The Combine’s specialists refuelled the 40 years old reactor ADE-2 and improved the operation safety, ITAR-TASS reported. Underground nuclear reactor AD-2 was put in operation in 1964 and became the main source of the heat and electricity for Zheleznogorsk.

The three weapons grade plutonium producing reactors — two in the closed Siberian city of Seversk and the one mentioned above in Zheleznogorsk — will, according to the agreement, be decommissioned within the next six years, effectively ending Russia’s capability to produce weapons grade plutonium. These reactors represent the last of Russia’s 13 plutonium-producing reactors that were slated for dismantlement under the DOE and US Department of Defence’s Cooperative Threat Reduction, or CTR programmes. The United States has already shut down all of its 14 plutonium production reactors.