The following is from a Chicago Tribune editorial:
Iran may be on the brink of nuclear weapons capability. North Korea has already busted into the nuclear club. The U.S. and its allies fear terrorists may acquire a nuclear weapon.
Today, we spotlight a rare international nuclear nonproliferation success that has made the world safer: A two-decade-long deal to recycle Russian warheads and turn the uranium into fuel to power American reactors. The agreement — "Megatons to Megawatts" — started in the ruins of the former Soviet Union. Russians, Americans — the world — feared that the Russian nuclear arsenal was vulnerable to thieves, terrorists and even Russian nuclear workers who weren't being regularly paid.
The idea was to funnel billions in hard currency into Russia and help secure their weapons by melting down warheads for fuel.
Result: Enough highly enriched uranium to fuel about 20,000 weapons has been converted into nuclear fuel to light homes and provide energy for Americans across the country.
U.S. and Russian marked the end of the program last month with the last shipment of Russian fuel scheduled to reach the Port of Baltimore. U.S. nuclear operators bought $17 billion of uranium from Russia. Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $287 million.
Credit MIT's Thomas Neff for this idea. For the cost of four B-2 bombers — "whose mission was to go in and take out missile silos" — the U.S. neutralized 20,000 warheads.
Neff told us that he initially couldn't convince the U.S. And the Russians were suspicious of U.S. motives.
So Neff pitched the idea directly to Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Russian weapons program. Then he spent the better part of a dozen years patching up disagreements.
Both sides reaped what Neff promised: A "fantastic deal."