The 20-year agreement was signed back in 1994 between Russia and the United States.

"Megatons to Megawatts is the most successful non-proliferation program in history," argues Philip Sewell, senior vice-president at USEC, a private US company that runs the agreement that turns highly enriched uranium into lightly enriched uranium.

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the administration of George H.W. Bush started negotiating how to get rid of stocks of nuclear arms dismantled in the former Soviet Union.

In 1994, the United States and Russia cut a practical-minded deal to turn 500 metric tonnes of highly enriched uranium, the equivalent of 20,000 nuclear warheads, into weakly enriched uranium that could be used in US nuclear power plants.

The deal so far has made it possible to reprocess 15,000 nuclear warheads stockpiled in the Russian federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan between 1950-1987.

When it expires in 2013, the program will have handled 20,000 nuclear warheads, and supplied the United States with about 10 percent of its annual power use, or half of its nuclear energy.

It is no small contribution to cleaning up weaponry, and "this material represents the equivalent amount of energy, or of electricity that would power the world for about six months, the United States for about two years, and France for 15 years," Sewell explains.

And USEC, which does two billion dollars in business annually with 3,200 employees in the uranium enrichment industry, acknowledges making a "small profit" along the way.

Over two decades, the operation will have had a total budget of eight billion dollars and will have sent back about 500 million dollars to the Russians, Sewell said.

The US company pays for the uranium to be treated, which is done in Siberia, and the long 1.5 tonne cylinders turned back into fuel are shipped by boat from St. Petersburg to Kentucky where USEC has its conversion facility.

USEC then supplies the specially prepared fuel to operators of the 104 US nuclear reactors.

With an international summit on nuclear security looming for Monday and Tuesday in Washington, Sewell is hopeful that the program will get a new lease on life.

"Whatever happens, we are fully prepared to support any continuation of the program," he said.

As a counterpoint, he noted that only 700 nuclear warheads are expected to be destroyed under the new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) signed Friday in Prague.

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