"Also it should be noted that to help achieve its amazing speed the reactors of the Alfas used fuel rods that were basically weapons grade fissile materiel. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the Kazakh military stumbled upon a stockpile of fuel rods meant for the Alfas stored in what was basically a barn house secured with a 19th-century padlock. The Kazakhs had no way of knowing about it since all records of their storage were in Moscow, not in Astana. Seeing it as a proliferation risk they managed to get the US to secretly transport it out of the country so the rods could be down-blended into normal reactor-grade fuel. The affair was known as "Project Sapphire" and you can learn more about it from David E. Hoffman's excellent book, "The Dead Hand.""

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