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Nunn-Lugar Funds Perpetuate Proliferation Concerns, Says Norwegian Foundation By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — U.S. funding to reduce the Russian nuclear threat indirectly supports ongoing activities of proliferation concern by propping up an unaccountable Soviet-era nuclear industry, representatives of a Norwegian environmental group said here today. “Programs geared toward securing Russia’s nuclear industry are well-intentioned and have made great progress,” the Bellona Foundation said at the U.S. release of its latest report, but “many unfortunately and unwittingly contribute to the perpetuation of Russia’s nuclear industry and nuclear fuel cycle in its current form.” Foundation experts first released the report in Europe last November and presented their conclusions this morning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Money sent to Russia by the United States for the purposes of improving nuclear and nonproliferation safety would be more effective if that funding supported a fundamental reform of the Russian nuclear industry,” Bellona researchers said in a position paper prepared ahead of the U.S. release. They said the industry uses the funds to build reactors abroad and to maintain a dangerously outmoded infrastructure that ultimately produces additional proliferation-sensitive material. U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee senior staff member Mark Helmke — a top aide to committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who was one founder of the Nunn-Lugar U.S. nonproliferation programs in Russia — accepted the criticisms but sought to place them in a wider context. He said nuclear weapons have been eliminated in several ex-Soviet countries and that much progress has been made in securing nuclear materials in Russia (see GSN, May 5). “All too often,” Helmke said, “the opponents of nonproliferation … use these criticisms against us. … We have to keep our eye on the big issue out there, and that is that we need to do more” to reduce the Russian nuclear threat. Helmke also criticized European political leaders for taking a tougher line with Russia on the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions than on nuclear concerns. “What is the more immediate threat that we face? Is it from climate change, or is it from a terrorist getting his hands on and exploding a nuclear bomb?” he asked. The U.S. State, Defense and Energy departments provide more than $1 billion each year for nuclear security and threat reduction programs in Russia. The Norwegian watchdog said programs such as the “megatons to megawatts” program to convert highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium, which is being carried out under a 1993 U.S.-Russian agreement, provide “unstructured” funding to Russia’s nuclear industry that “allows Russia to maintain the Soviet-era status quo of its nuclear industry and offer no impetus for Moscow to reassess the current structure of its nuclear industry” (see GSN, Oct. 6, 2004). “The question is: How does Russia spend the estimated $500 million annual financial windfall it yearly receives from the HEU-LEU program?” the foundation said. “In 2004, only 16 percent of the received funding is spent on increasing safety at nuclear installations. The bulk of this HEU-LEU funding is spent on construction of new nuclear sites outside of Russia (41 percent).” “This funding channel not only helps Russia to build nuclear power plants and other nuclear sites in such countries as Iran, India and China but also supports the Cold War-era nuclear infrastructure that has remained basically unchanged since Soviet times and could barely survive without this funding feeding tube,” according to the position paper. The experts acknowledged that figures on the Russian nuclear industry’s finances, particularly where government support is concerned, could only be approximated using open sources. The experts said Russia is “in the throes of a serious pile-up of” spent nuclear fuel and criticized lagging progress in U.S.-supported efforts to open a fissile-material storage site in Mayak, Russia, and to shut down Russia’s three remaining plutonium-producing reactors (see GSN, Feb. 25). “The reactors are meanwhile pumping out a combined 1,200-1,500 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium each year they remain operational,” they said. The foundation said that donors should use their leverage to get Russia to confront the problem quickly and that Russia should “perform a true evaluation of its past strategies and policies … inherited from Soviet times.” The report concludes with an “action plan” calling for assessments of the risks posed by various Russian nuclear activities, the establishment of a “truly independent” nuclear regulatory body in Russia, better oversight of internationally supported nuclear remediation programs in the country, regular audits of donor-supported programs, the “restructuring” of Russia’s own nuclear remediation programs and a Russian government “master plan for nuclear remediation.” Bellona Russian Studies head Nils Bohmer stressed that the foundation’s intent is not primarily to criticize but to improve the effectiveness of programs in Russia. “We are stating the facts and trying to not blame anyone,” Bohmer said.
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