Angarsk, a city of about 270,000 in southeastern Siberia, is the home of the Angarsk Electrolyzing and Chemical Combine, a plant created to enrich uranium for the Soviet nuclear program. Throughout its history, the plant has been a restricted area -- closed to all foreign visitors. On Nov. 28, 2006, however, the state-funded Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported that the Russian government has decided to remove the Angarsk plant from its list of restricted areas. Soon, according to the report, Angarsk will become the site of the world's first "international uranium enrichment center" (IUEC).
Enriched uranium fuel is required by almost all nuclear reactors in use around the world today. However, enriched uranium is also used in the cores of nuclear weapons. The difference between bomb fuel and reactor fuel is the level of enrichment -- building a bomb requires that the fuel must be enriched to contain at least 20 percent of the rarer uranium isotope U-235 (ideally, closer to 95 percent), while most modern nuclear power plants operate at enrichment levels well below 20 percent. ...
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