 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
2/6/12 |
 |
||||||||
|
 |
Home / Publications / News |
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
RANSAC Nuclear News, March 17, 2003 Compiled by Michael Roston and Lauren Arestie A. Cooperative Threat Reduction
 A. Cooperative Threat Reduction 1. Editorial: Arsenals Are Too Vulnerable In 1998, an al-Qaeda operative was arrested in Germany for trying to buy uranium to build a nuclear bomb. It was one of many attempts by the terrorist group to obtain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Today, in spite of stepped-up efforts since Sept. 11, 2001 to thwart terrorists' quests for such weapons, the chances that they might succeed remain alarmingly high. Twenty-seven countries possess these arms or are trying to build them, and half have terror groups operating inside their borders. With the world intensely focused on how to seize weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, the danger that they could fall into the hands of terrorists is getting inadequate attention. Despite broad agreement that the threat is real, the world community has failed to ensure the security of nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals. The extent of the risk was made clear by two reports released last week. Loose nukes. Tons of highly enriched uranium and other ingredients for a nuclear bomb "are dangerously insecure," according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit group. It says progress in securing these materials has been "unacceptably slow." Dirty bombs. Materials for building "dirty" bombs, which use explosives to spread deadly radioactive material, are commonplace. Yet the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned last week that more than 100 nations lack adequate controls to prevent the theft of the materials. The warning about dirty bombs prompted 120 nations at an IAEA conference in Vienna last week to agree to tighten the security of radioactive materials. And the U.S. announced $3 million in aid to help poor countries better secure their stocks. Compared with these actions, efforts to prevent nuclear and chemical attacks have lagged. Last June, the U.S. asked seven other industrial nations to match its $10 billion pledge over a decade to accelerate the destruction of nuclear weapons in Russia and other former Soviet republics. By the year's end, only $5.5 billion had been pledged, and those commitments aren't firm, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative report. In the U.S., some House Republicans have held up funds to help Russia destroy massive chemical-weapons stocks. Last year they blocked a move to shift some money targeted for Russia to other countries that want to get rid of chemical weapons. The lawmakers worry about adequate oversight of the $1-billion-a-year program and distrust Moscow's pledge to eliminate its stockpiles. Securing these weapons is further hampered by a lack of international cooperation. Russia balked at giving U.S. officials access to some weapons sites. Some countries with chemical, biological or nuclear programs, including North Korea, Iran and Libya, also refuse to work with the U.S. Yet even friendly nations are not acting with the needed urgency. Denying terrorists weapons of mass destruction doesn't come at a huge price. Failing in that mission does. return to menu 2. Editorial: Success Hinges On Verifying A long shadow hangs over the horizon of Krasnoyarsk, a city in central Russia. It is a $10-million plant built to neutralize volatile missile fuel that American taxpayers funded but will never benefit from. It will never be operated because the Russians diverted the fuel to their space program before the plant was even completed. This giant, empty facility is another example of the problems plaguing efforts to control weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. The proliferation of these weapons remains a serious danger - but not because of a lack of funding or congressional support. The Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) initiative has stumbled in recent years because of three basic, but fixable, problems. Access. Today, we are barred from entering 56 of the 80 known Russian biological-weapons facilities. Of those we are allowed to enter, we do not have full access. Clearly, we cannot fix what we are not allowed to see. As a result, only two sites can be certified as secure today. Cooperation. On top of money wasted in Krasnoyarsk, we recently lost another $95 million on a proposed facility in Votkinsk, where a local politician denied a land-use permit for a plant to dismantle missile engines. There are also plans to build a $1 billion plant to destroy poisonous gas. This time, we should require that Russia guarantee the necessary permits and regular meetings with Russian officials. This would ensure full cooperation throughout the construction and utilization stages. Further, we should mandate that U.S. site managers be present to oversee these stages. Focus. Department of Defense funding for CTR should remain focused on the former Soviet Union, where 99% of the world's potentially loose weapons of mass destruction are stored. The Energy and State departments should address problems elsewhere, as those institutions are better suited to traditional foreign aid. CTR earned my support because it made America safer. The initiative is drifting away from its original charter, but it can once again serve U.S. security needs if cooperation and access improve and the Defense Department keeps its focus on the most hazardous threats. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan said we should "trust, but verify." That was a prudent plan then, and it should guide us again today. return to menu 3. Editorial: Ignoring The Unthinkable If a terrorist were to detonate a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb in Grand Central Station, about half a million people would die immediately -- roughly equivalent to the population of Washington, D.C. Much of Manhattan would be destroyed, and depending on the prevailing winds the rest of the island might have to be evacuated. Hundreds of thousands more would die of burns and exposure to radiation. The direct economic effects would surpass $1 trillion, or one-tenth of the nation's annual economic output. Indirect effects -- if, say, the terrorists threatened to destroy another city -- would be much higher. It is impossible to predict how U.S. social and political structures would change after such an attack. But if you posit, for a moment, sufficient normalcy to imagine a congressional hearing, you can also imagine questions, as after 9/11, about who had failed to "connect the dots," and why. In