The reason to send HEU to the US is because they have a system, built and in place, to blend it down to LEU suitable for use in reactors. This is one of the (few?) things that Al Gore got right. Get that HEU out of Russia and into US reactors and spend however much money necessary to do so.
You do not use HEU is energy production reactors although you might, just, use it in one or another design of isotope production reactors.
And yet the US has been driving a worldwide campaign to get people to stop using HEU for medical isotope production because of those proliferation issues. To the point that they will come in and build an LEU using production reactor and even finance it.
Thus, HEU goes off to the US, the US then supplies back LEU suitable for isotope production.
It all entirely makes sense. But of course someone at The Conversation who wanted to complain about nuclear waste, an entirely different subject, wouldn't bother to tell you all that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
