Overview
	Technical Background
	The Threat
Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials   Materials Protection, Control & Accounting   Warhead Security   Mayak Fissile Materials Storage Facility   BN-350 Fuel Security   Removing Materials from Vulnerable Sites   Converting Reseach Reactors   International Nuclear Security Upgrades   Global Standards
	Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
	Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
	Monitoring Stockpiles
	Ending Further Production
	Reducing Stockpiles

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials

Removing Material From Vulnerable Sites

Status

This action followed closely on an announcement by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumiantsev that a U.S.-Russian agreement facilitating such shipments to Russia of Soviet-supplied HEU would soon be signed.[2]  Following the Bulgaria operation, Deputy National Nuclear Security Administrator for Nuclear Nonproliferation Paul Longsworth told the Washington Post that the U.S., Russia, and the IAEA had finalized a plan for the return of all Soviet-origin HEU to Russia by the end of 2005.[3]  Meeting this goal would require a dramatic acceleration from the current pace of removing material from 1-2 sites per year, which would almost certainly require new approaches—and there are significant gaps in current programs which need to be closed if the goal of removing the nuclear material from the world’s most vulnerable sites as quickly as possible is to be achieved.

Removing material from the most vulnerable sites is a critically important tool for reducing the risk of nuclear theft.  In many cases, it makes more sense to deal with material at a vulnerable facility by moving it elsewhere, rather than by trying to upgrade security in place, for several reasons:

• Some vulnerable sites have little revenue or prospect of future revenue, and are not likely to be able to afford the substantial cost of effective security for the long haul, even if given initial assistance to put a modern security system in place.

• Some facilities are in locations that are inherently difficult to secure—for example research reactors on university campuses, where a substantial armed guard force and a large fenced-off area might be quite difficult to create.

• At some sites, there may be a real danger of threats bigger than any reasonable security system could handle—if there is a danger of state failure or civil war in the area, for example, or a possibility that top officials of the facility itself would decide to sell off the material.

• Finally, constant vigilance is needed, but is very difficult to keep up, for security systems designed to protect against attacks that never occur: any security system only reduces the risk of theft.  Only by ensuring that there’s nothing there to steal can the threat of theft be entirely eliminated.

(In the case of research reactors, unlike power reactors, irradiated fuel also poses a serious proliferation threat, as the fuel is still highly-enriched, is typically not radioactive enough to deter determined terrorists from stealing it, and is in fuel elements small enough to put in a backpack or load into a pick-up truck.) These programs include (see Converting Research Reactors):

• Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR).  Since 1978, the United States has had a program in place to convert research reactors from using HEU fuel to using proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium (LEU) as their fuel.[4]  This effort, known as the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program, has since spawned related cooperative efforts in many countries around the world. A substantial part of the RERTR program's work has focused on developing fuels that would allow research reactors to convert to LEU without substantial cost increases or performance reductions. 

• U.S. Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel Acceptance Program. This effort involves taking back irradiated HEU fuel (and fresh fuel, if it is not going to be used) from U.S.-supplied research reactors.  Reactors are encouraged to convert to LEU through an offer to take their used fuel back to the United States if they do agree to convert. This research reactor fuel take-back program is a fundamental element of U.S. efforts to keep HEU out of the hands of terrorists and hostile states.[5]   By late 2002, over 5,500 fuel elements had been shipped back to the United States from 27 countries.[6] Many facilities, however, are not currently planning to take advantage of this U.S. offer; unless additional incentives convince additional facilities to take part, enough U.S.-supplied HEU for many nuclear bombs will remain abroad when the program comes to its currently scheduled end in a few years.

• U.S.-Russian Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) Cooperation.  Like the United States, the Soviet Union in 1978 began a program to reduce the enrichment of fuels for the research reactors it had designed.  By the late 1980s, however, the reduced enrichment program was put on hold due to lack of funds, a situation that only got worse after the collapse of the Soviet Union.[7]  In recent years, this effort has been restarted with U.S. funds.  Fuels that could make it possible to convert nearly all Soviet-supplied research reactors are undergoing testing now.[8]  Progress on actually converting reactors has been slow.    The first reactor to be converted is expected to be the VVR-CM reactor in Uzbekistan, which program officials hope to have converted in 2005-2006.[9]

• Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return.  Many of the facilities in the world with the largest and least secure quantities of HEU on-site are Soviet-supplied research reactors.  The United States and Russia began discussing the possibility of cooperation on a Russian take-back program in late 1999.[10]  These discussions evolved into a Russia-U.S.-IAEA tripartite initiative, with the United States providing the funding (separately from the RERTR budget) on condition that reactors sending their HEU back to Russia agree to convert to LEU.  The United States will only pay for take-backs for reactors that agree to convert to LEU.  As noted at the outset, in November 2003, Secretary of Energy Abraham and Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Rumiantsev released a joint statement saying that a U.S.-Russian government-to-government agreement governing this effort would soon be signed; Minister Rumiantsev indicated he expected the signature to occur before the end of 2003.[11] The two countries are focusing their efforts on repatriating fuel from more than 20 research reactors in 17 countries.[12]  The joint statement issued by Abraham and Rumiantsev also commits the two countries to bilateral consultations that will lead by the end of 2003 to agreement on the schedule for completing the return of fuel from these targeted sites. 