this case, however, such questions would be met by an astonishing response. Officials would have to acknowledge that the dots had been connected long before the attack; that both the danger and the means to eliminate it had been well understood; and that the president and Congress had failed to do what was necessary. Those are the inescapable conclusions of a new report, "Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials," by Harvard University experts Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier and John P. Holdren. The report was commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which is chaired by two politicians who have been trying for more than a decade to focus the nation's attention on this threat: Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who is also chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). Nunn noted last week that President Bush has said that keeping weapons of mass destruction from terrorists is "our highest priority." But the report concludes flatly: "It is simply not the case that the U.S. government is doing everything in its power to prevent a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States from occurring." And: "Between occasional initiatives, the level of sustained, day-to-day engagement from the highest levels . . . has been very modest (as, indeed, it was in the previous administration, and the one before that)." On one level, this insufficient response is difficult to comprehend. No one doubts that a nuclear explosion is the most fearsome single terrorist threat. It is also now beyond dispute, based on documents discovered in Afghanistan and other evidence, that al Qaeda, for one, has made serious efforts to acquire a weapon and has demonstrated the organizational skills to deploy it. It is clear too that the single best defense against such an attack is to prevent nuclear warheads or material from falling into terrorists' hands. Once they have such material, the remaining tasks are daunting but doable: assembling a weapon, smuggling it into the United States, detonating it. Available technologies would be unlikely to detect a weapon as it crossed the border. But terrorists cannot manufacture the nuclear material they would need; they would have to buy or steal it. The location of such material often is not secret, nor is its condition of storage: highly vulnerable. "The reality," says Bunn, "is that there are hundreds of buildings around the world in scores of countries where the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons are dangerously insecure." Last year the U.S.-Russian "Project Vinca" succeeded in spiriting bomb-grade material out of an insecure site in Yugoslavia. But that operation required more than a year of planning and an infusion of private funds -- and there are at least 24 other such high-risk sites around the world. In Russia, little more than a third of nuclear material has been secured in cooperative U.S.-Russian programs, and tales of theft, attempted theft and sloppy protection are legion: guards who do not patrol because they have no winter uniforms, security systems shut because of unpaid electricity bills. "Weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes," says the CIA. "We assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude of such thefts." A focus on Iraq may be seen as a distraction from this threat, or as one essential component of a response; in either case, it is certainly not sufficient. Yet the danger of unsecured nuclear material has not received a fraction of the official attention devoted to the Iraqi threat. And Nunn asserts that, as inadequate as the American response has been, most other nations have done far less. Why? The authors of the report offer various explanations: bureaucratic resistance, suspicion among nations, the absence of any corporate constituency that profits substantially from such work, the mistaken belief that everything possible is being done or, alternately, that nothing useful can be done. And then there is the most human of reasons: No one likes to think about the unthinkable. return to menu B. Plutonium Production Reactor Shutdown and Conversion 1. Russia and America OK Deal to Shut Down Plutonium Reactors (excerpted) In an apparent landmark achievement in cooperative threat reduction efforts between Russia and the United States, Moscow and Washington penned an agreement last week to shut down Russia's three remaining weapons grade plutonium producing nuclear reactors, sources in both governments say. The three reactors in question - two in the closed Siberian city of Seversk and the other in the closed city of Zheleznogorsk, also in Siberia - will, according to the agreement, be decommissioned within the next eight years, effectively ending Russia's capability to produce weapons grade plutonium. These reactors represent the last of Russia's 13 plutonium-producing reactors that were slated for dismantlement under the DOE and US Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction, or CTR programs. The United States has already shut down all of its 14 plutonium production reactors. All three Russian reactors are currently used to provide electricity and heat in Seversk and Zheleznogorsk - known in Soviet times as Tomsk-7 and Krasnoyarsk- 26 respectively. The deficit in power and heat that will result from the reactors' closures will be compensated by two aged fossil fuel plants near both cities that the DOE will refurbish. Officials with the US Department of Energy, or DOE, estimate the cost of restoring the fossil fuel plants to be $500m. The United States has described the agreement as another important step in US-Russian cooperation. It was signed in Vienna on Wednesday on the sidelines of a conference about radioactive material and radioactive dispersion devices - so-called dirty bombs - the prevention of which has been the center of America's nuclear non-proliferation rhetoric since the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. "This will bring us to the end of production of weapons grade plutonium in Russia," said US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham after signing the agreement with Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev. Rumyantsev said that the deal demonstrated to the world that Russia and America were friends and partners in ridding the world of nuclear dangers. The current deal has its roots in a 1997 agreement between Russia and the United States signed under the aegis of the Pentagon-run CTR Program. The original accord would have retrofitted the reactors in such way that they would no longer produce plutonium - a process called core conversion. The Pentagon was to implement that program by December 31st 