#13 - JRL 8003
RIA Novosti
December 30, 2003
DOES THE NUCLEAR THIEF STAND A CHANCE IN RUSSIA?
Tatyana SINITSINA, RIA Novosti analyst
The Moscow Kremlin is certainly guarded very well, but Russia's nuclear materials depots are guarded even better. "The nuclear thief does not stand a chance in Russia: it is nearly impossible to steal nuclear materials, let alone of weapons grade, such as plutonium or enriched uranium," Sergei Antipov, Deputy Atomic Energy Minister said.
But ten years ago there was a chance and a thief who used it: ten grammes of plutonium were stolen from a depot in Siberia in 1993. It takes at least ten kilogrammes to make a bomb, yet when the dangerous "bit" disappeared, all the concerned services were alerted and the stolen property was soon restored to its rightful place. 1993 was the peak year of social and economic destabilisation that swept the country after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It turned out that a depot employee, who had not been paid for months, decided to sell the plutonium just to get something to live on.
This theft of weapons-grade materials went down as the ONLY one in Russia's 50-year nuclear history.
Like all other nuclear powers, Russia pledged to preclude the proliferation of nuclear technologies and materials, which must be registered and controlled as strictly as possible. Nikolai Shingarev, head of the PR department of the Atomic Energy Ministry, said, "All nuclear power engineering and nuclear-fuel facilities have strong physical protection systems. All nuclear and radiation dangerous facilities (about 50) are guarded by large groups of Interior Ministry Troops. A large amount of equipment and special monitoring cameras keep under surveillance the movement and actions of people on the guarded territory around the clock."
There are also protection measures against radiation terrorism, which is the use of radioactive materials to contaminate people. The nuclear industry has a strict system of registration and control of radioactive and nuclear materials. Russia stands very well in the IAEA statistics, where the ministry provides information about the disappearance and unwarranted handling of radioactive materials. Many more accidents, including the disappearance of radioactive materials, have happened in the USA.
The West mounted physical protection and defence measures at nuclear facilities after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, while Russia did this before, when the Chechen war increased the terrorist threat and led to apartment blocks in Moscow and other cities being blown up. According to Mr Shingarev, "we continually modernise nuclear facilities' protection systems, employing the best specialists who had worked for the defence industry before conversion. They use the up-to-date, unique technologies to create security equipment for us."
Nuclear materials are controlled not only in storage but also during their transportation, meaning the delivery of fuel to nuclear power stations and return of fuel waste, the dispatch of fuel from scrapped submarines, and so on. The Atomic Energy Ministry has a Crisis Centre, whose satellites monitor the movement of radioactive cargoes across the country. Such cargoes are carried in special containers, mostly by railways and always catching the "green wave."
Every year up to 1,000 "nuclear trains" move across Russia. The containers with radioactive materials they carry are made at specialised factories and are supplied to "clients" only after extremely rigorous tests. They must remain intact after falling 9 metres onto a concrete floor, withstand direct fire from all kinds of weapons, and remain safe in a fire.
According to Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev, "The ministry's interaction with international organisations and foreign partners produces a considerable effect. The EU is financing several nuclear safety and waste disposal projects within the framework of the TACIS programme. Russia and the USA are working together to register, control and ensure physical protection of fissionable materials. US experts inspect related facilities in Russia and invariably praise the high standards of protection of nuclear facilities and materials."