The Cheapest Insurance Around : This is no time to foolishly undercut nuclear security aid to Russia

Twice so far this year authorities in Ukraine have seized illicitly held nuclear products, the most recent cache involving 13 pounds of pellets identified as uranium-235. Tests on the material are under way to determine whether it’s of a quality suitable for making bombs.

A number of rogue states--North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya--are in the market for just such material as they seek to acquire their own nuclear arsenals. That’s why the surreptitious movement of nuclear products, especially from the former Soviet Union, is justifiably a cause for international concern. FBI Director Louis J. Freeh goes so far as to describe it as “the greatest long-term threat to the security of the United States.”

It was recognition of that threat that prompted the program of U.S. technical aid to Russia and Ukraine for the protection and safe disposal of those Soviet nuclear weapons stockpiles that have been earmarked for elimination. The project includes American help in setting up a computer inventory of nuclear weapons--none had heretofore existed--and cleanup of nuclear sites, as well as help in the physical protection of nuclear laboratories and plants.

This is not a selfless program. Controlling fissionable materials in Russia is an approach to controlling nuclear proliferation, and so serves the security interests of the United States and promotes international stability. The projected cost of the program--about $800 million--is in fact cheap anti-proliferation insurance. But the program is in trouble in Congress. The budget recission package passed by the House cuts it by $80 million. That is not just shortsighted but, for anyone who takes the trouble to ponder what’s at stake, a willfully self-wounding example of false economy.

The apparent expansion in cross-border smuggling of nuclear materials indicates unmistakably that more, not less, vigilance is needed in the face of this menace. Last year, intelligence sources say, 124 incidents of attempted nuclear smuggling of suspected Russian-origin materials were detected in Germany alone, more than twice as many as in 1993. Clearly this is not the time for Congress to foolishly undercut a vital nuclear security program.