2000. But that date came and went with no evident progress - a failure that many former DOE and CTR officials familiar with the deal have attributed to poor management on the US side and foot dragging on the Russian side. Among the apprehensions that slowed Russia's cooperation with the core conversion project were the hundreds of jobs that will be lost at the radiochemical plants in Seversk and Zheleznogorsk, where the spent fuel from these reactors is reprocessed for weapons grade plutonium oxide. Another Russian concern, according to Robert Alvarez, a former DOE senior policy advisor during the Clinton Administration, was the loss for Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry, or Minatom, of the 1500 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium oxide these three reactors annually produce. According to Alvarez, and many other former and present officials familiar with Russian-American efforts to destroy surplus weapons plutonium, Russia is reluctant to dispose of what Minatom views as a viable future source of nuclear fuel for a series of plutonium reactors it now has on the drawing board. These reactors - the BREST and BN-800 -produce plutonium as waste that then can be fed back into the reactors as fuel. "The Russian's treat plutonium like gold," said Alvarez in an interview with Bellona Web. Russia's former atomic energy minister Yevgeny Adamov - who left his post two years ago under a cloud of scandal, but who maintains shadowy ties with current atomic energy brass - has underscored Alvarez's assertion in recent interviews where the former Minatom chief advocated Russia's new line of plutonium fuelled reactors. Ultimately, Adamov said, Russia should aim for a closed plutonium fuel cycle that relies on the BREST and BN-800 series. According to various unofficial estimates, Russia has 125 tons of weapons plutonium stored at various sites -under varying degrees of security - around Russia. The US has declared it has 100 tons of plutonium. During CTR's bumpy core conversion efforts, Gosatomnadzor, or GAN - Russia's increasingly marginalized nuclear regulatory agency - was bellowing protests about the dangers and cost overruns the program was posing and threatened to withdraw the Seversk and Zheleznogorsk reactors' operation licenses. In a rare accord, Minatom agreed with GAN, and the agencies reported to the Pentagon in 2000 that the conversion project was foundering. The Pentagon abandoned the core conversion idea and gave the DOE the responsibility of shutting down the reactors altogether and devising alternative fossil fuel energy schemes for Seversk and Zheleznogorsk by revamping two decades-old fossil fuel plants near both of the cities. Under the accord signed on Wednesday, the two Seversk reactors will be shut down in 2008 and the one in Zheleznogorsk by 2011. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov had last month issued a decree stating that the Seversk reactors would close by 2005 and Zheleznogorsk's by 2006. But DOE budgeting restrictions cannot maintain that schedule. The reactors will meanwhile continue to produce enough plutonium to make one new nuclear weapon per day. According to Moscow and current DOE officials, continuing to produce the plutonium oxide is cheaper than storing the un-reprocessed spent nuclear fuel, or SNF. Rumyantsev estimated that the reactors will generate an additional 10 tonnes of weapons grade plutonium before they are retired. Though last week's agreement was hailed by both governments, many observers remained sceptical of the new deadline and of the project as a whole. Indeed, sources at the DOE who are familiar with the project say that if the DOE's funding levels for the project do not rise significantly in the years to come, already postponed completion deadlines are impossible to meet. [...] return to menu 2. US Financial Participation In Shutdown Of Russian Plutonium Production Reactors Would Amount To Hundreds Of Millions Of USD The US financial participation in the shutdown of the three Russian weapons plutonium breeders and creation of alternative energy sources would amount to hundreds of millions of US dollars, as the Minister of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev informed journalists at the meeting in Minatom of Russia. Mr. Rumyantsev and the US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham signed an US financial assistance agreement concerning the shutdown of three Russian power reactors producing non-power grade plutonium: ADE-4 and ADE-5 in Seversk (Tomsk Region) and ADE-2 in Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk Region). The signing took place during the conference on security of radiation sources held in Vienna 11-12 March. This agreement is supplemental to the intergovernmental agreement on cooperation concerning plutonium production reactors signed by Russia and the US on September 23, 1997. "The intergovernmental agreement provided for modifications of the reactor cores to minimize plutonium production", A. Rumyantsev explained, "However, after the joint discussion of scientific and technical aspects it became clear that this path would not lead to a solution to the plutonium production issue. Therefore, a decision was made to shutdown the reactors but prior to that to create replacement capacities". "As regards plutonium to be produced by Seversk and Zheleznogorsk reactors before they are shut - this is about 10 metric tons - it will be added in 34 MT Russia committed to dispose under the 2000 Agreement", Minister Rumyantsev informed. According to the agreement terms and conditions the Russian plutonium disposition program should be funded out of international sources. As the Minister said, "about 800 USD have been raised, the US providing for the major share; the other participants are Japan, France and Italy", while the international community has to raise US$ 2 B to construct a uranium-plutonium (MOX) fuel fabrication plant. The facility is planned to be built in the Urals or Siberia. A. Rumyantsev called the agreement signed in Vienna "an important milestone of more active and broad US-Russia nuclear cooperation", adding that there were some other joint projects queuing. Responding the Nuclear.Ru question regarding the specific projects, the Minister noted the commissioning of the fissile material storage facility at PA "Mayak" site in Ozersk. "We have also started the global partnership activities under the agreements reached in Kananaskis Summit. We conduct negotiations on arrangements for disposal of nuclear submarines, continue cooperation within the International Scientific and Technical Center, and have signed a commercial contract for supply of plutonium-238 for space nuclear installations", Alexander