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Taiwan ships last of spent nuclear fuel to US

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-30 17:00

TAIPEI: Chinese Taiwan has shipped to the United States the last spent fuel kept at two long-suspended nuclear reactors, an official said Thursday.

The fuel, which contained highly enriched uranium, was placed in two special containers aboard a US transport vessel that sailed on July 19, said Shao Yao-chu of Taiwan's Atomic Energy Council.

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It was the last of two installments of spent fuel shipments that Taiwan had agreed to ship back to the US as part of an agreement with Washington dating from 1999, Shao said. The first shipment was transported shortly after the pact was struck. The fuel originated in the US

The spent fuel had been kept at two research reactors operated by the National Tsing Hua University and the Atomic Energy Council in Taiwan. The reactors went out of service in 1993 and 2005 respectively, Shao said.

The reactors were used to support scientific research.

Taiwan was once suspected of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

But under American pressure, the military-run Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology shut down its nuclear reactor in 1988 after Washington concluded it might have been used to produce plutonium, a substance that could be employed to make nuclear arms.