Adequate funding and leadership for those efforts will be crucial to the success of any broader effort to eliminate nuclear material from vulnerable sites.

In addition to such reactor conversion and fuel take-back efforts, on several occasions the United States, working with international partners, has airlifted material out of particularly vulnerable sites, for secure storage and processing elsewhere:[13]

Project Sapphire.  In November 1994, after more than a year of secret discussions and preparation, some 581 kilograms of HEU was airlifted from the Ulba facility near Ust-Kamenogorsk in Kazakhstan to secure bunkers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in what was known as Project Sapphire.[14]  Most of the HEU was 89-90% enriched, and most of it was alloyed with beryllium—a form that had been produced as fuel for the former Soviet Alfa submarine. The Kazakh government had indicated to the United States that the material could not be adequately protected at Ulba, and there were indications that Iranian representatives had connections to the Ulba facility (indeed, canisters addressed to Teheran were reportedly found in the room next to some of the material when it was packaged) and might be interested in acquiring the HEU.  The United States paid for the operation, and although the removal had originally been suggested by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the United States agreed to give Kazakhstan some $20-$30 million in cash and assistance for other projects in return for giving up the material.[15] After shipment to the United States, the material was blended to non-weapons-usable low-enriched uranium (LEU), with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring of the process, and sold for use as commercial fuel.

Operation Auburn Endeavor.  In April 1998, several kilograms of HEU—some fresh and some irradiated, along with a small amount of LEU—were removed from a research facility near Tbilisi, Georgia, and shipped to the British reprocessing plant at Dounreay for processing (with U.S. funding and assistance), in an effort known as Operation Auburn Endeavor.[16]  Georgia at that time was wracked by civil war and mounting chaos, and while the security system at the facility had been upgraded with U.S. assistance, neither the Georgian government nor the U.S. government was confident that the material could be adequately protected in place.  At one moment of the civil war, before the security upgrades took place, scientists at the unprotected facility (which then had some 10 kilograms of HEU) took turns guarding it "with sticks and garden rakes," those being the only weapons they had available.[17]  A small amount of HEU from another facility in Georgia, at Sukhumi in the separatist area of Abkhazia, had been stolen, and has never been recovered.[18]  Despite these factors, it took years of U.S. interagency discussion and international negotiation before the project was finally implemented.[19]

Project Vinca. In August 2002, in a cooperative effort involving the United States, Yugoslavia, Russia, the IAEA, and the private U.S. Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), 48 kilograms of potentially vulnerable HEU—enriched to 80 percent U-235—was removed from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences near Belgrade.[20]  This material was officially described as being enough for two and a half nuclear bombs.[21]  The impoverished Vinca facility had inadequate safety and security measures in place—though both had been significantly upgraded in IAEA-coordinated efforts in the years before the operation—and had been the focus of Yugoslavia's secret nuclear weapons program during the communist period.[22]  Moreover, the general chaos in Yugoslavia and the presence of powerful and well-connected organized crime organizations with international links increased the risk of possible theft.  Although removal of this HEU had been proposed—including by the scientists at the facility itself—years before, the U.S. government took no action on the issue while the Milosevic regime remained in power; relations with the regime were poor, and there were other priorities (such as the Balkan wars).  Even after the collapse of the Milosevic regime, it took a considerable period of internal discussion within the U.S. government, followed by a sensitive negotiation with Yugoslavia and the other participants, to gain agreement to remove the HEU.[23]  Yugoslavia insisted that if the HEU was to be removed, they should receive funding for managing the large quantity of LEU spent fuel at the site, and for cleaning up the contamination at the facility.  The U.S. government agencies involved each concluded they had no legal authority to spend U.S. taxpayer funds on cleaning up nuclear waste in a foreign country that was not from U.S.-supplied material, and ultimately asked NTI to provide $5 million for that part of the project, to clinch the deal.[24]  Russia, which had supplied the fuel, was willing to take it back, but only if all of its costs were paid, which the U.S. government ultimately agreed to do. In the end, the material was packaged by U.S., Russian, and Yugoslav experts under IAEA inspection, moved to a Russian cargo aircraft (with 1200 Yugoslav police and soldiers guarding the transfer), and flown on a Russian military cargo aircraft to the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors at Dmitrovgrad, Russia—a facility with secure storage areas (equipped with modern material protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) systems as part of U.S.-Russian MPC&A program).[25]  There, the material will be blended to proliferation-resistant LEU, as part of an ongoing U.S.-Russian cooperative project to blend down similar small HEU stockpiles.  All told, the U.S. government paid $2.5 million for the project (including incentives to the Yugoslav government, costs of packaging and shipping the material, and the costs of securing and blending it in Russia), half as much as NTI agreed to provide.[26]