Rumyantsev said. The Minister believes that the US rejoining the ITER Project is one more important step in development of the US-Russia cooperation. return to menu 3. U.S., Russia Sign Reactor Shutdown Deal The United States and Russia signed agreements on Wednesday reviving an on-again, off-again deal to shut down the last three Russian reactors producing nuclear weapons-grade plutonium. Under terms of the accords, the United States will spend an estimated $500 million on two new fossil-fuel power plants to replace the reactors, which provide heat and electricity to Seversk and Zheleznogorsk. The Siberian cities once were secret, "closed" locations of the Soviet military establishment. The agreements "set the stage for another important advancement in our cooperative nonproliferation efforts," U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said. The signing "demonstrated to the entire world that Russia and America are friends and partners," said his Russian counterpart, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev. They signed the documents at Vienna's Hofburg Congress Hall, on the sidelines of a three-day global conference, co-sponsored by their governments, on another nonproliferation concern, the potential for development of terrorist "dirty bombs" - conventional, non-nuclear bombs packed with radioactive materials. A U.S.-Russian deal under which Washington was to help phase out the plutonium reactors was first signed in 1997, and was celebrated as a historic event in the costly U.S. campaign to ensure that Moscow safeguarded and reduced its vast nuclear stockpile. The United States halted its own weapons production of plutonium in the late 1980s, as a result of a series of U.S.-Soviet arms control treaties. The Russians, who have shut down 10 other plutonium-producing plants, continued operating the two at Seversk and one at Zheleznogorsk because they were vital to the power supplies of the cities, formerly known as Tomsk-7 and Krasnoyarsk-26. They continued reprocessing the spent uranium fuel from the power plants into plutonium not to make bombs, but because indefinite storage of the spent fuel would have been prohibitively expensive. The 1997 deal foundered, however, because its original goal of modifying the reactors proved impractical, and because of Russian financing problems and disputes over American audits on use of U.S. funds. The Russians also have been slow to move because the plan would dislocate thousands of people employed by the combined reactor-reprocessing operations. The original plan envisioned conversion by 2001. Now, under Wednesday's agreements, the Seversk shutdown is to take place by 2008, and the shutdown at Zheleznogorsk by 2011. The governments hope displaced staff will be re-employed under the "Nuclear Cities" program, a U.S.-financed effort to develop jobs elsewhere in Russia for workers from the former "closed cities." The three plants are the source of 3,300 pounds of plutonium a year, roughly enough to make one nuclear bomb per day. return to menu 4. U.S., Russia Sign Agreements to Shut Down Russian Plutonium Plants Atomic Energy Minister Aleksandr Rumyantsev and U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham signed agreements in Vienna on 13 March under which Russia will shut down three nuclear reactors in Tomsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai that produce weapons-grade plutonium, Russian and international news agencies reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 6 March 2003). In exchange, the United States will provide assistance for the construction of thermoelectric fossil-fuel plants in Seversk and Zhelzhnogorsk to make up for the loss of energy incurred by the closures. "The nuclear reactors will be shut down only after the substituting energy facilities have been commissioned," Rumyantsev said, according to ITAR-TASS. The news service reported that the shutdown will be complete in 2009. Abraham declined to say how much the agreement will cost the United States, but he confirmed that it was included in the $1.3 billion allocated in the current budget for nonproliferation programs, Reuters reported. return to menu C. Plutonium Disposition 1. Lack of International Aid Hampers Destruction of Russia's Weapons-Grade Plutonium Instead of the required 2 billion dollars required for building a plant to destroy weapons-grade plutonium in Russia, the international community has gathered only 800 million dollars, a RIA Novosti correspondent quotes Alexander Rumyantsev as reporting on Friday. Rumyantsev is the Russian Nuclear Energy Minister. Only Japan, the United States, Italy and France have allocated money for the project, he said. Rumyantsev recalled that, under the 2000 Russian-American intergovernmental agreement, the two countries pledged "to destroy mutually this component of thermonuclear weapons". "Under this agreement, each country has to destroy 34 tons of plutonium", he said. For that, it was planned to build such a plant in the Urals region or Siberia. "As soon as the international community interested in the reduction of the world's nuclear potential, gathers 2 billion dollars, we will get down to construction," stressed the Russian minister for nuclear energy. return to menu D. MPC&A 1. Activists Say Drinking And Drugs A Major Problem At Russian Nuclear Facilities MOSCOW - Drinking and drug abuse make the danger of accidents and theft at Russia's nuclear facilities a severe problem, activists and sociologists said Monday. Citing what they called a crisis situation in Russia's nuclear industry, members of Greenpeace and other groups urged the government to improve safety and security at existing sites instead of building more nuclear reactors. President Vladimir Putin stressed the importance of the nuclear sector for defense and power needs in January, and the Nuclear Energy Ministry said two years ago that it wanted to build 20 new reactors by 2020 and double reliance on nuclear power - which now accounts for about 14 percent of Russia's electricity. At the same time, "Every day, every month, every year, we see less and less attention to the human factor," upon which "the safety of our country depends to a decisive degree," said Gennady Denisovsky, of the Institute of Sociology at the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. That inattention is a risky mistake, Denisovsky and others said at a news conference, painting a picture of a nuclear industry beset by alcoholism and drug addiction - and leadership that not only fails to address these problems but aggravates them. "A nuclear power plant does not fight alcoholism, it propagates alcoholism," said Vladimir Lupandin, also with the Institute of Sociology. "Alcoholics