The fuel bank now stores 120 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (LEU) in the Siberian city of Angarsk, the Russian agency said in a statement.

The fuel is enriched to between two and 4.95 percent and is kept under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA approved the reserve's creation at a two-day meeting in November. It is meant to ensure stable fuel supplies in case of disruptions of the international uranium enrichment services market.

LEU is used by most of today's civilian nuclear power plants. The creation of the bank was first proposed in September 2007 by Russia, which fears nuclear fuel supply cutoffs being used by developed nations for political purposes.

earlier related report
Belarus to eliminate highly enriched uranium stocks by 2012
Astana (AFP) Dec 1, 2010 - The ex-Soviet state of Belarus on Wednesday announced it would eliminate its stocks of highly-enriched uranium by 2012, following talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton won the pledge from Belarus Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov after talks on the sidelines of the OSCE summit in the Kazakhstan capital Astana.

"Foreign Minister Martynov announced that Belarus has decided to eliminate all of its stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and intends to do so by the next nuclear security summit in 2012," said a joint statement.

"The United States intends to provide technical and financial assistance to support the completion of this effort as expeditiously as possible."

In highly-enriched form, uranium can be used to form the warhead of a nuclear bomb and there have been fears over the security of the stocks held by ex-Soviet states like Belarus.

Clinton was quoted as praising the decision "as a sign of progress in efforts to advance nuclear security and nonproliferation" and said Belarus would be invited to the 2012 nuclear security summit in South Korea.

Belarus' strongman President Alexander Lukashenko had been quoted as saying earlier this year that the country had hundreds of kilogrammes of highly-enriched uranium and had no intention of eliminating it.

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