Uranium moved from Poland to Russia

The International Atomic Energy Agency secretly completed the removal of 40 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear reactor near Warsaw on Wednesday and transferred the material to a secure site in Russia for disposal, according to an IAEA document.

The operation is part of an ongoing effort by American and United Nations officials to secure and recover high-risk nuclear and radiological materials around the world. Similar operations over the past three years have returned material from Libya, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Uzbekistan to Russia, where it was first made during the Soviet era.

The IAEA wants to reduce the number of reactors around the world that still use weapons-grade uranium. The agency says that more than 100 are still in operation, including in the United States, China and India, though numbers are concentrated in Eastern and Central Europe. It wants them converted to use low-enriched uranium and to eliminate the commerce in highly enriched uranium for research reactors.

According to the IAEA document obtained by the International Herald Tribune, the operation to remove the uranium from the nuclear research reactor at Otwock-Swierk, outside Warsaw, began Tuesday. It was monitored by officials from the IAEA and the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration.

The document stated that the material was "airlifted by cargo plane in an early-morning operation that safely returned the nuclear fuel to a secure facility close to Novosibirsk. The Russian facility will dilute the fissile material to low-enriched uranium that cannot be used to make a bomb."

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