While running for president, Barack Obama said "the U.S. will lead the effort to remove [highly enriched uranium, or HEU] from vulnerable research reactor sites around the world, assist in the conversion process, give unneeded facilities incentives to shut down, enhance physical protection measures pending HEU removal, and blend down recovered civil HEU for use as power reactor fuel."

Unlike its low-enriched cousin, highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons in addition to being used for energy and research purposes. So a key goal of arms control advocates has been the removal of HEU from nonmilitary sites where it could be converted to military use.

The main vehicle for doing this in the United States is the National Nuclear Security Administration's Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which began in 2004. GTRI staffers have traveled around the world and assisted in adapting reactors that use HEU to LEU, shut down other HEU reactors, upgraded security and returned HEU from former Soviet states to Russia.

But Obama can't take total credit for this. The effort started under President George W. Bush, and Obama is just building off his predecessor's work.

So has Obama done anything unique?

Yep. One of the major uses of HEU is in the creation of molybdenum-99, a medical isotope used in most diagnostic procedures. The United States has traditionally imported most of its molybdenum-99 from Europe and Canada, where suppliers use weapons-grade uranium in its production. The House of Representatives and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee have both passed the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2009, which would authorize the Energy Department to spend $163 million over the next five years to support the development of molybdenum-99 using only low-enriched uranium. The money, says Charles Ferguson, the president of the Federation of American Scientists and a nuclear expert, should "level the medical playing field" and make it easier for companies who use or switch to low-enriched uranium to succeed.

So Obama is continuing some work done by the previous administration, and expanding upon it. We rate this promise In The Works.