MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US removes 13.5 kilos of highly enriched uranium from Venezuela's RV-1 reactor

The material, enriched above the 20 percent threshold separating low-enriched from highly enriched uranium, had been considered surplus since the reactor ceased operations in 1991

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has completed the removal of 13.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the former RV-1 research reactor at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), in Miranda state, in an operation coordinated with the United Kingdom, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Venezuela's transitional government.

The material, enriched above the 20 percent threshold separating low-enriched from highly enriched uranium, had been considered surplus since the reactor ceased operations in 1991. The extraction took place between 18 and 29 April. The uranium was packaged into a spent-fuel cask, escorted overland for some 160 kilometers to the docks at Puerto Cabello, and transported aboard a specialized vessel operated by the British firm Nuclear Transport Solutions to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where it will be processed into high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).

“The safe removal of all enriched uranium from Venezuela sends another signal to the world of a restored and renewed Venezuela,” said NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams. He credited “President Trump's decisive leadership” for the speed of an operation the agency said would normally have taken years. The mission falls within the three-phase plan that the Trump administration and Secretary of State Marco Rubio designed for Venezuela following the capture of Nicolás Maduro in January. Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited Caracas in February to lay the groundwork.

Venezuela's transitional government, led by interim President Delcy Rodríguez, framed the operation differently. In a statement issued on 7 May by Foreign Minister Yván Gil, Caracas said the U.S. military strike on 3 January — which hit roughly 50 meters from the former reactor during “Operation Absolute Resolution” — “objectively raised the level of risk and confirmed the urgency of carrying out an operation that Venezuela had long been requesting.” That bombing damaged IVIC's electrical grid and partially affected its Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Ecology centers as well as its Nuclear Technology Unit, according to institute director Alberto Quintero, cited at the time by news agency EFE.

The RV-1, designed by Venezuelan scientist Humberto Fernández-Morán, reached criticality in 1960 under U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's “Atoms for Peace” program, which contributed 300,000 dollars toward its construction. It was among the first research reactors in Latin America. Its formal closure was completed with the IAEA in 1997, and the facility was later converted into a gamma-ray sterilization plant for medical and industrial use.