are advantageous for nuclear power plants - they are modest and undemanding, they can work where all norms of sanitary safety are violated, and they can be fired at any time," he said. He said drug abuse is also a problem because of the high stress of responsible jobs at nuclear facilities. Nadezhda Kutepova, director of the Planet of Hopes activist group, said that "alcoholism is broadly common" at Mayak, a nuclear processing plant that was a major Soviet-era weapons facility. In Ozyorsk, the Ural Mountains city where Mayak is located, "people sitting with a can of beer on the bus on the way to work, people working with hangovers - this is the norm." She said that in 1999, Ozyorsk recorded the highest per capita growth in drug addiction in Russia, and that the drinking problem developed in part because of the Soviet-era teaching that alcohol helps counter radioactive substances. Last year, 45 cases of drunkenness on the job were recorded at Mayak, and 11 people were fired, Kutepova said. But she believes those statistics - at a facility where she said workers could drink from containers of alcohol on the job during Soviet times - are the tip of the iceberg. She said Russia's "closed cities" - communities surrounding plants such as Mayak that were part of the Soviet nuclear weapons industry - should be opened to increase accountability. "In closed cities there is a 'collective guarantee' system of internal relations, under which violations are simply covered up because nobody wants them to get out," Kutepova said. "The majority of people in leadership positions protect their employees when they find them under the influence." She said reports of technical problems or safety violations also often do not go beyond the fences of facilities. Sergei Kharitonov, who worked for 27 years at the Leningrad Atomic Power Station near St. Petersburg, said nuclear power plants have similar problems. Kharitonov, who works with the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, said the Leningrad plant suffers from "a total lack of a culture of security." The Nuclear Energy Ministry says the industry has a very good safety record, and ministry spokesman Nikolai Shingaryov said Monday that alcohol and drug abuse are less prevalent in cities housing nuclear facilities than elsewhere. He said abuse among employees in responsible positions is nonexistent. Kharitonov said that what the public is told "is far from the truth about the situation at nuclear facilities." return to menu E. Radiological Dispersal Devices 1. U.S., Russian Experts Test 'Dirty Bombs' VIENNA, Austria -- In New Mexico's desert and Russia's Ural Mountains, U.S. and Russian experts are experimenting with simulated "dirty bombs" to see how such radiation weapons and potential terrorist tools might work, officials of the two countries say. It's a sensitive area in which some information is withheld to keep clues to bomb-building out of terrorists' hands. But American and Russian specialists attending a global conference on dirty bombs disclosed some aspects of recent testing to a reporter because, as a ranking U.S. official said, the public should know everything is being done to deal with the threat. These so-called "RDDs," for radiological dispersal devices, haven't made an appearance yet, but the al-Qaida terrorist network, for one, is reported to have shown a serious interest in developing them. Dirty bombs would combine conventional explosives with strontium, cesium or some other highly radioactive isotope used for such purposes as cancer radiotherapy, searching for oil deposits and sterilizing food. They wouldn't cause the immediate mass casualties or devastation of nuclear weapons, but they are much simpler to make and the contamination and fear of radiation poisoning could cause general panic and shut down sections of cities for years. Some 600 scientists, government officials and others at the three-day conference that ended Thursday focused on tightening protection of radioisotopes in use worldwide, stopping illicit trafficking and planning emergency responses to such attacks. Others, meanwhile, are trying to learn how a dirty bomb would behave if detonated. For the past six months teams at the U.S. Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have been experimenting with basic designs of RDDs, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Using materials that simulate the characteristics of the radioisotopes -- except for the radioactivity -- they have been exploding the devices to test the reach of the radiation effect as a result of blast and wind, he said. Earlier computer modeling allows the testers to assess likely levels of radiation in various areas as a result of the blasts. Formal results from the U.S. Defense Department tests haven't reached Washington yet. But researchers already know some things, such as that cesium chloride powder, used in large amounts in food irradiators and some older medical devices, is probably the material best suited for dirty bombs. "It's very radioactive, and the powder disperses well," the official said. He said the tests will be stepped up to the level of radiothermal generators -- devices packed with large amounts of isotopes, developed by the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War to power long-life aviation beacons and other remotely installed military equipment. Such generators often hold 40,000 curies -- the basic measure of radioactivity -- in strontium or other material. Experts say even 1,000 curies might make an effective dirty bomb. "A Russian admiral told us there have been many attempted thefts of RTGs reported," the U.S. official said, adding that apparently none was successful. A Russian scientist, Alexander M. Agapov, told the Vienna conference it's possible 900 such devices were deployed by the old Soviet military, many with radio beacons or small lighthouses along Russia's Arctic fringe. Retrieving and securing that radioactive material will be a major challenge. In his slide presentation, Agapov, safety chief for Moscow's Atomic Energy Ministry, described Russian computer simulations of dirty-bomb events. In a sign of the sensitivity, however, he blocked out the amounts of TNT and radioisotope used for simulated weapons. He later told a reporter the Russians determined that radioactive particles from an explosion do not disperse in an oval pattern following wind direction, as usually theorized, but in a much more irregular pattern affected by crosscurrents. Agapov described a Ural Mountains field test of emergency response, based on a computer simulation of a terrorist bazooka attack on a train carrying cobalt-60 and cesium-137, isotopes common in Russian transport. The test didn't involve an actual