[United Press International, July, 2005]
Nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union remain a dangerous proliferation and environmental threat, Russian and U.S. experts warned today.
Russian researchers from the Bellona Foundation, a Norway-based environmental organization, released their latest report on the state of the Russian nuclear industry and the need to reform it. They said the Soviet nuclear legacy has left Russia and the world vulnerable to nuclear materials left over from the Cold War.
Joining the Russians on a panel at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies was Mark Helmke, a staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the lack of security around nuclear sites in Russia was a much larger threat than the environmental one.
Helmke has been a major supporter of the program crafted by former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that since 1991 has provided billions of dollars to Russia to tighten security around nuclear facilities and dispose of nuclear materials. He said the issue is more or less a race against time in trying to keep terrorists from getting nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union.
"There are a number of unreconstructed cold warriors on both the American and Russian sides, and they often use that to slow down important non-proliferation work," he said. "We have to understand the sense of urgency here. It is remarkable that no terrorist in the past 10 years has been able to get hold of and use any of the nuclear, biological or chemical weapons that are spread all over the former Soviet Union."
Helmke said the issue still needed to become a top global priority for political leadership. "For some reason, this does not seem to rise up as a concern in Europe," he said. “Issues such as global warming that have held the attention of world leaders need to be put aside for more immediate concerns.
"What is the more immediate threat that we face? Is it climate change or is it a terrorist getting his hands on and fashioning a dirty bomb?" He asked. "The problem is that too many of us are whistling past the graveyard on this threat. The threat is so frightening to so many people that we tend to discount it politically and focus on other issues that might be easier to get your heads wrapped around and motivate the public."
A lack of technology has made it impossible to dispose of large stores of nuclear material that if released into soil or water would pose serious threats to those nearby.
"Thirty-seven percent of former usable nuclear weapons have been disposed of, but it is the advanced and technological projects that hit the wall," said Igor Kudrik, a Russian researcher and co-author of the report. “The Russian nuclear program needs to be reformed to ensure the proper disposal of these materials. We need to separate ourselves from the Cold War legacy waste that is taking away from today's activities."
Alexander Nitkin, a contributing author to the report, said Russia needed to comprehensively re-evaluate the nuclear policies it had inherited from the Soviet Union. He said funds given by the United States to dispose of materials were often misspent on unnecessary infrastructure. Nitkin and Kudrik also called for international oversight to account for the massive amounts of foreign funds pledged to Russia for nuclear remediation projects. "We also need to establish what are the most important nuclear hazards that need to be addressed," Nitkin said.
One major area of concern is the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility near St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city. It has reportedly been bankrupt since 2003 and has been a habitual violator of anti-dumping policies in nearby rivers.
Mayak is Russia's only spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility. It has also been the scene of serious security threats in the past decade. A soldier was arrested for allegedly attempting to break into a warehouse on the premises, copper cabling has been stolen, a stash of aluminum rods was discovered outside the perimeter of the plant and scrap stainless-steel valves with a high level of radioactive contamination were found off the premises.
Still, Russia has come a long way in downsizing its once highly threatening nuclear program, the experts said. This summer, 10,000 nuclear warheads will be disposed of.
Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, executive vice president of global energy firm USEC, said her company had helped achieve one of the most successful non-proliferation stories. "Ten percent of the electricity we use in this country comes from (the fuel for nuclear reactors provided by) nuclear warheads that were once aimed at us," she said.
Bellona researchers said they hope their report will grab the attention of major world leaders so they can work more efficiently to modernize the Russian nuclear industry and properly downsize and dispose of nuclear materials. "The victims of a future dirty-bomb attack won't want to know what we have or have not done," said Helmke. "This absolutely must become a priority."
