Thanks, Shawn, and thank you for the question.
Under the global partnership program, we've been working cooperatively with Russia over the past 10 years. This work has allowed us to provide significant financial and technical support to upgrade the physical protection systems at 10 Russian facilities housing weapons-usable nuclear material.
Our objective here was to bring these facilities up to the international standards and norms as indicated by the IAEA in its various standards documents.
For the most part, these upgrades included the bricks and mortar type of work, such as replacing aging wooden fences topped with rusty barbed wire with modern metal fences equipped with appropriate detection and monitoring systems, as well as providing sustainability assistance through the provision of spare parts and training.
As Professor Bunn described in his opening statement, 10 to 12 years ago a number of facilities in Russia were literally the equivalent of storing usable nuclear material in a gymnasium setting, sort of in a locker. Through our engagement in the global partnership program, we saw very similar examples, and we've worked over the past 10 years on upgrading those.
We've also worked on the recovery of radiological sources across Russia's vast northern and far eastern coastline as well. We worked cooperatively with Norway, the IAEA, and the U.S. in efforts to secure radiological sources that were being used in navigational beacons in the north, replacing them with solar-powered equivalents and taking those dangerous radiological materials and storing them in a secure facility in Russia.