Nonproliferation Regime in Crisis, Russian Official Says

By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The global nonproliferation regime has been pushed to a state of crisis by the spread of uranium enrichment technology, the deputy head of Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency said here yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 29).

Ambassador Nikolai Spassky said the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was by no means on its “deathbed,” but that the pact — long the basis for keeping nuclear proliferation in check — faced serious challenges.

“It’s perfectly alive and kicking, but it’s undergoing a very severe crisis,” Spassky said during a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Under the treaty, nations have the right to pursue nuclear fuel cycle technology for peaceful, energy-producing purposes.  Yet the uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing technologies that nations can pursue under the eye of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are “proliferation prone,” he said.

The centrifuge technology that can enrich uranium to the low level needed to make viable reactor fuel can be used to create the weapon-grade material with extremely high levels of uranium 235.  “Sometimes we forget this basic reality, but it is so,” Spassky said.  “A nuclear fuel cycle by itself is daily producing the nonproliferation crisis.”

Critics have called the right to pursue reactor fuel production technology a loophole in the treaty.  Spassky labeled it a “very serious contradiction” that can only be addressed by nations making concessions in a “voluntary way.”

In the current Iranian nuclear crisis, the U.N. Security Council has demanded that Tehran freeze its uranium enrichment research, believed by the United States and other world powers to be part of a covert weapons program.  Iranian officials have repeatedly said the program is peaceful and have defended their right to enrich based on the treaty language.

Spassky called for an international effort to encourage nations to voluntarily limit their rights to enrichment and reprocessing technology.  Such an effort would require the central involvement of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said, and must be based on trust and economic incentives.

Altering the treaty to close the loophole is not an option, he said.  “It’s also a very sad reality.  If we open the treaty, it will amount to opening a Pandora’s Box because we couldn’t manage it. … It would crumble.”

Squaring nonproliferation concerns with increasing global energy demands will become an increasingly important thread in U.S.-Russian relations, Spassky said, given the “unbelievable growth of nuclear energy in the world.”

That growth highlights the importance of the U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program, designed to provide reliable nuclear fuel supplies to nations and to recollect used fuel, and a similar Russian initiative, he said (see GSN, May 25).  Part of his current visit to Washington has been spent talking to U.S. officials about “dovetailing” the two plans.

One version of a U.S. spending bill for fiscal 2007 trims nearly half of President George W. Bush’s requested budget for the partnership program — from $250 million to $130 million.

“We have quite a lot to gain doing these things together,” Spassky said.  “It can be managed only through joint work.”

A bilateral relationship that seemed in jeopardy of a total collapse in recent years has been undergoing “most fundamental changes,” Spassky said.  He described U.S.-Russian relations now as a “pragmatic partnership.”  Cooperation on nonproliferation and counterterrorism concerns will be central in the future, he said.

“We should aim to make as much progress as we can with the current administrations” of Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Spassky said.

He called for a U.S accord with Russia permitting cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.  During the Group of Eight summit in July, Putin and Bush announced plans for formal discussions on an agreement that could allow Russia to import, store and possibly reprocess tons of spent fuel that the United States had supplied to other countries.

That such an agreement is not in place is an “intellectual atrocity,” he said, while holding out hope that it could be completed before the two leaders leave office.  “I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

Spassky said Russia has recently received an offer on a cooperation agreement from the United States.  “We consider it to be a very constructive offer and we are negotiating on the basis of it.”

Russia has been seeking an agreement since the 1990s, but previously the United States had been opposed to a broad nuclear trade deal due to concerns about Russian construction for the Bushehr nuclear power reactor in Iran.

Regarding the Russian nuclear complex, Spassky said the era of weak security at Russian facilities and the need for U.S. funding in that sector had ended.

“That’s not the situation right now,” he said.  “Right now, I’m frankly not sure where nuclear facilities are more secure, in Russia or the United States.  It’s practically dealt with.

“Now the situation is not of us asking for money.  We don’t need money,” he said.  “We actually don’t need it.  It creates more problems for us.  It’s easier and more convenient for us to pay ourselves for our own domestic projects.”

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