Romania.  In September 2003, Russia, the United States, and the International Atomic Energy Agency collaborated again to remove highly enriched uranium, this time with Romania.  The long-planned operation removed 14.2 kilograms of unirradiated HEU reactor fuel (mostly 80 percent enriched, but also including some 36% enriched material) from Romania's Pitesti Institute for Nuclear Research. The Soviet Union had originally provided the material to Romania in the 1970s for a research reactor at another site, which has since been closed.[27]  The operation culminated on Sunday, September 21, 2003, when eight fresh fuel canisters containing the HEU were transported to Bucharest, loaded onto a Russian IL-76 cargo plane, and flown to Novosibirsk, Russia.  At the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant  the fuel will be blended down to LEU and fabricated for potential sale, in a manner similar to the Project Vinca fresh reactor fuel.  While the Novosibirsk facility has storage areas whose security has been upgraded in the U.S.-Russian MPC&A program, the facility has faced substantial security problems in the past; U.S. officials, however, expressed confidence in the security of the material removed from Romania.[28]  The Department of Energy provided $400,000 to fund the airlift operation.[29]  In addition, the United States agreed to include the Pitesti research reactor in the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program and convert the reactor to the use of LEU fuel to carry out the Institute's research activities.  More importantly, in an effort to win Romanian acceptance for having its HEU removed, DOE broke with precedents and agreed to pay $4 million to support the purchase of new LEU fuel for the converted reactor.[30]  According to the chairman of Romania's National Commission Controlling Nuclear Activities, Romania is also planning by 2006, presumably as part of the U.S. Research Reactor Fuel Take-Back program, to return from the Pitesti research reactor an unspecified amount of HEU that the United States had supplied to Romania in 1978.[31]

Bulgaria.  In a 48-hour operation in late December 2003, 35 nuclear experts and security personnel from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Russian Federation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Bulgaria collaborated to airlift 16.9 kilograms of HEU from a shut-down research reactor outside of Sofia, Bulgaria to a secure facility in Russia. The material, enriched 36 percent uranium-235, was contained in 28 unirradiated research reactor fuel elements.[32]  The Bulgarian reactor, at the Institute of Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energetics, had been shut down in 1989, though Bulgarian officials hope to restart it using low-enriched uranium.  The fuel was first transported by truck from the research reactor near Sofia to the airport at Goria Oryahovitsa, about 100 miles northeast of Sofia.  It was then loaded onto a Russian AN-12 cargo plane, and airlifted to the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors at Dmitrovgrad, Russia. U.S., Russian, IAEA, and Bulgarian officials spent six months planning the operation, while the United States covered the expenses for the work, paying $440,000.[33]

BN-350 Fresh and Spent Fuel.  As noted in the section on BN-350 Fuel Security, the United States and Kazakhstan are considering shipping hundreds of tons of plutonium-bearing spent fuel away from a potentially vulnerable site on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and NTI has already paid to ship hundreds of kilograms of fresh HEU fuel away from the site.[34]

Future Plans.  As of the beginning of 2004, what the U.S. government regards as its "plan" to remove nuclear material from the world's most vulnerable sites is in reality a collection of several programs dealing with parts of the overall issue, each with different management and approaches.  For instance, the RERTR program aims to convert research reactors to use fuels that cannot serve as the core of a nuclear bomb—but that program has no instruction to give aging, unneeded reactors incentives to shut down rather than converting, and it has only limited incentives to offer for conversion (which is largely why there are still 130 research reactors around the world using HEU).  As noted above, if current plans are not changed, the U.S. effort to take back the tens of tons of HEU it unwisely provided to foreign research reactors in the past offers only limited incentives for facilities to take the U.S. up on the offer—with the result that enough U.S.-supplied HEU for hundreds of nuclear bombs will remain abroad when the program comes to its planned end in a few years.  The pace of the initiative to return Soviet-supplied HEU to Russia has been slow so far—with no material removed in 2001, material removed from one facility in 2002, and material removed from 2 facilities in 2003.  As noted above, U.S. officials hope to return all Soviet-origin HEU to Russia by the end of 2005, [35] but this would require a dramatic acceleration of the current pace, to the point that material would have to be removed from another site essentially every month.  The prospects for meeting this ambitious objective do not appear promising—especially if nothing is changed in the level of sustained high-level engagement pushing the effort forward (in both Washington and Moscow), or in the organizational structure designed to implement the initiative.[36]

Budget

See budget table

Budgets for removing vulnerable nuclear material from individual sites have generally been difficult to analyze, as each of these operations has been structured as a unique operation, usually with funding from several sources.[37]  That situation may be about to change, however, because the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for FY 2004 included $5 million to fund these types of operations (see the Legislative Summary page for more information about this bill).  As discussed in the Key Issues and Recommendations section below, this is not enough money to dramatically increase the pace of removals, but it is at least a beginning.  Moreover, the Bush administration requested a significant increase in funding for the State Department’s Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund in Fiscal Year (FY) 2004, which was justified in part as being needed to fund a new "Dangerous Materials Initiative," at least a portion of which would be focused on removals of HEU from dangerous sites.[38]  Because the House and Senate disagreed on how much of the administration's request to grant, it is not yet known how much money for NDF and the "Dangerous Materials Initiative" will be included in the foreign operations appropriations bill, which will be rolled into a large omnibus spending bill likely to be addressed in January 2004 (see Legislative Update).

The total cost of Project Sapphire has never been officially revealed, but was probably in the range of $40 million, if one includes the estimated $20-$30 million in cash and assistance with other projects provided to Kazakhstan as part of the deal (described above), the cost of packaging and shipping the material, and the cost of processing it in the United States.[39]  These funds came from the Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, the State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund (NDF), and Department of Energy accounts.