attack, but a small amount of isotope was used and controlled fires were set beside a train car, to test detection abilities and response. He said the conclusion was that people within a mile or two of the attack would have to be evacuated within five to six minutes -- or at least kept sealed indoors. "You don't have time to check wind direction. You just move," Agapov said. return to menu 2. Head of Russian Atomic Energy Ministry Announces Creation of Centers to Register and Monitor Sources of Radioactivity Russia is going to create centers to register and monitor sources of radioactivity used in medicine, geology and in industrial technologies. That statement was made on Thursday by Aleksander Rumyantsev, Russian minister of atomic energy in reply to the question of the RIA Novosti correspondent regarding the creation in the country of a mechanism to register and monitor such materials in the wake of the appropriate decision taken by the session of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which specifically contemplated that issue in Vienna on 11-12 March. Rumyantsev spoke to journalists at a briefing in the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy devoted to the IAEA session. He stated that "such centers will be created in all 89 regions of the country. Presently they are at the formation stage in 50 regions." According to him, they will establish databases on the whole service cycle of such sources, from their production, application up to utilization. The minister pointed out that "at the moment such registration and monitoring process was "split" between a number of departments and as a result of that depleted radioactive sources were often "found" at dumps or in the most inappropriate locations." He acknowledged that "not everything is well" with such materials. He stated that "there even emerged the term "abandoned sources". The minister stressed that as it was happening not only in Russia, the IAEA paid particular attention to that problem." Rumyantsev reported that the above-mentioned centers would be subordinate to the Ministry of Atomic Energy. return to menu F. Russia-U.S. 1. Duma to Vote on SOP on March 21 The State Duma international committee is going to forward the bill on ratification of the Russian-American treaty on the reduction of Strategic Offensive Potentials for the March 21 plenary session of the lower chamber, Committee Chairman Dmitri Rogozin said summing up the committee session Friday. The international committee has approved the SOP ratification bill, he said. This bill was re-submitted to the State Duma by the president. The committee has given an "unconditional" approval for the draft law. The new bill is the result of the joint work of deputies and the president alike, stressed Dmitri Rogozin. return to menu 2. Duma May Vote On US Treaty The international affairs committee in Russia's lower parliament house recommended a vote next week on ratification on the nuclear weapons treaty reached by President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush. Committee chairman Dmitry Rogozin said the treaty would be submitted to the full State Duma March 21 without any suggested alterations, the Interfax news agency reported. The treaty, agreed on last May by Putin and Bush, calls on both nations to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds, to 1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads, by 2012. The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the treaty last week. The Duma's defense committee Thursday urged the 450-seat chamber to ratify it. return to menu 3. Duma Committee Backs Arms Treaty Ratification The general who heads the defense committee in Russia's lower parliament house recommended Thursday that the chamber ratify the nuclear weapons treaty signed by the Russian and U.S. presidents last spring, suggesting that instability in the relationship because of disagreements over Iraq lend the matter some urgency. "This document should have been ratified in a stable situation; it is all the more necessary to ratify it in today's unstable situation," the Interfax-Military news agency quoted Gen. Andrei Nikolayev, chairman of the State Duma defense committee, as saying. He said he believes the Duma may ratify the treaty this month. The treaty, signed last May by President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush, calls on both nations to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads by 2012 - down from about 6,000 for the United States and 5,500 for Russia. The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the treaty last week. "The treaty is necessary for Russia, it allows Russia to build its strategic forces as it deems necessary through 2012," Nikolayev said, adding that it also allows the system of control envisaged by the earlier START treaty in place through Jan. 1, 2009. "This means that up to Jan. 1, 2009 we will know what is going on in the U.S. nuclear complex." The Duma's international affairs committee, which will make the final decision on whether to submit the bill on ratification to the 450-member chamber, will consider the issue Friday, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The agency said the first and most important reading of the ratification bill could take place Monday or Wednesday. The bill is also subject to approval by Russia's upper parliament house, the Federation Council. Nikolayev urged the international affairs committee to hold an open joint session of both parliament houses on the treaty and to submit two resolutions for a vote alongside the treaty: one setting out the Duma's broader position on nuclear arms cuts; the other meant to ensure that Russia's defense capabilities are not compromised by the reductions and to provide for the further development of its strategic nuclear forces. return to menu 4. Duma Committee Favors Ratification Of SOR Treaty The Duma Defense Committee has advised the lower house to ratify the Russian-American Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SOR), its chairman, Gen. Andrei Nikolayev, told Interfax on Thursday. "The Duma committee, after considering the bill on ratification of the SOR Treaty submitted by the president, has recognized that the provisions of the bill are an effective legal foundation guaranteeing the necessary coordination of efforts of Russian federal government bodies to implement the treaty," Nikolayev said. The bill "creates additional conditions for guaranteeing the regular notification of the Federal Assembly in the framework of established control procedures about the implementation of the treaty by the United States," he said. Nikolayev said his committee advised the Duma to ratify the treaty. The Duma International