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U.S.-Russia: Bush Officials Optimistic on Plutonium Conversion Deal By David Ruppe However, the United States still needs to raise an additional $600 million from other nations to support the agreement. So far other Group of Eight countries have committed $400 million toward a goal of $1 billion, a senior administration official said yesterday on a panel at the American Enterprise Institute. The United States would match the $1 billion, according to the plan. “Based on what we can reasonably forecast from the U.S. perspective … we can reasonably say this year we will be able to top $1 billion,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “We are hoping to have an agreement by the end of the year,” the official said. The origins of the deal go back to 1995 when then-U.S. President Bill Clinton declared as surplus 50 tons of U.S. plutonium not needed for U.S. nuclear weapons. Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president at the time, reciprocated in 1997 by declaring 50 tons of Russian plutonium to be in excess of Russian military needs. In 2000, the two nations agreed to dispose of 34 tons each primarily by converting the plutonium into reactor fuel (see GSN, Jan. 23, 2002). Russia has indicated it would not begin implementing the deal until it could be sure the estimated $2 billion cost could be funded, according to the U.S. official, who also noted that the United States has secured commitments from all G-8 members — except Germany — to achieve the $400 million total, but acknowledged that some of them had not publicly stated those commitments. Dispute Over Plan The administration is pitching the plan as the best way to deal with the Russian plutonium, which some experts fear could be passed on to terrorists or other governments. The reactors would burn the fuel, turning it into waste that experts say would be far less usable for nuclear weapons, and put the material under international control. Some critics say the plan creates proliferation problems because it could encourage the construction of plutonium-fueled nuclear reactors. “I’m not going to argue that this program is risk-free … I do believe that the program has far fewer risks than the only alternative,” said the senior official. The alternative, the official said, would be for Russia to store the material in its weapon-grade form “indefinitely” until Russia someday uses it for energy. Moscow would never adopt an alternative proposal to degrade the material by mixing it with nuclear waste products, he added. Panelist Henry Rowen, a professor of public policy and management at Stanford University, charged the plan would be more dangerous than retaining the material at Russian storage sites and that the U.S. funding could be put to better use hastening security improvements for Russian nuclear materials. “I have one suggestion for these billions of dollars. Give it to the Nunn-Lugar program,” a U.S. effort to secure and dismantle former Soviet weapons of mass destruction, he said (see GSN, March 13). Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, which cosponsored the panel, also expressed concern over the security of Russian plutonium in transit. “We’re taking a route, in the name of making this material less accessible, that will make it more accessible,” he said. “If Japan loses 50-plus bombs of material, and cannot tell where it is, in 15 years, what are the odds without IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards in the case of Russia that Russia will do better?” he asked (see GSN, April 2). Potentially Lucrative Deal Critics suggested certain government and financial interests were driving the deal. Sokolski, a nonproliferation official in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush, said today the deal’s “key beneficiaries” would include the company Cogema, a U.S. subsidiary of a French firm. “It owns a major portion of the entity that … won the bid for the construction of the (Russian) plant,” he said. That company — Duke, Cogema, Stone-Webster — is “one entity,” Sokolski said. Those two companies also do nuclear-related work for the Energy Department, which experts said also favors the deal. Other potential beneficiaries are the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site, as well as Russia, from the facility to be constructed for processing the fuel, Sokolski said (see GSN, Dec. 6, 2002). “They will get title to the (plutonium fuel) plant,” and after processing the 34 tons could use the plant for processing other countries’ plutonium — 50,000 nuclear weapons worth — that would need to be transported and could be subject to diversion, he said.
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