NEWS RELEASE

Committee on Energy and Commerce
Rep. John D. Dingell, Chairman

Dingell, Stupak Ask for GAO Report on
Highly Enriched Uranium

Washington, DC – Late Friday, Reps. John D. Dingell (D-MI), the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak (D-MI), the Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, wrote the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to request that the agency examine the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) programs to consolidate highly enriched uranium (HEU) and convert it into lower enrichment levels unsuitable for weapons use.

“Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is widely regarded as the most likely material to be pursued by terrorists interested in constructing a crude nuclear weapon,” the letter states. “While the United States is rightly concerned with efforts by countries such as Iran to acquire the enrichment capabilities to produce HEU, there are already hundreds of research reactors and other facilities around the world fueled with this weapons-usable material. Therefore, it is an abiding national security interest to ensure that, as rapidly as possible, these stockpiles of HEU—much of which was provided by the United States and Russia in preceding decades—are removed from vulnerable facilities, consolidated into a smaller number of more secure locations, and ultimately down-blended or converted to lower enrichment levels unsuitable for weapons.”

Read the Letter

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