U.S. Worries That Russian Nuclear Technology Needs More Safeguards

The White House is growing increasingly worried that Russia’s political and economic crises will increase the flow of nuclear technology and know-how out of the former Soviet Union from a trickle to a flood.

One of President Clinton’s top foreign policy advisors said this week that there is a danger that the “leakage” of nuclear technology from Russia, which began with the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, could become a “hemorrhage.”

Clinton administration officials are contemplating new programs in the president’s budget for 2000 to ease the economic strains on Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal.

However, nonproliferation experts warn that the danger is even greater than the administration realizes, stressing that tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium are vulnerable to theft and misuse.

“The assistance is not commensurate to the threat, which has grown significantly as a consequence of the economic crisis,” said William C. Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “I don’t discount the progress we’ve made, but it tends to be overwhelmed by the very, very destabilizing economic situation.”

Bruce Blair, an arms-control specialist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said, “These programs that we’ve been promoting are just a drop in the bucket compared to what’s really needed. The deterioration of security and safety in Russia has outpaced the effect of our assistance.”

The nonproliferation specialists said the situation underlines the dangers that persist from Russia’s nuclear arsenal almost a decade after the Cold War ended.

“There have been two periods of acute concern: one in early ‘90s, during the breakup of the Soviet Union, and today, with another crisis in economical, military and political spheres,” Blair added.

The U.S. government has created programs over the last decade to help safeguard Russia’s nuclear weapons and fissile material--highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

Washington has also helped pay the salaries of Russian nuclear scientists so they are not tempted because of economic hardships to sell their skills to rogue governments or terrorist groups.

On a recent tour of nuclear facilities in Russia, Potter went to sites he had previously visited and found that although some were in better shape because of the U.S. assistance, others had deteriorated. His overall impression, he said, was negative.

The assistance has mostly been directed at bringing new technology to the facilities, such as motion detectors and video cameras to protect against theft. Yet many of the people who are supposed to operate the machinery are suffering because of the economic crisis, he said.

The nuclear work force is not being paid, and unlike previous crises, when food was relatively cheap, inflation has now priced most goods out of the workers’ reach.

In addition to increasing prices dramatically, a financial crash in August also inflicted major psychological damage on the nuclear work force, Potter said.

“In the past, there were people who believed that in the future things were going to get better,” he said. “One of the consequences of the meltdown in August was that those who held out for a brighter future no longer believe it is possible.”

The security guards are the weakest link, he said, because they do not have the same appreciation for the danger of nuclear material as the scientists do.

Potter said that, in some cases, the guards do not bother turning on the expensive equipment from the United States.

The administration should focus on the “human factor” as it decides how to shape the new programs, he said.

“We have to focus more on personnel. We have a tendency to assume we can solve the problem by supplying technology,” Potter said.

The threat involves the hundreds of tons of fissile material scattered across Russia in research facilities. Most of it is not well inventoried, making it vulnerable to theft.

Some experts warned that an even greater threat might be posed by the deterioration and growing politicization of the Russian military, which threatens the security of Russia’s thousands of nuclear warheads.

“I strongly doubt that Russia will be able to maintain adequate safety in their nuclear weapons control, and an incident is quite possible,” Blair said.

The White House said it is concerned about the potential threat of fissile materials falling into the wrong hands and of nuclear expertise being misused, but it rejected the warnings about the threat from the nuclear weapons themselves.

“It’s something we are watching closely,” White House spokesman P.J. Crowley said, referring to the proliferation of fissile material and knowledge of how to use it. “We have always recognized this as something we had to be concerned about.”

However, “there is no evidence that there has been a degradation in the strategic rocket forces,” said one White House official who asked not to be named.

White House officials said the administration is working on proposals for its next budget that would supplement the existing programs aimed at helping Russia secure its nuclear arsenal.

Officials said it is still too early to outline plans.

“There’s no question that because of the things going on, there is at least the potential for a larger problem, so the idea is to get ahead of it before it actually develops,” said another senior White House official, who also spoke on the condition that he not be named.

Earlier this fall, Russian and U.S. officials unveiled a program designed to encourage Russia’s nuclear scientists to stay in their own country instead of moving to others that aspire to be nuclear forces, such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The United States will provide as much as $30 million to create commercial projects in the 10 Russian nuclear cities that have traditionally been closed to foreign visitors. Under the project, nuclear workers will be trained in business skills, and nuclear facilities will be converted to produce commercial goods.

Congress agreed this fall to spend an additional $200 million to bail out a program that reprocesses weapons-grade uranium into low-grade uranium that can be used for nuclear power plants.

The program was on shaky ground because the price for the low-grade uranium had dropped, making it much less profitable for the Russians.