Affairs Committee responsible for the ratification was invited to submit the bill to the Duma after receiving a financial and economic study and an explanatory note to it. The two accompanying documents are missing today even though they were required to be submitted under Duma regulations, the Defense Committee said. It also invited the International Affairs Committee to hold joint parliamentary hearings on the bill, and suggested drafting two Duma resolutions on its attitude to questions of strategic offensive reductions and additional measures to coordinate the efforts of Russian government bodies in such reductions and on guarantees for maintaining the combat readiness and advancement of Russian strategic nuclear forces under conditions of strategic offensive reductions. The Defense Committee believes the two draft resolutions should be submitted to the lower house for consideration together with the bill. Nikolayev said Russia needs the treaty. "It permits Russia to build its strategic nuclear forces the way it finds necessary until the year 2012. It also allows [Russia] to keep the START-1 verification system until January 1, 2009. This means we will know what is going on in the U.S. nuclear sector until January 1, 2009," he said. "The treaty should have been ratified in a stable situation. The need to ratify it in the current unstable situation is even greater," Nikolayev said. return to menu 5. Duma Defence Committee Recommends to Ratify Strategic Offensive Potentials Reduction Treaty The State Duma defence committee recommended that the lower-house of parliament ratify the Russian-US Strategic Offensive Potentials Reduction Treaty, chairman of the committee Andrei Nikolayev told RIA Novosti. According to him, the draft law that was resubmitted by the president with due account for the proposals of the working group for the preparation of this document, fully meets the interests of Russia's strategic security. Andrei Nikolayev believes that the draft law can be ratified by the State Duma before the end of March. return to menu 6. Vladimir Putin Submits Bill Ratifying Russian-American Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty to State Duma On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted a reviewed bill "On ratification of the Russian-US Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty" to the State Duma, Deputy Chairman of the Lower House International Committee Konstantin Kosachev told RIA Novosti. According to him, on Friday, March 14th, the international committee will hold an extraordinary session on the bill. The deputy did not rule out a possibility of the bill being discussed at a State Duma plenary session to be held on March 19th or 21st. According to the spring session schedule approved on January 15th by the State Duma the ratification of the Russian-US treaty was planned to be addressed in April. The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty was signed by the Russian and US Presidents last May. return to menu 7. Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty Submitted To Duma For Ratification Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted the bill on ratifying the Russian-US Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty to the State Duma for consideration, State Duma Deputy Chairman Vladimir Lukin told RBC. He pointed out that currently this document was discussed at committees of the lower house of the Russian parliament. Earlier deputies recommended some amendments to the bill. Lukin stressed that the process of ratifying this treaty unfolded "without haste and pretty professionally". He expressed hope that in the near future the State Duma and the Federation Council would ratify this document. The US Senate ratified it on March 6, 2003. return to menu G. Russia-Iran 1. Russia Urges Iran to Sign Further IAEA Protocol Russia has urged Iran to sign a protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency allowing for closer study of its nuclear programs. Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov says he stressed this point with Iranian Ambassador Gholamreza Shafei during a Friday meeting in Moscow. Iran participates in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and has a safeguard agreement in place with the IAEA. The additional protocol would allow the inspection of sites that have not been declared part of a nuclear energy program. Russia's construction of a nuclear power plant in the Iranian city of Bushehr has drawn criticism from the United States, which says the project could help Tehran develop nuclear weapons. Russian and Iranian officials say that concern is unfounded. Russia says its nuclear cooperation with Iran is "peaceful in nature." return to menu 2. Moscow Urges Tehran To Work With IAEA Russia urged Iran on Friday to comply with global agreements on nuclear disarmament and let in weapons inspectors as Washington demands, as Moscow appeared to reassess its disputed cooperation with Tehran. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov met the Iranian ambassador to Moscow one day after US President George W. Bush said Tehran posed an "unusual and extraordinary threat" and renewed sanctions barring US firms and citizens from oil dealings there. The White House and US State Department had said earlier this week that longstanding US concerns about Iran's nuclear program were made even graver by recent information that its efforts were far more advanced than previously thought. Russia had previously brushed aside those worries, but there appeared a shift in Moscow's position after Tehran declared that it might not send back to Russia spent nuclear fuel from the Bushehr nuclear reactor being constructed by Russian specialists. Russia's atomic energy ministry had been in months of painstaking negotiations with Iran to make sure that fuel provided by Russia for the plant is returned - ensuring that Tehran could not attempt to reprocess the material for nuclear bombs. Sources in Iran and Russia said the first fuel shipments for Bushehr may come as early as May. But Iran made clear this month that it will reprocess the nuclear fuel waste on its own, leaving Russia in a tricky position as it continues to justify nuclear cooperation with a country identified as a "rogue state" by the United States. A Russian ministry statement said Mamedov told Iranian ambassador Gholamreza Shafei that Moscow "pointed out to Iran the importance of signing additional protocols of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) agreement." Mamedov added that Russia still insisted that its nuclear cooperation with Iran was "exclusively peaceful in nature." On Tuesday, Washington joined a call from the International Atomic Energy