U.S. to Buy Once-Secret Russian Space Technology

In a breakthrough for East-West trade in once-strategically sensitive high-tech products, the United States will buy a space station generator and a space vehicle propulsion unit from Russia, as well as begin negotiations for the purchase of plutonium, the White House said Friday.

“It’s a new direction,” a White House official said, reflecting a relaxation of Cold War limits on trade between the United States and the former Soviet republics that would have been unheard of even a year ago.

Under the arrangement, none of the approximately $14 million that Russia will earn from the sales can be used for military purposes, the White House said.

The purchases are part of a continuing program of U.S. aid to Russia and the other republics, elements of which are being unveiled over a period of weeks.

As prepared by the State Department, the package includes a $12-billion increase in the U.S. contribution to the International Monetary Fund and the earmarking of as much as $1 billion to help stabilize the Russian currency, the ruble, officials have said.

In a policy statement advocating greater trade in the high-technology items, the White House said the Administration will promptly review applications to import or export such products and consider “with a presumption of approval” requests to export items that can be used for either military or civilian purposes. It would deny these applications “only if the export would jeopardize the security interests of the United States and its allies.”

From the agreement, Russia gains badly needed Western currency and a toehold in a new market for its technology, and the United States gains new technology “at a significantly lower cost than if we were to try to develop it ourselves,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

“They’re selling because they need the money, one of the best motives I know of,” said another White House official.

The three components of the deal are:

* A Topaz space power unit, an $8-million nuclear reactor to be purchased by the Pentagon for experimental use at the University of New Mexico.

* Four Hall thrusters, which provide a means for using electric current to propel objects in space. They are to be purchased by the Pentagon for $200,000 to $300,000 and sent to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena for examination. The United States uses chemical thrusters, rather than electric-powered units, to steer its satellites, Fitzwater said.

* “A few kilograms” of plutonium-238, a highly toxic substance used as fuel in radioisotope thermonuclear generators. The generators are used to supply electricity to satellites on deep-space missions.

The White House said the plutonium would come from existing Russian stocks or reactors now in operation there and would be transported to the United States in specially constructed casks for security purposes. A condition of the $6-million purchase is that Russia will not use the money to support nuclear weapons production.

The plutonium will be used at the government’s Savannah River, S.C., nuclear plant, the White House said. Safety hazards have prompted the shutdown of the U.S. facility where such plutonium is manufactured.

Fitzwater said the sales could take place because of “the remarkable changes occurring in Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union.” Until the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the military and diplomatic tensions between Washington and Moscow would have blocked such trade.

Fitzwater said the United States is interested in purchasing the Russian material, rather than producing the items in this country, because of cost concerns.

“It’s not a handout or a windfall to anybody, but it is a beginning of a serious examination by both countries of ways in which we can buy their technology and they can benefit,” he said.