The total cost of Operation Auburn Endeavor has also never been officially revealed, but appears to have been much less, given the much smaller amount of nuclear material that was involved.  Roughly $4 million appears to have been expended on the effort from CTR accounts;[40] it is not clear whether other U.S. agencies contributed funds.

As noted above, the costs of Project Vinca included $2.5 million from the U.S. government, of which $2 million came from NDF and $0.5 million from DOE's Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) program,[41] and $5 million came from the private Nuclear Threat Initiative.

DOE paid $400,000 to finance the operating expenses of removing HEU from Romania.[42]  In addition, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced in September 2003 that DOE would spend $4 million to provide new LEU fuel for the conversion of the Pitesti research reactor, a necessary condition for Romanian agreement to removal of the Soviet-supplied HEU fuel.

According to published reports, DOE budgeted $440,000 to finance the removal of fuel rods containing 16.9 kg HEU from Bulgaria.[43]

Key Issues and Recommendations

Slow Pace and Dispersed Authority.  Two features stand out from this account of past efforts to remove potential bomb material from vulnerable sites: each operation took a very long time to put together (in some cases several years), and each one involved building a complex partnership of different U.S. government agencies to carry the mission out—above and beyond whatever international negotiation was needed.  Issues surrounding which agency had funding, which had expertise, which had negotiating authority, which had transport means, which had locations to store the material, and the like took many months to resolve—while the material remained insecure.  In the case of Project Vinca, that prolonged internal discussion led to the conclusion that no agency of the U.S. government had the authority to carry out a crucial part of the deal, forcing the government to rely on NTI. After September 11, the world can no longer afford such delays or such reliance on private generosity.  Potential bomb material needs to be removed from vulnerable sites by legitimate authorities as quickly as possible—so that they can get to it before thieves and terrorists do.

• Recommendation:  The United States should establish a focused, fast-paced "global cleanout" program to remove potential bomb material from the world's most vulnerable nuclear facilities as rapidly as possible.[44]  The program should have a specific mandate, dedicated resources, and the access to expertise needed to implement such efforts in a single set of hands.  It should also possess flexible authority to provide a range of incentives to facilities and countries to give up this nuclear material, as discussed below.  At a funding level of roughly $50 million a year for several years, such a program would have the potential to remove all the material from the world's highest-risk sites within a few years.  This focused effort would draw on the important efforts already under way, such as the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program, its Russian counterpart, and the associated U.S. and Russian fuel take-back programs.[45]  In cases where the material is still needed at the site, but security is inadequate, assistance for rapid security and accounting upgrades should be provided.

  In the congressional session of 2003, there were several bills in the Congress that included language designed to accelerate such removals of dangerous nuclear material (see Legislative Summary).  As of late November 2003, however, only one bill had become law with a relevant provision attached: the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for FY 2004 included $5 million to fund operations to remove nuclear material from vulnerable sites around the world (replacing the Senate's language, which would have included $20 million).[46]  The other measures that included language on this topic do not appear likely to become law.  For example, the House International Relations Committee voted to authorize an increase in funding for the State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund even larger than the increase requested by the administration, with the additional money specifically targeted for HEU removals, but this authorization was not passed into law.  The foreign operations appropriation, to be rolled into a large omnibus spending bill likely to be addressed in January 2004, is not expected to include such large increases in funding for NDF.  Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) similarly introduced an amendment to the $87 billion FY 2004 Supplemental Appropriations Act to appropriate $40 million for a new DOE-led task force to remove vulnerable nuclear materials from around the world.  But her amendment was dropped due to lukewarm Democratic support and opposition by the Republican leadership (see Legislative Update).  These initiatives demonstrate initial congressional interest in the types of activities recommended here.  The administration and Congress should build on that interest to fully authorize and fund a robust program with the mandate, resources, authority, expertise, and flexibility needed to remove nuclear material from vulnerable sites around the world.

• Recommendation: Because this problem is global, and not limited to the former Soviet Union, both the Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program and the Department of Energy's Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) effort should be explicitly authorized to fund programs worldwide—anywhere where this is necessary to reduce threats to the United States.  The version of the FY 2004 Defense Authorization passed into law allows up to $50 million of both CTR and MPC&A funds to be spent outside the former Soviet Union in a given fiscal year.[47]  Before doing so, the President must determine that the activity is a critically important nonproliferation activity and can be completed in a short time.  The Departments of Energy and Defense should now move as rapidly as possible to forge the partnerships needed to upgrade security for vulnerable nuclear materials wherever these will continue to be stored. 

