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Untitled Document Feds press Russians on work liability Andrea Widener Contra Costa Times July 23, 2003
The Department of Energy said Tuesday it will cancel a program to help isolated Russian nuclear weapons cities if the country does not adopt new liability provisions.
Nonproliferation advocates say the move is so onerous it will essentially cancel the Nuclear Cities Initiative, which since 1998 has helped make the transition for the flailing cities to non-weapons work through job creation and infrastructure development.
"These are just the first dominos in something that could seriously undermine very important programs," said Raphael Della Ratta with the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council.
DOE officials say the concern is exaggerated, and they want the programs to continue, but with new rules to protect U.S. workers.
"We hope that the Russian Federation will accept our broad proposal on liability in time to allow for the extension of the ... agreement," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement.
The Nuclear Cities Initiative is coordinated by the three U.S. nuclear weapons labs, including Lawrence Livermore.
And, Livermore is a sister city of Snezhinsk, one of the formerly closed nuclear company towns that was devastated when the Soviet Union collapsed. Some cooperative programs between the two cities were sponsored through the nuclear cities program.
According to a DOE statement, Abraham sent a letter to the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy this week saying they will likely pull out of the program if the new rules that expand Russia's liability for joint work between the two countries are not approved.
Existing projects will be allowed to continue if an agreement is not reached by September, when the current agreement expires.
Several members of Congress, including Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, sent a letter to President Bush on Monday asking that the programs be preserved.
"Given the concern that a terrorist organization or rogue nation seeking to develop their own nuclear arsenals would actively recruit these scientists, it only makes sense to continue with the very program that helps them transition into peaceful alternative careers," Tauscher, who has worked to support nuclear programs with Russia, said in a statement.
The DOE's move attempts to match liability provisions in other joint nuclear agreements with Russia, including those to dispose of nuclear weapons and build power plants.
The focus on the nuclear cities fund and another, which funds research on the safe disposal of plutonium, is paradoxical because the programs pose almost no risk to the United States compared to those other programs, said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
A compromise would extend the program for six months or a year, until the Russian parliament gets a chance to vote on other provisions.
"The hard-liners in the administration seem to have rejected that approach," Spector said. "The sad part is that some very important programs may be victimized."
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