That would mark a turnabout in Russia's public position, reiterated on Tuesday, that it intends to fulfill its contract to ship nuclear fuel to the completed Bushehr reactor.

Tankers are transports specifically designed to ship fuel to forward locations.

Valero Energy Corporation, whose refineries produce about 10 percent of California's gasoline, has been unable to ship fuel to parts of the state because blackouts have shut down the pipelines it uses.

And, though no living thing could survive travel in a ramrobot, it had proved possible to ship fuel to the slowboats via ramrobot.

The program to ship food and fuel to the north, which makes up almost half of Russia's vast territory, was one of the most heavily subsidized parts of the Soviet economy.

Last year, Russia agreed to ship low-enriched fuel to the plant by March 2007 and start it in September, with electricity generation to start by November.

Another complication is that the department recently told utilities that they should ship fuel to Yucca in containers that could go directly into the mountain for burial.

The Kremlin spends only one-tenth of 1 percent of Russia's gross domestic product to ship food and fuel to the north, down from an extravagant 2 percent in Soviet times.

And the U.S. will pay Russia to ship nuclear fuel to Ukraine in advance of extracting more from Ukraine's warheads.

They are shipping nuclear fuel from here" - he traces a line across the map - "to here.