No Comprehensive Plan.  Neither the U.S. government nor any other government or international organization has a comprehensive, prioritized plan for removing potential bomb material from as many of the world's most vulnerable facilities as possible, as rapidly as possible.  Pulling together the best available information would be crucial to the development of a comprehensive plan: as of November 2003, while different parts of the U.S. government had substantial amounts of information about the many nuclear facilities with nuclear material in countries around the world, there was no one anywhere in the U.S. government that had a comprehensive database of what was known about where the plutonium and HEU in the world is, how much is at each site, in what forms, and under what standards of security and accounting.  As a result, while a number of sites had been identified as high priorities for removal of nuclear material or security upgrades, there was no way to determine comprehensively which sites in the world should be given highest priority.  In early November, 2003, Secretary Abraham and Minister Rumiantsev announced that they would jointly prepare such a plan for the part of the overall effort focused on shipping Soviet-supplied HEU back to Russia, possibly by the end of 2003.[48]  At about the same time, DOE announced the establishment of a new task force focused on reducing radiological threats, which includes an effort to assess security vulnerabilities at research reactors around the world.[49]  While this effort is focused on radiological threats rather than on controlling materials that might be used in a nuclear bomb, vulnerability assessments compiled in this effort could contribute to prioritizing the efforts of other DOE programs focused on removing vulnerable HEU.

• Recommendation:  The U.S. government should prepare a prioritized plan to remove nuclear material from the world's most vulnerable sites as rapidly as practicable, to be implemented by the focused program recommended above, in cooperation with other states and the IAEA.  The goal should be to eliminate material entirely from several sites each year, cleaning out all the highest-priority sites within a few years.

• Recommendation: The U.S. government should prepare a comprehensive database on locations, quantities, forms, and security of plutonium and HEU worldwide, and use it in the construction of prioritized plans for both removing nuclear material and cooperatively upgrading security for nuclear material.

Incentives Needed for Facilities to Give Up Material.  For many facilities, the HEU at their site is a substantial part of the site’s reason for existing and receiving funds; there are understandable concerns about the future of the facility and those who work there if the material is removed.  Hence, providing incentives tailored to the needs of each facility will be a fundamental element of success in any effort to remove the material from the most vulnerable sites around the world.  The histories of the Romania operation, Project Vinca, and Project Sapphire demonstrate this reality: incentives that ended up costing millions of dollars had to be offered to the relevant facilities and institutions to gain agreement for the material to be removed.  As those cases also demonstrate, the incentives required are likely to be different at each site, and will have to be tailored to each facility's needs (or each country's needs).  Incentives to give up material could include:

• Offers to purchase of HEU or plutonium;

• Grants for research no longer requiring the research reactor (ensuring that scientists at the site would continue to have funding for several years);

• Assistance in converting an HEU-fueled research reactor to low-enriched uranium (LEU);

• Assistance with shutting down or decommissioning a research reactor, or cleaning up contamination at the site;

• Costs to the facility of maintaining high levels of security if the material remains (particularly as countries put in place effective regulatory frameworks requiring stringent security for potential bomb material).[50]

Other incentives are, of course, possible, and have been offered in some past cases (some of the projects funded in Kazakhstan as part of the Project Sapphire package, for example, did not fall into any of the above categories).

Countries Need to Be Willing to Accept Nuclear Material.  Despite the quite small quantities of nuclear material involved in these various cases, finding a country that would take the material has repeatedly proven to be a problem—especially when irradiated material was involved, so that a country would be serving as a "dumping ground" for "foreign nuclear waste."  In the case of Project Sapphire, there was no irradiated material, which made it possible politically to bring the material to the United States, but performing the legally required environmental analyses took months (and had to be done in secret, vitiating much of the public participation purpose of the laws requiring such analyses)—and it is not an accident that the material was flown to Tennessee shortly after the mid-term elections that occurred that year, not before.  In the case of Operation Auburn Endeavor, the United States could not take the material because it included foreign "nuclear waste" (the 800 grams of spent fuel involved), prolonged discussions with Russia over shipping the material there went nowhere, and the United Kingdom, which ultimately agreed to accept the material, had to make a one-time exception to its policy of not accepting any foreign nuclear waste for permanent storage in the UK—at the cost of some significant controversy.  Project Vinca again involved only fresh material (at least initially—the LEU spent fuel at the site will probably be shipped to Russia as well, eventually), and occurred after Russia had adopted legislation legalizing the import of foreign spent fuel and become more open about possibilities for importing foreign nuclear materials.

• Recommendation: The United States, Russia, and other countries that have supplied potentially weapons-usable nuclear materials should adopt policies of being willing to take those materials back—and should put in place the legal and physical infrastructures to be able to do so quickly, when the occasion demands.  This must include, of course, sites to send the material that are themselves effectively secured.  These countries and other major nuclear states, especially those with extensive nuclear processing facilities available (such as Britain and France) should also put in place flexible approaches making it possible for them to accept small quantities of material they did not supply—whether fresh or irradiated—when necessary to address a proliferation threat.

Security Needs to Be Provided Where Material Will Remain.  Of course, there are sites in a number of countries that will have a continuing need for HEU or plutonium.  It will be essential to ensure that wherever these materials remain, they are effectively secured and accounted for.  Some sites may require rapid assistance with security and accounting upgrades to achieve that objective—and the need for such upgrades is not likely to be limited to the former Soviet Union.  Some upgrades may also be needed pending removal of nuclear material at sites where the material will be removed, but that cannot be accomplished immediately.

• Recommendation: The United States, working with other donor states and in coordination with the IAEA, should provide assistance for rapid security and accounting upgrades wherever these are needed to address proliferation threats.  (See International Nuclear Security Upgrades.)   Funds to address this recommendation could be drawn from the authority provided in the FY 2004 Defense Authorization Act to spend up to $50 million each year in both DOE Material Protection, Control and Accounting and DOD Cooperative Threat Reduction funds outside the former Soviet Union.

