Serbia will ship to Russia a huge consignment of nuclear waste from a reactor once considered one of the world's most dangerous, officials said Wednesday.
The three tonnes of waste was composed mostly of spent nuclear fuel but also some enriched uranium that had been stored at the idle Vinca reactor, some 16 kilometres (nine miles) east of Belgrade, they said.
"It would be difficult to make a nuclear weapon out of this," Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's Rosatom State Nuclear Power Corporation, said after signing a contract for the disposal with Serb Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic.
"But if 3,000 kilograms (660 pounds) of nuclear waste came into the hands of terrorist organisations, the consequences could be very serious," Kiriyenko was quoted by as saying by Beta news agency.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reportedly described the Vinca reactor as the most dangerous in the world in 2006 because its pollution and terrorism threat.
The waste, provided to then Yugoslavia by the former Soviet Union during the 1980s, will be transported to Russia from next month after sitting at the defunct reactor for years.
It will be stored in specially made containers, although a route for its transportation to Russia was yet to be determined, said Kiriyenko.
Along with Serbia and Russia, the 54-million-dollar project was overseen by the IAEA and the United States.
In 2002, enriched uranium potent enough to make at least two nuclear bombs was flown from Vinca to Russia in a US-aided programme cited as a good example of cooperation against "international terrorism."
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