"Megatons to Megawatts Program"

A bit off topic but was reading that under the "Megatons to Megawatts Program" which concluded in 2013 where basically Russia sells uranium to USA that's came from deactivated nuclear weapons. You can read more if you Google the agreement.

"A total of 500 tonnes of Russian warhead grade HEU (equivalent to 20,008 nuclear warheads) were converted in Russia to nearly 15,000 tonnes tons of LEU (low enriched uranium) and sold to the US for use as fuel in American nuclear power plants. The program was the largest and most successful nuclear non-proliferation program to date. During the 20-year Megatons to Megawatts program, as much as 10 percent of the electricity produced in the United States was generated by fuel fabricated using LEU from Russian HEU."

Yeah it flooded the uranium market and sent fuel prices crashing down when it was introduced. A lot of mines closed down.

d_taddei2 wrote:"A total of 500 tonnes of Russian warhead grade HEU (equivalent to 20,008 nuclear warheads) were converted in Russia ."

Are these figures correct? This translates into 40 tonnes of HEU per warhead. Unbelievable.

RTN wrote:

d_taddei2 wrote:"A total of 500 tonnes of Russian warhead grade HEU (equivalent to 20,008 nuclear warheads) were converted in Russia ."

Are these figures correct? This translates into 40 tonnes of HEU per warhead. Unbelievable.

Check your maths again...

500 000 kg divided by 20 000 warheads that's 25kg per warheads.

Where did you get that 4 in 40 from anyway

Because of the , instead of .

Taken from a book called nuclear shadow boxing written by Vadim Simonenko and George Stanford. Am not sure of the process involved, but that's what the figures they provided. Don't shoot the messenger. Lol

Hole wrote:Because of the , instead of .

That was obvious...

Even then 500/20 is 25 not 40. US school education in action . 2 mistakes in one simple division haha.

d_taddei2 wrote:Taken from a book called nuclear shadow boxing written by Vadim Simonenko and George Stanford. Am not sure of the process involved, but that's what the figures they provided. Don't shoot the messenger. Lol

Not shooting the messenger. Just trying to get a clarification. Usually a warhead in a ICBM has around 15kg HEU. The figures cited here were quite high.

Isos wrote: That was obvious...

How is that obvious? Most countries use the decimal system.

I would imagine that the warheads would have from various sizes. Some might have been prototypes etc. Scientists state a minimum of 15kg HEU is needed to what they deem to be a nuclear bomb. In comparison the bomb dropped on Nagasaki used 64kgs of HEU that produced a 16 ""kiloton"" yield.
Now early R-36 missiles had 18-25 """megaton"""" yield. Am certainly not a nuclear bomb expert and not sure of the finer details. What I believe is nation's never fully divulge nuclear information about weapons and capabilities. The Russians/Soviets could have told everyone a certain missile only has a 10 megaton yield when in fact it could be 20 megaton.

But whatever went on in the deal we will oy ever know what was divulged to the media.