U.S. Suspends Radiation Detection Project in Georgia

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration was forced to suspend a nuclear detection project in Georgia this month due to the former Soviet republic’s conflict with Russia, the Boston Globe reported today (see GSN, Aug. 18).

At the time of the Russian invasion, 10 NNSA technicians were helping Georgia to install sophisticated radiation sensors at 14 border posts, three airports, two seaports and a training facility.  The agency pulled its personnel out of Georgia on Aug. 9, before the project was completed — eight of the border sites and the airports remain unsecured.

“NNSA regards work in Georgia as a priority due to its location with respect to potential nuclear smuggling routes,” said spokeswoman Casey Ruberg.  “We look forward to continuing this work as soon as possible.”

The United States and other nations have spent nearly $50 million on threat reduction efforts in Georgia, including security enhancements at nuclear research sites and other programs to prevent terrorists from acquiring material they could use for an improvised nuclear weapon or a radiological “dirty bomb.”  The funding is part of billions spent in former Soviet republics to secure or eliminate potential WMD materials (see GSN, Aug. 18).

“Georgia has been a hotbed of nuclear smuggling,” said U.S. Government Accountability Office senior analyst Gene Aloise.  "Because of these past incidents, one as recently as 2006, any type of disruption — like tanks rolling in from Russia — is a cause for concern.”

The last half-decade has seen two foiled efforts in Georgia to smuggle weapon-usable highly enriched uranium, the Globe reported.  Plutonium and other radioactive materials have also turned up on the black market in the country.

U.S. and European experts on nuclear terrorism spent much of their time in meetings last week discussing Georgia, which the Government Accountability Office says has “thousands of radiological sources” left over from Soviet times.

“We have raised questions about this conflict and about the broader issues that it raises,” said Ambassador Wendy Sherman, a member of the U.S. Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (see GSN, Aug. 13).  “The commission is taking a look at what else we might be doing.”

One primary question, Sherman said, is “are the borders secure?”

There are concerns about how the conflict with Russia might affect security at Georgian facilities that possess radioactive materials.  There are three nuclear research sites in the country, one of which is in the breakaway region of Abkhazia.  Local authorities in the province have rejected previous Georgian assertions that some dangerous material from the Vekua Institute of Physics and Technology has ended up in terrorists’ hands.

Experts also worry that U.S.-Russian tension spurred by the Georgia conflict could derail the broader spectrum of threat reduction efforts.

“It is hard to see how cooperation between our two countries on any matter, including the cooperative threat reduction, can be sustained,” said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington.

The programs must persist, others said.

“We have to deal with the immediate situation, but it remains in their national security interest and ours to have threat reduction (programs),” Sherman said.  “When it comes to nuclear material or nuclear weapons, this is very serious business” (Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, Aug. 19).

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