Ukraine, US To Sign Memorandum On High Enriched Uranium
By Ria Novosti
Kiev and Washington will sign on September 26 a memorandum on the high enriched uranium that Ukraine pledged to remove from its territory, the Ukrainian foreign minister said.
“On Monday we are signing a memorandum with [U.S. Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton on the issue of high enriched uranium,” Foreign Minister Konstyantyn Hryshchenko said in an interview with Ukraine’s TV channel Inter late on Friday night.
The minister said the memorandum will also determine the schedule of works on the construction a modern nuclear research facility in Ukraine, but did not specify what the facility would be exactly intended for.
Ukraine, which was briefly left with the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal after the breakup of the Soviet Union, agreed to give up the remaining stockpiles of highly enriched material by the next nuclear summit in 2012.
In February, the United States officially confirmed that it would render Ukraine $50 million in support of the country’s nuclear security program.
The Nuclear Energy Institute puts Ukraine in its top five countries accounting for the largest percentage of generated nuclear energy. Almost half of the country’s energy output comes from nuclear power plants.
