Yugoslavia Ships 6,000 Nuclear Reactor Rods

Serbian police sealed off nearly half of the capital early Thursday while 6,000 unused nuclear reactor fuel rods were taken to the airport for shipment to Russia.

Helicopters hovered over the city as heavily armed police officers guarded the 22-mile route to the airport from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, just outside Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital.

The heavy security was aimed at preventing a terrorist attack, said Dragan Domazet, minister of technology, science and development for Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia’s two republics.

Domazet said the rods, each about 4 inches long and 1 inch in diameter, could be used to help develop nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union gave the fuel rods to the Vinca institute in 1976 for research work.

The Serbian government in recent years has instituted a program to reduce environmental hazards, including nuclear materials.

Domazet said that the removal of nuclear fuel was organized with the help of international groups and the U.S. government, which donated $10 million to decommission Vinca.

Bringing the rods to the airport took about six hours, a police officer said.

The Vinca nuclear reactor was developed upon the institute’s founding in 1948 as a part of the former Yugoslav federation’s nuclear program. The reactor was closed and partly decommissioned in the early 1980s.

Today the Vinca institute is devoted to a wide variety of scientific research.