Balance Needed Between Security, Science, Safety, and Cost.  There remain legitimate scientific needs for some research, training, and isotope production reactors around the world (though it is quite likely that the world would be better served with regional sharing of a smaller number of more capable research reactors, as has been the trend over the years with particle accelerators).  The approach to a "global cleanout" effort, and the incentives to be provided as part of that effort, must balance the continuing scientific needs, the proliferation risks, the safety hazards, and economic costs.

• Recommendation: The United States should work with other countries to develop an approach to maintaining a robust global nuclear research and training effort at reasonable cost while eliminating vulnerable HEU stockpiles and minimizing other security and safety hazards posed by research reactors.

Links

FOOTNOTES

[1] This operation is described in more detail below.

[2] U.S. Department of Energy, "Secretary Abraham and Minister Rumyantsev Sign Joint Statement on the Return of Russian Research Reactor Fuel" (press release, Washington, D.C., November 7, 2003).

[3] Peter Baker, "U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium at Bulgaria Plant; Material was Potent Enough for Bomb," The Washington Post, December 24, 2003.  Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy spokesperson Nikolai Shingarev stated after the Bulgarian operation that 22 facilities were targeted as part of U.S.-Russian efforts to return HEU to Russia.  "Russia took back unused nuclear, not waste, from Bulgaria—spokesman," ITAR-TASS, December 25, 2003, translated by BBC Monitoring Service.

[4] The internationally accepted definition is that LEU is uranium enriched to less than 20% U-235.  This is a somewhat arbitrary figure, as it is possible to make a nuclear bomb with material enriched to 20% or even less, if a large enough amount of material is available.  The critical mass of a bare sphere of uranium metal that was 100% U-235, with a substantial neutron reflector, would be 15 kilograms, while that for 20% U-235 would be approximately 250 kilograms—almost 20 times as much—and the amount of material needed increases rapidly as enrichment is reduced below 20%.  See, for example, Reviews of Modern Physics 50, no. 1, Part II, January 1978 (Report to the American Physical Society by the Study Group on Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Waste Management), p. S28.

Virtually none of the HEU fuels used in research reactors could be used directly in a nuclear weapon without chemical processing.  In many cases, the uranium is a small percentage of the weight of the fuel elements—uranium-aluminum mixtures with a uranium density in the range of 1.3 grams per cubic centimeter, for example, are quite common (compared to 19 grams per cubic centimeter for the densest form of uranium metal).  While processing such fuels to produce material suitable for use in a bomb would present some challenges, states or groups that would be capable of making a bomb would in general be able to address these less complex challenges.

[5] For discussion, see, for example, U.S. Department of Energy, Record of Decision for the Final Environmental Impact Statement on a Nuclear Weapons Nonproliferation Policy Concerning Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel (Washington, D.C.: DOE, May 28, 1996).

[6] Maureen Clapper, "Progress of the United States Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel Acceptance Program," paper presented to the24^th  International Meeting on Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR 2002),, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, November 3-8, 2002.

[7] This discussion is based on Oleg Bukharin, Christopher Ficek, and Michael Roston, U.S.-Russian Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactor (RERTR) Cooperation, RANSAC Policy Update (Washington, D.C.: Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, Summer 2002).

[8] Bukharin, Ficek, and Roston, U.S.-Russian Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactor (RERTR) Cooperation, op. cit.

[9] Bukharin, Ficek, and Roston, U.S.-Russian Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactor (RERTR) Cooperation, op. cit.

[10] Allan Krass, presentation at the 8^th Annual International Nuclear materials Policy Forum, September 25-28, 2001, Washington, D.C.

[11] U.S. Department of Energy, "Transcript of Secretary Abraham and Russian Atomic Energy Minister Rumyantsev at Announcement of Joint Statement on Fuel Return," op. cit.

[12] U.S. Department of Energy,  "Transcript of Secretary Abraham and Russian Atomic Energy Minister Rumyantsev at Announcement of Joint Statement on Fuel Return," op. cit.

[13] Two other cases, where the main concern was not the material's potential vulnerability to theft but forcing the host government to meet its nonproliferation obligations, are not discussed in detail here: the removal of Iraq's HEU research reactor fuel (which it had planned to remove from international safeguards and make into a bomb as part of its "crash program" to build a bomb after the invasion of Kuwait), and North Korea's not-yet-implemented commitment, in the 1994 "Agreed Framework" with the United States, to allow the plutonium-bearing spent fuel from its plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon to be shipped out of North Korea.

[14] For a detailed account, see William C. Potter, "Project Sapphire: U.S.-Kazakhstani Cooperation for Nonproliferation," in John M. Shields and William C. Potter, eds., Dismantling the Cold War: U.S. and NIS Perspectives on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, CSIA Studies in International Security, 1997).  An excellent recent account, including events after the material arrived in the United States, can be found in Chris Flores, "Project Sapphire: A Nuclear Odyssey," The News & Advance (Lynchburg, VA), December 29, 2002-January 2, 2003.  A colorful complementary account can be found in Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1999), pp. 65-68.  Unless otherwise noted, facts about the operation reported here are from these sources.

