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Russian Nuclear Security Lags, Raising U.S. Terrorism Concerns

Jeff Bliss

Bloomberg News

July 5, 2006

U.S. efforts to secure the former Soviet Union's nuclear stockpile are flagging as the Iraq war and Iran's atomic ambitions push it lower on the international agenda and an oil-rich Russia resists pressure for tougher action. Almost 15 years after the U.S. launched its program to help strengthen controls on the world's largest nuclear stockpile, Russian guards are still patrolling storage sites with unloaded guns, propping open doors that should be locked and turning off intrusion detectors to avoid false alarms, according to a 2005 report by Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom. The report found that security systems in 46 percent of the Russian buildings that contain nuclear material have yet to be fully upgraded.

President George W. Bush has said the most serious U.S. security threat is a terrorist detonating a nuclear device in a large city -- and experts say the likeliest source of material for such a device is Russia.

"The problems remain very acute," said William Potter, a former consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and co-author of the book "The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism." "We've been diverted from what should be our priority mission, securing material on the ground in Russia and other former Soviet states." Last year, Russians reported 200 cases of suspected smuggling of nuclear and radiological materials, said Representative James Langevin of Rhode Island, senior Democrat on a House panel that tracks terrorist threats.

"What a Mistake"

Representative Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said nuclear material has been leaving former Soviet republics because the U.S. and Russia haven't been more vigilant. "What a mistake it is we let this stuff leak out of those countries," Harman said.

Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate at Harvard's Managing the Atom project, said Russians don't have the same level of anxiety about nuclear theft as do others. "If you talk to people at nuclear facilities, they say, 'Bunn, you're a worrywart,' "he said. About 40 terrorist groups or cults have possessed or expressed an interest in using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons as well as "dirty bombs," according to the U.S. national intelligence director's annual threat assessment, released earlier this year. A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives to disperse radiological material.

Aging Complex

The Russians haven't moved to secure highly enriched uranium at civilian facilities, Potter said. They're also storing 30 tons of nuclear materials in wooden 1940s-era buildings at the Mayak nuclear complex in the southern Ural Mountains, Bunn said. While Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to increase cooperative efforts to secure nuclear weapons and material in their 2005 summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, there's been little follow-up since, said Potter, who is now director of the Monterey, California-based Center for Proliferation Studies.

He said that "although the rhetoric for the most part is good, it's not clear the leadership in either country has backed it up with action." Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who chairs a House panel that tracks nuclear nonproliferation, said Bush hasn't focused on securing the weapons because his presidency increasingly has become tied to success or failure in Iraq. Graham Allison, an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, said Bush and Putin have also been distracted by Iran's nuclear program, currently the focus of an international diplomatic effort to get it to agree to restrictions.

Less Receptive

Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-founder of a program to secure the Soviet nuclear arsenal, said Russia's newfound clout as the world's No. 2 oil producer has made it less receptive to U.S. pressure. "They want to point out at the outset, 'We're not supplicants, we're rich,' " said Lugar, an Indiana Republican. The Russians want to cooperate "with the understanding we have the proper respect for the comeback that Russia has made."

Russia has resisted U.S. requests that it consolidate its nuclear sites to make it easier to keep track of the material and weapons, Potter said. The Russians also have made it more difficult for U.S. officials to inspect sensitive military and research facilities, said William Hoehn, Washington office director of the Russian-American Nuclear Advisory Council, a policy group focused on nuclear security.

"Resolved"

Vladimir Rybachenkov, counselor for nuclear affairs at the Russian embassy in Washington, said the U.S. and Russia are working well together and that U.S. personnel have been able to enter sensitive facilities. "As far as access problems, I think they've been resolved," he said.

Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. stockpile and works with the Russians to secure their nuclear material, said progress on securing nuclear material has accelerated since the Bratislava summit and that security upgrades have been completed in 77 percent of all Russian buildings that house nuclear materials or weapons. "Anyone who says we're not doing enough or making it a priority doesn't know what we do or doesn't understand what we do," Wilkes said.

Russia possesses about 16,000 nuclear warheads and 600 tons of material that could be used in bombs, according to a U.S. National Academy of Sciences 2005 report and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Residue

The material is contained in weapons and barrels stored in large warehouses, Bunn said. Some of it is in the form of residue that lines the pipes and surfaces of uranium and plutonium plants or can be found at research facilities in special boxes fitted with gloves that allow scientists to work with it, he said.

Since the early 1990s, the U.S. and Russia have worked to secure and winnow the weapons stockpile. Programs set up by the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Act have destroyed or deactivated 6,828 nuclear warheads, 865 air-to-surface missiles, 29 nuclear submarines and 194 nuclear test tunnels, according to Lugar's office. The act is named for its Senate co-sponsors, Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat.

The U.S. has funded about $2 billion in security improvements at nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union, Wilkes said. Harman questions whether all of it has been well-spent. "There is massive corruption in Russia, and so a lot of that money didn't go to exactly what it should go for," she said.

Rose Gottemoeller, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Moscow Center, said she sees "a steady momentum" in upgrading security at facilities. Still, Gottemoeller, Bunn and other experts say that terrorists are developing smarter tactics and becoming increasingly brazen.

Bunn said that most Russian nuclear facilities -- even those with upgraded security systems -- probably couldn't defend themselves against attacks such as those staged by Chechen militants at a Moscow theater in 2002 and at a school in Beslan in 2004.