By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — As expected, a 1998 U.S.-Russian agreement on plutonium disposition was allowed to expire this week because of U.S. concerns that the agreement had insufficient liability protections for U.S. officials and contractors, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed today.

Known as the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement, the measure provides for scientific and technical cooperation between the United States and Russia on the withdrawal of plutonium from nuclear military programs.

“I cannot understand why the administration would let key aspects of the program to get rid of so much weapons-grade plutonium lapse.  Keeping fissile material out of the hands of terrorists seems a critical step in the war on terrorism,” U.S. Representative Ellen Tauscher, who has been a vocal proponent of maintaining such programs, said today.

The expiration follows the announcement Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Department that another 1998 threat-reduction measure, the Nuclear Cities Initiative agreement, will be allowed to expire in September unless Russia agrees to changes in liability provisions.  Tauscher and five other Democrats wrote the Bush administration this week to protest the move (see GSN, July 23).

The source of U.S. insistence on the liability language changes is the State Department, according to NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes.

“We just want to proceed with our programs, essentially, and we don’t want to get bogged down in these legal issues, but … the State Department is insisting on some legal changes on the liability issues,” Wilkes said.

Wilkes said no new projects could be started under the plutonium agreement now that it has lapsed, but he added that “there’s a lot that’s already in the pipeline that’s been planned.” 

“This should have no short-term effect, because we fully support the program, and we have not stopped. … We are continuing work,” he added.

In any case, he added, “We anticipate this issue is going to be resolved.”

The Washington director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Leonard Spector, called it “unfortunate that there is this perturbation in the plutonium disposition program” but added that it “appears that, in this particular case, the impact of the agreement lapsing will not have a significant impact overall.”

The Energy Department indicated Tuesday that it expects to reinstate the NCI agreement once the liability concerns are resolved, and Wilkes said the same sequence of events is possible in the case of the Plutonium Science and Technology agreement.

Some aspects of the plutonium agreement are also covered by the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement, and experts have said activities carried out under the auspices of the 1998 agreement could conceivably continue under the 2000 text.  Wilkes said today, “There’s maneuverability room, I guess, between the two agreements.”

A liability protocol to the 2000 agreement has yet to be negotiated.  The Bush administration has been seeking a single liability standard for all threat reduction programs that would be similar to the one established in the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction “umbrella agreement.” The provisions in that agreement assign Russia near-total liability for damages and injuries that occur in the context of activities carried out under the agreement.

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