Russia plans to retrieve nearly 2,400 kg of high-enriched uranium from nuclear plants in several other countries by 2016, state atomic agency Rosatom said Tuesday.

Rosatom's head Sergei Kirienko said Russia would retrieve used nuclear materials from Uzbekistan by the end of 2012 and Vietnam in 2013, and would spend some 12.5 million U.S. dollars to convert its four nuclear reactors to low-enriched uranium fuel under a Russia-U.S. nuclear cooperation program on peaceful use of atomic energy.

One or two reactors would be converted in 2014, Kirienko told reporters after a meeting here with U.S. Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman.

The two officials co-chaired the nuclear energy and nuclear security working group of the bilateral Russian-U.S. presidential commission.

Kirienko said Russia in 2012 has already retrieved over 100 kg of used nuclear fuels from Ukraine, the United States and Mexico. So far, Russia has already halted nine reactors that used high-enriched fuel.

Russia started taking back fissionable materials from nuclear power plants abroad in correspondence with the Return of Research Reactor Spent Fuel to the Country of Origin, which was initiated by the United States and Russia in 1999.

The program was designed to prevent the proliferation of the spent nuclear materials from Russian and U.S. nuclear power plants, which use highly enriched uranium as fuel. It could be used to produce nuclear weapons in third countries.