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Former Soviet Research Site of Concern to IAEA Has No Weapon-Grade Nuclear Materials, Officials Say
Current and former officials at a nuclear research site in the former Soviet republic of Georgia said the facility has no weapon-grade uranium or plutonium and is not missing any radioactive materials, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, June 16). A team from the U.N. nuclear watchdog is set to visit the Sukhumi institute in the next few weeks. “I will gladly receive experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Anatoly Markoliya, director of the institute in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, told Interfax. A U.N. diplomat said yesterday there are concerns that “about 9 kilograms of plutonium” and about 1 kilogram of weapon-grade uranium may be missing from the facility. Russian and Georgian officials, however, disputed that claim. “Our institute does not have any fissile materials needed to make nuclear weapons, but there are radioactive materials there,” Markoliya said. Olga Pustovalova, an ecology expert who worked at the Sukhumi institute in the 1980s, said no dangerous materials were missing from the site and that armed guards secured all radioactive materials. “The loss of any radioactive materials from the institute is out of the question,” she said. Officials at Russia’s Atomic Energy Agency have said all dangerous nuclear materials have been removed from the facility, Reuters reported (Reuters, June 16).
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