On September 17th, KIYOURA Takashi, Deputy Director General of Research and Development Bureau, MEXT, and Kasia Mendelsohn, Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator, Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA), issued a Joint Statement on the KUCA conversion at the 2024 IAEA General Conference in Vienna, Austria.

　KUCA is a research reactor owned and operated by the Kyoto University Institute for Integrated Radiation and Nuclear Science (KURNS). It has been used for basic nuclear engineering research and student training (Operation is currently suspended).
 
　In the Joint Statement between Japan and the U.S. at the 4th Nuclear Security Summit * 1 held in 2016, it was announced that Japan would remove highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel from KUCA to the U.S. and convert KUCA from HEU to high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to minimize stocks of HEU worldwide. To complete the removal of HEU * 2 by 2022 and restart KUCA, MEXT and DOE/NNSA collaborated on research, development, and fuel fabrication to convert KUCA to HALEU fuel.
　With the completion of HALEU fuel fabrication for KUCA, KIYOURA Takashi, Deputy Director General of Research and Development of Bureau MEXT, and Kasia Mendelsohn, Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, U.S. DOE/NNSA, met to commend these efforts and reaffirm that Japan and the United States will continue to cooperate to strengthen global nuclear security.
　Once HALEU fuel is transported to KURNS in the future, KUCA is intended to restart within fiscal 2025 after receiving regulatory approval. It is expected that KUCA will contribute to advanced research and human resource development.
 
*1 The 2016 Nuclear Security Summit（April, 2016）
https://www.mofa.go.jp/dns/n_s_ne/page3e_000467.html
*2 （News）Removal Completed of Highly Enriched Uranium Fuels from the Kyoto University Critical Assembly（KUCA） to the U.S.（August, 2022）
https://www.mext.go.jp/en/news/topics/detail/mext_00084.html

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