President Trump’s Energy Department Removes All Enriched Uranium From Venezuela in Under Six Weeks

The Trump administration notched a significant nuclear-security win this month after the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration removed all remaining enriched uranium from a legacy research reactor in Venezuela and brought it to the United States for processing and reuse.

NNSA announced on May 8 that a multinational team pulled 13.5 kilograms, roughly 30 pounds, of uranium enriched above the 20 percent threshold from Venezuela’s RV-1 reactor. The material had been sitting as surplus since the reactor’s physics and nuclear research mission ended in 1991.

The team completed the removal less than six weeks after the initial site visit, packaged the material into a spent fuel cask, escorted it approximately 100 miles overland to a Venezuelan port, loaded it onto a specialized carrier supplied by U.K. Nuclear Transport Solutions, and shipped it to the United States.

Enriched uranium removed from Venezuela research facility and transported to the U.S. https://t.co/H9dRDnnEx6

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) May 11, 2026

NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams credited President Donald Trump’s leadership, saying the teams completed in months what normally would have taken years. The agency pointed to President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s three-phase plan for Venezuela as the framework that fast-tracked the retirement of the nuclear risk.

The National Nuclear Security Administration provided the operational details of the mission in its official release.

The National Nuclear Security Administration announced that DOE/NNSA, working with partners, completed the removal of all remaining enriched uranium from a legacy research reactor in Venezuela. NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams credited President Trump’s leadership, saying the teams completed in months what normally would have taken years.

The release said President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio’s three-phase plan for Venezuela fast-tracked the retirement of the nuclear risk. NNSA said the RV-1 reactor supported physics and nuclear research for decades, but after that work ended in 1991, uranium enriched above the 20 percent threshold became surplus material.

NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, Department of State personnel, experts from the United Kingdom, the Venezuelan Ministry of Science and Technology, and the IAEA worked together on the removal. The team removed 13.5 kilograms, about 30 pounds, of uranium less than six weeks after the initial site visit, packaged it into a spent fuel cask, escorted it 100 miles to a Venezuelan port, transferred it to a specialized carrier supplied by U.K. Nuclear Transport Solutions, and brought it to the United States. At Savannah River Site, the material will be processed at H-Canyon to obtain HALEU for America’s nuclear renaissance.

The destination matters. Savannah River Site’s H-Canyon is one of the few facilities in the world capable of processing this kind of material. The administration says the recovered uranium will be converted into high-assay low-enriched uranium, known as HALEU, a fuel type needed for the next generation of advanced American reactors.

That turns a nonproliferation problem into an energy asset. Instead of sitting in a shuttered Venezuelan lab where it posed a security risk to the hemisphere, the material will feed what the administration calls America’s nuclear renaissance.

Trump DOE Removes Highly Enriched Uranium From Venezuela in Major Nuclear Security Win!

READ: https://t.co/k7HnVP47wP pic.twitter.com/KO3lOZpxWv

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) May 11, 2026

The operation involved an unusually broad coalition. NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation led the effort alongside the State Department, British nuclear-transport experts, Venezuela’s Ministry of Science and Technology, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. That level of coordination across adversarial diplomatic lines in under six weeks is itself a notable achievement.

Just the News reported on the broader significance of the removal for U.S. and South American security.

Just the News reported that the Energy Department removed the last enriched uranium from a Venezuelan research facility and transported it to the United States, reducing risk to the United States and South America. The report pointed to the RV-1 reactor, which Venezuela had built to support physics and nuclear research, and noted that the material was leftover after that work ended in 1991. That background matters because it explains why the uranium was not part of a new power project or an active research program. It was surplus material sitting inside a legacy facility.

The report amplified the NNSA announcement that all remaining enriched uranium from the reactor had been removed and that the material had been brought to the U.S. for processing and reuse. It also helped push the story into the conservative news stream on May 11, when John Solomon highlighted the operation on X and framed it as an Energy Department action that reduced risk on both sides of the hemisphere. For WLTR readers, the key point is the official one: the Trump administration says the nuclear material is no longer sitting in Venezuela.

The RV-1 reactor had not conducted active research in 35 years. For more than three decades, enriched uranium sat in a country that has grown increasingly unstable under the Maduro regime, maintained close ties with adversaries including Iran, Russia, and Cuba, and offered limited transparency to international monitors. Removing the material eliminates a risk that previous administrations left unresolved.

Enriched uranium removed from Venezuela research facility and transported to the U.S. https://t.co/Rh0Vv60xBX

— Just the News (@JustTheNews) May 11, 2026

For the Trump administration, the Venezuela operation fits a larger pattern: move fast, use leverage, and turn national-security threats into strategic advantages. In this case, they took surplus enriched uranium out of a hostile neighborhood and redirected it toward powering the next generation of American nuclear energy. That is a win on two fronts, and it happened in weeks, not years.

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