Agency for Iran to sign a new protocol with the IAEA that would oblige it to allow more inspections and extensive monitoring of its nuclear sites. But Assadollah Saburi, deputy head of Iran's national atomic agency, insisted that Tehran would not sign the appendix to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, rejecting it as "new restrictions" on Iran's power program, which he said was already facing "all sorts of obstacles." Iran announced last week it intends to activate a uranium conversion facility near the city of Isphahan, a step that US press reports said would produce the uranium hexafluoride gas used in the enrichment process. And Time magazine said the IAEA concluded that Iran introduced uranium hexafluoride gas into some centrifuges at an undisclosed location to test their ability to work. Analysts agreed that Moscow was feeling the heat from Washington over Tehran and was scrambling to come up with a diplomatically suitable response - but that not all Russian officials and ministries were in agreement over Iranian policy. "Our atomic energy ministry lobby is very strong and it will try to resist any reassessment of Iranian policy," said Yevgeny Volk, Moscow office director of the US-based Heritage Foundation institute. Moscow stands to gain at least 800 million dollars from a completed Bushehr deal. "It is not clear at the moment whose position in Moscow is stronger - that of diplomats concerned about relations with the United States, or that of the atomic energy ministry, concerned with profits," said Volk. Other analysts suggest that Mamedov's meeting with the Iranian ambassador had two goals: to convince Tehran to let in IAEA inspectors and salvage a deal on the return of spent fuel ahead of the potential May shipments to Bushehr. "Moscow will see great political gain if Iran signs that IAEA protocol under Russian pressure," said Anton Khlopkov of the PIR Center military research institute. return to menu 3. Moscow, Teheran for Further Co-Operation in Nuclear Energy Moscow and Teheran intend to continue co-operation in the nuclear energy sphere, as the Russian-Iranian relations in the area are "of peaceful character, based on international agreements", the Russian Foreign Ministry's information and press department reported on Friday. At the meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov and Iran's Ambassador to Moscow Gulam Shafeii held on March 14th, the parties confirmed their readiness to further develop mutually profitable co-operation in this direction and pointed to the "importance for Iran to sign the additional protocol for the IAEA guarantees agreement as soon as possible". The two sides expressed their serious anxiety about the crisis around Ira and underlined the two countries' common commitment to a peaceful political settlement of international conflicts based on the UN Charter and corresponding international commitments, the Russian Foreign Ministry's representatives reported. return to menu H. Nuclear Smuggling 1. Radioactive Material Seized In Tajikistan China and its north-western neighbour Tajikistan are boosting co-operation against Muslim separatists. Beijing is fighting Uighur groups in its northwestern Xinjiang Region, Dushanbe is fighting the Muslim organization Hizbi Tahrir. The Chinese embassy in Dushanbe says two million US dollars worth of food aid is being delivered within the framework of a bilateral agreement to fight terrorism, signed last year. Beijing is also giving local police 20 vehicles, uniforms and material to defuse bombs. The news came as Tajik police seized four kilograms of radioactive murcury and arrested two people. The arrests occured in an area where many arms factories operated before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The West fears substances from them can be purchased by terrorist organizations to produce weapons of mass destruction. return to menu I. Nuclear Industry 1. Industry's Production Potential Outruns Investment Capabilities For Power Units Completion Production potential of the industry outruns the capabilities of investing in completion of construction of the nuclear power units, as Alexander Rumyantsev, the Minister of RF for Atomic Energy informed Nuclear.Ru. "This makes my heart heavy, the Minister said. - because our industry has everything to expeditely complete construction of power units at Kalinin, Balakovo, Volgodonsk, Kursk, but we do not have funds, we cannot raise them using the long-term credits since the system of financing is not adequate". A. Rumyntsev believes that raising electricity tariffs to complete construction would be a wrong path. "If we were to raise the tariffs, the investment share would grow. Then could speed up the construction but this would lead to catastrophic consequences for the industry development, therefore the government is rather moderate about it", Minister Rumyantsev explained. "As the minister I know that can do much more but we are jammed by tariffs." Later last week Saratov Region Governor Dmitry Ayatskov announcing the scheduled meeting of the Union of Nuclear Power Territories and Enterprises (UNPTE) which was to address financial issues noted the changes in attitudes towards nuclear power in the regions. "The situation of the early 90s ended up. If previously Bashkiria, for example, used to unalterably oppose construction of NPPs, now Tatarstan and many other regions which did not have nuclear power facilities are strong for construction of NPPs on their territories and request Minatom to allocate funds for construction of ground-based, floating, any NPPs so that have them in their regions", D. Ayatskov said. He also added that there should not be the equal allocation of funds. "If today Balakovo-5 is 80% completed and Kalinin-3 is 95% completed, I am for commissioning of Kalinin-3 first and then that of Balakovo-5 but not for scattering the funds. We must be guided by reason and expert advice", he stressed. return to menu J. Links of Interest 1. Fact Sheet on Iran's Uranium Program return to menu 2. "Dirty Nukes": Threat or Hype? return to menu 3. Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan DISCLAIMER: Nuclear News is presented for informational purposes only. Views presented in any given article are those of the individual author or source and not of RANSAC. RANSAC takes no responsibility for the technical accuracy of information contained in any article presented in Nuclear News. RANSAC's Nuclear News is compiled two to three times weekly. If you would like to be removed from our mailing list or if you have questions/comments/concerns, please reply to news@216.119.87.134 |
|
|
|
© 2007 Partnership for Global Security. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement.