Russian Nuclear Program Gets New Chief

Signaling that he is not caving in to the West, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin named an experienced nuclear scientist Wednesday to head the nation’s huge atomic program and urged him to maintain “parity” with the United States.

Yevgeny Adamov, 58, who played a key role in cleaning up after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in Ukraine, will become minister of atomic energy, taking over an agency that employs 1 million people and governs everything from nuclear warheads to the construction of floating atomic power stations.

Adamov succeeds the powerful Viktor N. Mikhailov, 64, who made a controversial deal to provide a nuclear reactor to Iran but also was able to negotiate a lucrative agreement to sell weapons-grade uranium to the United States.

After meeting with Yeltsin on Wednesday, Adamov told reporters that the president had instructed him to maintain Russia’s nuclear status while saving money “so that the parity should be preserved and the means needed for this could be smaller.” Yeltsin also told him to enhance safety so that atomic power can be used more to rebuild Russia’s economy, he said.

While some observers speculated that Mikhailov was forced out, Yeltsin praised the former minister and said he had “consented” to Mikhailov’s request to go back to scientific research. “He deserves the gratitude of the president and the government,” Yeltsin said, for his years of work in the “very subtle and dangerous area” that involves “both diplomacy and armaments.”

One Russian expert said that Mikhailov’s departure was the inevitable result of this nation’s shift from emphasizing nuclear weapons to promoting the development of nuclear power. While Mikhailov, who proudly called himself a “hawk,” was superb at building his military empire, he was not so successful in bringing in needed revenue from reactor sales abroad.

Despite $6 billion in new contracts to sell reactors to China and India, Mikhailov told reporters last week that 1997 was his ministry’s worst year financially.

“Mikhailov was never close to matters of the peaceful atom,” said Vladimir Kuznetsov, a parliamentary advisor and author of a book on nuclear disasters. “He was the king of nuclear weapons, and he was excellent at overseeing their production and accumulation. But this time is long gone now, and it was time the keeper of the keys to the Cold War fortress should go too.”

Adamov, in contrast, comes from a background of developing reactors for civilian purposes and was in charge of designing the sarcophagus that encased the radioactive ruins at Chernobyl. He also personally oversaw some stages of the cleanup work there.

“It is only logical that the ministry should be led by the man who really suits the tasks the ministry is faced with now, and that is how to keep the vast nuclear industry in check and how to try and make this industry profitable,” Kuznetsov said.

Also Wednesday, the lower house of parliament ended a months-long standoff with Yeltsin’s government and passed a budget for 1998 that calls for the equivalent of $83 billion in spending but accounts for only $60 billion in revenues. The upper house is expected to approve the budget within a month.