U.S.-Russian Anti-Smuggling Effort Largely in Disarray By R. Jeffrey Smith The Washington Post WASHINGTON A two-year U.S. effort to help Russia keep its nuclear materials from falling into terrorist hands has largely failed to get off the ground because of U.S. friction with top Russian nuclear experts, low funding and inattention at the top levels of the Clinton administration, according to U.S. officials familiar with the program. These political and financial problems hinder the ability of Russia and the United States and its European allies to prevent further smuggling into Western Europe of bomb-grade materials from Russia, the officials said. In recent interviews, the officials said while none of the batches confiscated in the last four months had more than 10 percent of the fissile material needed to build a terrorist bomb, nuclear smuggling is likely to persist and could eventually pose a threat to U.S. or allied security, a view they said is supported by classified U.S. intelligence estimates. The officials said Russia lacks vital experience and know-how in keeping close track of its estimated 1,000 tons of bomb-grade uranium and 170 tons of plutonium, rendering it incapable of providing reliable assurances that none of its materials is missing from storage. But they said the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, the country's principal nuclear custodian, has repeatedly rebuffed offers of U.S. assistance out of pride and anxiety that any cooperation with Washington could compromise its weapons secrets or be attacked by Russian nationalists. Without intercession by Clinton and other top officials at the highest levels of the Russian government, the officials said, ministry officials will continue to rebuff months-old U.S. offers to help detect and repair security defects at military-related nuclear facilities or aid Moscow in developing a better export control system. They said the topic should be a top priority for next month's summit between President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. White House sources said Clinton is likely to raise the issue there but has not yet decided whether to emphasize it. U.S. policy also has shortcomings, said the officials, who spoke on condition they not be named. Although the White House last year claimed ensuring secure storage of former Soviet nuclear materials was a key foreign policy priority, the administration lacks a detailed, government-wide strategy for halting nuclear smuggling. It has no mechanisms for rapidly sharing intelligence information on nuclear smuggling incidents with Russia and other former Soviet republics, unlike Germany, which concluded such an agreement with Moscow last week. The lack of such an accord, officials said, helps explain widespread grumbling within the government that the CIA knew little more about the recent smuggling incidents than what had appeared in German press accounts. Copyright 1994, The Tech. All rights reserved. This story was published on August 28, 1994. Volume 114, Number 33. This story appeared on page 3. This article may be freely distributed electronically, provided it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice, but may not be reprinted without the express written permission of The Tech. Write to archive@the-tech.mit.edu for additional details. Smuggled Plutonium May Not Pose Serious Threat to Safety By Rick Atkinson The Washington Post BERLIN Two weeks after the seizure by German police of a large quantity of contraband plutonium, investigators in Europe and the United States have concluded that the threat to public safety from smuggled radioactive materials may have been substantially exaggerated by German officials. Those investigating the contraband plutonium and enriched uranium confiscated in Germany this summer acknowledge that they still have more questions than answers about the origins and intended buyers of the material. Nor do they discount the potentially catastrophic consequences of uncurbed nuclear smuggling. But interviews with officials in Vienna, Frankfurt, Bonn, Luxembourg and Washington indicate that while the contraband probably came from Russia, there is no firm evidence that it was diverted from nuclear weapons or weapons production lines. Nor is there evidence that bomb-building fissile material has fallen into unauthorized hands. Nor has proof emerged of an organized "Russian mafia" brokering radioactive contraband or of rogue Third World states seeking to buy black-market plutonium. In fact, some law enforcement officials suspect that at least part of the recent uproar may be a case of the tiger chasing its tail - that aggressive undercover sting operations intended to bait and snare nuclear smugglers have created an artificial demand for radioactive material. A further complication is that the irresistible combination of crime and nuclear bombs has become a campaign issue in Germany as federal elections draw closer this fall. A leading opposition politician charged this week - without offering any proof - that the government cynically staged several recent arrests of nuclear crooks to bolster Chancellor Helmut Kohl's law-and-order image. Anti-proliferation experts take pains to stress the gravity of nuclear smuggling, while expressing hope that this month's furor accelerates plans to safeguard nuclear stockpiles. "We don't have a crisis," one U.S. official said. "We have a serious problem." All agree that the extraordinary purity of one contraband plutonium stash recently seized in Germany was particularly alarming, as was the relatively large size of the plutonium cache found in another bust. "It is serious, but not very serious," said David Kyd, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) in Vienna. "Serious in that the quality of some samples is exceptionally high, but not very serious in that there's no indication of organized trafficking here... . There doesn't appear to be anybody big time out there in a purchasing