Russia says, it has created the world's first international atomic fuel bank as part of a global effort to curb the spread of nuclear arms to nations such as North Korea and Iran. The Rosatom state atomic energy corporation said on Wednesday that the Siberian fuel reserve – which will operate under the auspices of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear watchdog – will have enough material to refuel two civilian nuclear power plants. The former Foreign Intelligence Service chief Gennady Yevstafyev told AFP that the purpose of this facility was to reduce the risk of other countries processing their own uranium to a minimum. He said this will dramatically improve control over the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Angarsk bank is the first of about a dozen facilities proposed by various nations following the 2003 discovery of covert enrichment activity in Iran. The IAEA approved the Russian reserve's creation at a historic but contentious two-day meeting in November.