related Cooperation
** Russian �
Соглашение между Правительством Российской Федерации и Правительством Соединенных Штатов Америки об утилизации плутония, заявленного как плутоний, не являющийся более необходимым для целей обороны, обращению с ним и сотрудничеству в этой области

Plutonium Disposition Program
National Nuclear Security Administration, 26 June 2013. * Anatoli Diakov
Disposition of Excess Russian Weapon HEU and Plutonium
Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies, February 2012.

References

{{reflist Treaties entered into force in 2000 Treaties of Russia Treaties of the United States Arms control treaties Nuclear weapons policy