not appear promising.
REDUCING THE RISK OF NUCLEAR THEFT IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
As described in Chapter 2, the risks of theft of fissile materials—or even assembled weapons—in the former Soviet Union are serious. Action to improve security and accounting is urgent, as many of the Russian officials responsible have acknowledged. Every day that goes by poses additional risks that fissile materials may be stolen and wind up in the hands of potential proliferators.
Both the HEU deal and the planned construction of a fissile material storage site in Russia address this issue in part, but both deal only with fissile materials from weapons dismantlement that Russia considers excess. Yet in addition to these quantities there are substantial stocks of fissile materials not incorporated in weapons throughout the Russian nuclear weapons complex; substantial stocks of civilian separated plutonium at the Mayak reprocessing plant; and a wide variety of military and civilian research facilities with more than enough fissile materials for a bomb. Nuclear materials in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other former Soviet states must also be adequately secured and accounted for.
The United States is working with several of the states of the former Soviet Union to provide assistance in improving security and accounting for these nuclear materials, but only very limited steps have been taken so far, and the scale of the effort is small by comparison to the scale of the problem. As part of the Nunn-Lugar Safety, Security, and Dismantlement (SSD) effort, the United States is planning to provide Russia $10 million for these purposes (in addition to the planned assistance for the secure storage facility), along with $7.5 million for Ukraine, and $5 million for Kazakhstan. In Russia, the effort will include assistance in improving Russia's "state system" of material accounting and control, training courses similar to those regularly provided to international groups at the U.S. national laboratories, and the construction of "model" safeguards and security systems at two civilian sites—both of which process only non-weapons-usable LEU—over a period of roughly two years. As of the fall of 1993, none of these funds had been expended, as the relevant implementing
20
agreement had just been signed. The IAEA and other countries also plan to provide limited assistance in material control and accounting, but none on a scale comparable even to the U.S. effort.
These efforts have been considerably hampered by the ongoing turmoil in the former Soviet Union, disputes among agencies there, the continuing legacy of secrecy and mistrust, lack of priority and political impetus, and limited
See U.S. Deoartment of Defense. OD. cit. The implementing agreement for material control andnd Japan.) See Allison et al., op. cit., pp. 125-128.