Trump repeats false claim that US gave a fifth of its uranium to Russia

At a White House news conference Thursday, President Trump rehashed false allegations he made during last year’s campaign that then secretary of state Hillary Clinton “gave” 20% of US uranium to Russia.

Though inaccurate and hyperbolic, Trump’s contention is based on a kernel of truth: In 2013 Russia’s nuclear company Rosatom completed the acquisition of a Canadian-based company, Uranium One, which owns mines that account for about 20% of US uranium capacity. A large contributor to the Clinton Foundation had previously held an ownership interest in Uranium One. And the State Department was one of nine agencies on an interagency body, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, that reviewed and approved Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One. But only President Obama had the power to kill the deal.

As reported by multiple news outlets, including the New York Times and the independent fact-checking organization Politifact , the US uranium reserves, if mined, could not be exported without licenses issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. More importantly, Russia is awash in highly enriched uranium (HEU), the fissile material that’s used in military applications such as nuclear warheads and naval propulsion reactors. The International Panel on Fissile Materials estimated in 2015 that Russia possessed 679 metric tons of HEU.

In fact, Russia sold about 500 metric tons of converted HEU to the US from 1993 to 2013. Under a program known as Megatons to Megawatts, Russia blended down the HEU from dismantled Russian weapons to make low-enriched uranium, which the US bought to fuel its commercial reactors.