BETHESDA, Md. - USEC Inc. announced today that it has achieved a significant milestone by completing 20 percent of the historic 20-year U.S.-Russian Megatons to Megawatts program that converts material from Russian nuclear warheads into fuel for commercial power plants. One hundred metric tons of weapons-grade uranium—the equivalent of 4,000 nuclear warheads—have been converted into fuel for power plants and delivered to USEC.

USEC and Techsnabexport (TENEX) are the executive agents implementing this program on commercial terms for the U.S. and Russian governments. Under the commercial implementing contract, 500 metric tons of Russian warhead material will be converted to fuel in Russia and purchased by USEC over a 20-year period, for an expected purchase value of about $8 billion. To date, USEC purchases total $1.7 billion.

With last week’s milestone shipment, the Megatons to Megawatts program has converted weapons-grade uranium into nearly 3,000 metric tons of commercial reactor fuel that will continue generating emission-free electricity here in the United States.

"This is our sixth year of implementing the Megatons to Megawatts program, and we are ahead of the original government schedule," said USEC President and CEO William Timbers. "This has been called ‘the deal of the century--the most successful nuclear non-proliferation initiative in history.’ Every day, this program converts nuclear swords into energy for peaceful purposes. Just a decade ago, who would have imagined that Soviet warheads would be dismantled and diluted to supply electricity to U.S. cities? Yet it is happening today."

USEC’s utility customers around the country are using Megatons to Megawatts fuel in their commercial nuclear reactors to generate electricity. These customers include Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Maryland and Nebraska Public Power District’s Cooper station.

The government-to-government agreement was signed in 1993, and the implementing contract was signed in 1994. The first shipment of LEU-from-HEU arrived at USEC’s Portsmouth, Ohio, facility in June 1995. USEC and TENEX implement the Megatons to Megawatts contract at no expense to the taxpayer.

USEC Inc. (NYSE: USU), a global energy company, is the world’s leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

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