[15] As reported by Bolat Nurgaliyev, Kazakh Ambassador to the United States, in "So storony Kazakhstana 'nedovesa' yadernykh materialov net," Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, October 31, 1996, quoted in Center for Nonproliferation Studies, "Project Sapphire."

[16] See, for example, Michael R. Gordon, "U.S. and Britain Relocate a Cache of Nuclear Fuel," New York Times, April 20, 1998; Thomas A. Shelton, James M. Viebrock, Alexander W. Riedy, Stanley D. Moses, and Helen M. Bird,  "Multilateral Nonproliferation Cooperation: US - Led Effort to Remove HEU/LEU Fresh and Spent Fuel From the Republic of Georgia to Dounreay, Scotland (Auburn Endeavor/Project Olympus)," presented at the 1998 International Meeting on Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors, October 18 - 23, 1998, Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Toby Dalton, "Tbilisi: The Tip of the Nuclear Iceberg," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Nonproliferation Project Issue Brief No. 1, April 23, 1998.

[17] Emily Ewell Daughtry and Fred Wehling, "Cooperative Efforts to Secure Fissile Material in the NIS," Nonproliferation Review, Spring 2000.

[18] See William C. Potter, "A U.S. NGO Perspective on U.S.-Russian MPC&A Cooperation," in Proceedings of the 39^th Annual Meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (Northbrook, IL: INMM, 1998); a summary is available on NTI's web page.  For more recent accounts—some with somewhat different versions of events—see "Uranium Stored in Abkhazia Might Have Been Sold To Terrorists," Interfax, June 29, 2002, along with related stories also summarized on NTI's web page.

[19] As discussions with Georgia and with Russia (the original source of the material) were underway, reporter Michael Gordon of the New York Times learned of its existence.  The Times agreed to a U.S. government request to delay publication until the HEU was removed, to avoid alerting potential thieves—but after many months of continued government inaction, the newspaper ultimately decided to publish the story.  See Michael R. Gordon, "Russia Thwarting a U.S. Bid to Secure a Nuclear Cache," New York Times, January 5, 1997.  Even after this story revealed the effort, raising fears that potential thieves might attempt to steal the material before it was removed, it took the U.S. government another 15 months to actually get the material moved.

[20] See, for example, Joby Warrick, "Risky Stash of Uranium Removed: U.S., Russia Remove Weapons-Grade Nuclear Material From Yugoslavia," Washington Post, August 23, 2002; U.S. Department of State, "Fact Sheet: Project Vinca," August 23, 2002; Richard Stone, "Belgrade Lab Sets New Course After Top-Secret Uranium Grab," Science, August 30, 2002; Joby Warrick, "Legislators Want Action on Nukes: After Yugoslav Success, Control of Other Stockpiles Sought," Washington Post, August 24, 2002; Robert Schlesinger, "24 Sites Eyed for Uranium Seizure," Boston Globe, August 24, 2002.

[21] Department of State, "Fact Sheet: Project Vinca," op. cit.

[22] See William C. Potter, Djuro Miljanic, and Ivo Slaus, "Tito's Nuclear Legacy," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2000.

[23] Interviews with Department of Energy and State Department participants, May 2002.

[24] See, for example, Warrick, "Risky Stash of Uranium Removed," op. cit.

[25] See, for example, Warrick, "Risky Stash of Uranium Removed," op. cit.

[26] Data provided by the Nuclear Threat Initiative; see also U.S. State Department, "Fact Sheet: Project Vinca," op. cit., which describes the total U.S. government investment as $2-3 million.

[27] For details on the Romanian removal, see Susan B. Glasser, "Russia Takes Back Uranium from Romania," The Washington Post, September 22, 2003); Anca Teodorescu, "Weapons-usable Uranium to be Converted Into Non-weapons Usable Uranium," The Associated Press, September 23, 2003; Department of Energy, "The United States, Russian Federation, Romania, and the International Atomic Energy Agency Cooperate on Nonproliferation" (press release, September 22, 2003); and Ann MacLachlan and Daniel Horner, "Romanian HEU Moved to Russia in Multilateral Nonproliferation Deal," Nuclear Fuel, September 29, 2003.

[28] The Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant is a fuel fabrication facility that handles both HEU and LEU fuels.  In a statement in late 2002, Yuri Vishnevskii, then chairman of Gosatomnadzor (GAN), the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, identified Elektrostal and Novosibirsk as the sites of "most" of the thefts of nuclear material that had occurred at GAN-regulated facilities.  See, for example, James Heintz, "Russian Official Says Nuclear Material Disappeared From Country's Plants," Associated Press, November 15, 2002, and "Head of Russia's Nuclear Regulatory Agency Admits Leakage of Weapons-Grade and Reactor-Grade Nuclear Materials From Atomic Facilities," Nuclear.ru, November 15, 2002.  In 2001, workers stole nearly half a ton of zirconium tubes from the plant, reportedly bringing them out through the main gate.  U.S. government officials, however, are confident in the security arrangements for the Romanian material shipped to Novosibirsk.  See Anna Badkhen and James Sterngold, "Nuclear Theft Case Raises Fears About Russia: As Official is Tried For Taking Uranium, U.S. Backs Plans to Send Back More," San Francisco Chronicle, November 23, 2003.

