United States policy initiatives in promoting the RERTR program

The Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program has been successful in furthering efforts to reduce and eventually eliminate highly enriched uranium (HEU) from international commerce. Three key policy initiatives are underway to further promote the RERTR program. The first initiative is implementation of a new nuclear weapons nonproliferation policy concerning foreign research reactor spent nuclear fuel. Under this policy, the United States will accept over the next 13 years research reactor spent fuel from 41 countries that have converted or plan to convert to use LEU fuels. The second initiative is to pursue cooperative efforts to expand the RERTR program to new regions of the globe, including Russia and China. The third initiative is to restart the advanced LEU fuels development program at the Argonne National Laboratory in order to increase the number of reactors that can convert to use LEU without significant detriment to their performance