mode." Harald Mueller, a top nonproliferation expert at Frankfurt's Peace Research Institute, added: "My guess is we're still dealing with a trickle and not with a stream. As long as it's only a trickle, we have an opportunity to stem the stream. But that supposes that we do a lot in the next weeks or months." Copyright 1994, The Tech. All rights reserved. This story was published on August 28, 1994. Volume 114, Number 33. This story appeared on page 3. This article may be freely distributed electronically, provided it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice, but may not be reprinted without the express written permission of The Tech. Write to archive@the-tech.mit.edu for additional details. WHAT'S NEW by Robert L.Park Friday, 26 Aug 94 Washington, DC 1. HOW MUCH WEAPONS-GRADE PLUTONIUM DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A BOMB? With plutonium smuggled out of Russia showing up in Germany, and with North Korea determined to make its own, maybe we ought to know. The International Atomic Energy Agency says 8 kilograms, but some experts think that figure was deliberately inflated to discourage would-be proliferators. They don't seem to be all that discouraged; one of the three plutonium seizures in Germany amounted to 500 grams. In a report released this week by the Natural Resources Defense Council, physicists estimate that as little as one kilogram may be enough to make a one-kiloton bomb. Although that may not sound like much compared to megaton bombs, the radius of destruction would be roughly one-third that of the Hiroshima bomb. Making bombs with less plutonium does take some- what more sophisticated technology. In fact, Edward Teller has been urging the development of baby bombs on the 100-ton scale to quell small disturbances. You got a problem? Eddie's got a bomb. 2. IF YOU CAN'T GET WEAPONS-GRADE PLUTONIUM, TRY REACTOR-GRADE! Traffic in the weapons stuff may be on the gram scale, but trade in civilian plutonium is by the ship load (WN 15 Jan 93). It's awkward stuff for bombs because of a high Pu-240 content, which builds up when Pu-239 is exposed to neutrons. In a simple design, a high background of neutrons from spontaneous fission of Pu-240 would produce a "fizzle"--but the "fizzle yield" would still be a few kilotons! That could be increased in a sophisticated design. 3. IF YOU'RE NOT THAT SOPHISTICATED, USE HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM! The simplest design of all is the "gun type" used at Hiroshima, but even with weapons-grade plutonium, the Pu-240 content would be too high. That would seem to make HEU the material of choice for unsophisticated proliferators, although it would take about three times as much to make a bomb. To eliminate international trade in HEU, the US has been urging our allies to stop using it in research reactors. It seems like a reasonable request, but for the fact that the proposed Advanced Neutron Source at Oak Ridge calls for the use of HEU. The ANS, which has already run into appropriations trouble (WN 1 Jul 94), could be redesigned to use non-weapons fuel, but at a cost in flux and operating time. WHAT'S NEW (in my opinion), Friday, 15 Jan 93 Washington, DC 1. PLUTONIUM: RUSSIA MAKES IT--JAPAN BUYS IT--U.S. WAREHOUSES IT. With the end of the Cold War, weapons-grade plutonium has become a hot item on the commodity market. A shipment of plutonium from a reprocessing plant in France arrived in Japan ten days ago. In the next 20 years, Japan plans to amass over 100 tons of Pu-239 for an ambitious breeder program--that is more Pu-239 than is in the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal! It would make the island nation energy self-reliant and greatly reduce production of greenhouse gases. Russia also plans to build fast-breeder reactors as part of a program to double its nuclear power capacity by 2010. Even now, Russia continues to operate plutonium production facilities on the grounds that they are also used to generate electricity and heat apartment buildings. The U.S., however, terminated its Clinch River fast-breeder program in 1983. There is no long-range plan to use the tons of Pu-239 from dismantled weapons now piling up at a facility near Amarillo. We do hope DOE has a long-term lease on the warehouse. The half-life of Pu-239 is 24,000 years. 2. MEANWHILE, NASA HAS AGREED TO BUY PLUTONIUM-238 FROM RUSSIA, as WHAT'S NEW predicted a year ago (WN 25 Jan 93). The non- fissile isotope, which decays by alpha emission with a 90-year half-life, is used by the U.S. for the thermoelectric generators that power deep space science missions. NASA does not have enough of the isotope for the 1997 Cassini launch. DOE considered using the idle Fast Flux Test Facility at Hanford to make Pu-238, but at the Russian price of only $1.2M per kilogram, it's far cheaper to buy it. A relic of the fast-breeder program, FFTF will now be turned off. It will take five years to achieve "cold" shutdown. 3. SDI BOUGHT A TOPAZ II SPACE NUCLEAR REACTOR FROM THE RUSSIANS. And to the distress of American astronomers, they want to test it in near-Earth orbit. Astronomers have had plenty of experience with Soviet space reactors. During the Cold War, the Soviets used nuclear reactors to power radar satellites. On each pass, the reactors blinded American gamma-ray satellites. It would be even worse with the more sensitive Compton Gamma Ray Observatory that was launched last year. Last week, the Council of the American Astronomical Society adopted a resolution urging SDIO to put the reactor in a high enough orbit to avoid interference. In 1978, a Soviet reactor crashed in Canada, scattering radioactive debris over 40,000 square miles of tundra. In 1989, Rep. George Brown (D-CA) called for a moratorium on nuclear power in Earth orbit. Amazingly, SDIO has not even defined a mission for the Topaz. THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY (Note: Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the APS, but they should be.)