[29] See Glasser, "Russia Takes Back Uranium from Romania," op. cit.

[30] Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, "Nuclear Nonproliferation: New Challenges and New Solutions" (address to the 47^th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria, September 15, 2003).

[31] Teodorescu, "Weapons-usable uranium to be converted into non-weapons usable uranium," op. cit.

[32] U.S. Department of Energy, "U.S. Nonproliferation Efforts Continue as Nuclear Material is Removed from Bulgaria," press release, Washington, D.C., December 24, 2003; Baker, "U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium at Bulgaria Plant," The Washington Post, op. cit.; Michele Keleman, "Analysis: US and Russian nuclear experts carry out secret operations to recover and remove enriched uranium from research facility in Bulgaria," National Public Radio: All Things Considered, December 24, 2003; "Russia took back unused nuclear, not waste, from Bulgaria—spokesman," ITAR-TASS, op. cit.

[33] Veselin Toshkov, "U.S., Russian experts remove uranium from Bulgarian reactor to keep it out of terrorists’ hands," Associated Press, December 24, 2003.

[34] Ironically, the HEU was shipped to the Ulba plant from which HEU had been removed in Project Sapphire.  Security at the Ulba plant had been upgraded in the intervening period, in a U.S.-Kazakh cooperative effort; the material will be blended to LEU at Ulba.  Personal communications with Nuclear Threat Initiative staff.

[35] Baker, "U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium at Bulgaria Plant," The Washington Post, op. cit.  —

[36] In particular, even once the new U.S.-Russian government-to-government agreement is signed, there remain substantial bureaucratic obstacles within the Russian government, related particularly to procedures for the required environmental assessments for imports of irradiated fuel.  (See Converting Research Reactors.)

[37] Often funding is drawn from larger appropriation items that are already accounted for in the Securing the Bomb budget database, such as the State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund (NDF); thus, to avoid double-counting, we have included separate items for these efforts only when a separate, additional funding line can be identified.  As a result, we do not provide a budget table from the database for these efforts.

[38] Interviews with State Department officials, September 2003.

[39] The packaging and shipping costs were substantial, as a team of some 30 U.S. experts spent some six weeks in Kazakhstan packing the material up, and 2 huge military C5-A cargo aircraft were used to fly it to the United States.  The costs of processing were also substantial, as most of the uranium was alloyed with hazardous beryllium, requiring special processing techniques to separate them.  See discussion, for example, in Flores, "Project Sapphire: Nuclear Odyssey," op. cit., and in Center for Nonproliferation Studies, "Project Sapphire."

[40] CTR budget database, 2002.

[41] Data provided by the Nuclear Threat Initiative; see also U.S. State Department, "Fact Sheet: Project Vinca," op. cit., which describes the total U.S. government investment as $2-3 million, with $2 million coming from the NDF.

[42] Glasser, "Russia Takes Back Uranium from Romania," op. cit.

[43] Toshkov, "U.S., Russian experts remove uranium from Bulgarian reactor," op. cit.

[44] For discussion of this concept, see Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and John P. Holdren, "Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials," in Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan (Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat Initiative and Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, March 2003).

[45] These existing efforts in principle allow for take-back to the United States or Russia of nearly all the HEU at research reactors around the world.  But they are slow-paced; receive very little high-level attention; are constrained by lack of funds; are not integrated with efforts to provide comprehensive incentives to facilities to give up material; focus primarily on research reactors of greater than 1 megawatt thermal power, which require regular supplies of fresh fuel, and less on the large number of lower-power facilities whose HEU also poses proliferation risks; are not integrated with efforts to secure nuclear material for the period during which it will remain in place; are not integrated with efforts to help countries put in place stringent security regulations (which in turn will affect facilities' calculations about the desirability of keeping their weapons-usable material); and do not include a component focused on shutting down those research reactors that are no longer needed.  These are the key reasons why a new, focused program is needed, to build on the existing efforts.

[46] U.S. House of Representatives, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2004, 108th Congress, 1st Session, 2003, H. Rept. 108-357; U.S. Senate, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2004, 108th Congress, 1st Session, 2003, S. Rept. 108-105.

[47] U.S. House of Representatives, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, 108th Congress, 1st Session, 2003, H. Rept. 108-354.

[48] U.S. Department of Energy, "Transcript of Secretary Abraham and Russian Atomic Energy Minister Rumyantsev at Announcement of Joint Statement on Fuel Return," op. cit.

[49] U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, "NNSA Forms New Task Force to Address Nuclear and Radiological Threats; Will Consolidate Department of Energy's Threat Reduction Efforts" (press release, Washington, D.C., November 3, 2003).

[50] In the United States, for example, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) security regulations for facilities with "Category I" quantities of HEU (more than 5 kilograms of U235 contained in HEU) are expensive and troublesome to meet, which led nearly all NRC-regulated research reactors either to convert to LEU or to arrange their fueling so that they never have Category I quantities of material on-site.  The NRC has required that all NRC-regulated research reactors that were capable of converting to LEU do so, and all but a few have now converted.

Written by Matthew Bunn. Last updated by Matthew Bunn on January 12, 2004.

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The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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