Less Well-Known Cases of Nuclear Terrorism and Nuclear Diversion in the Former Soviet Union

 

Dr. William Potter, Director, Center for Nonproliferation Studies
August 1997

(For a chronology of reported nuclear smuggling cases please see the NIS Nuclear Trafficking Database.)

Nuclear Terrorism

Nuclear terrorism subsumes a variety of threats. The ones most often discussed in the Western press involve the seizure of nuclear weapons by renegade military factions or the use of diverted fissile material to fashion a nuclear device. A much more likely scenario in the former Soviet Union today, however, is an attack on or sabotage of civilian nuclear power installations or spent fuel storage sites. These are not hypothetical threats. There have been at least four episodes since 1992 in which nuclear power plants in the post-Soviet states were the targets of terrorist actions.

 

February 1992: Oleg Savchuk, a computer programmer at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania was arrested for trying to sabotage a reactor at the plant by introducing a virus into the computer system. The alleged sabotage coincided with a breakdown in the cooling system of the first reactor, although there was no confirmed link between the two incidents. Savchuk may have introduced the virus and then called it to the attention of the plant management in order to receive a bonus for meritorious service.

 

4 November 1994: Kestutis Mazuika, a 42 year old Lithuanian national in Sweden threatened the destruction of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant unless a payment of $8 million were made to a secret organization (NUC-41 "W") which he claimed to represent. Mazuika made the demand in a four-page handwritten letter in Russian he presented to a secretary in the office of the Swedish prime minister in Stockholm. The letter specified that $1 million was to be handed over to Mazuika on 7 November, and the remainder was to be deposited in a Swedish bank. The letter claimed that the secret organization had well-trained representatives at the Ignalina facility and was prepared to blow up the plant. Mazuika was arrested when he returned to the prime minister's office on 7 November 1994. During the investigation of the case he was examined by a psychiatrist and judged to be mentally sound. He claimed that the organization NUC-41 "W" forced him to commit the act. Legal action was taken against Mazuika in both Sweden and Lithuania. He was sentenced to four years of imprisonment in Sweden, but was released after one year and returned to Lithuania. Although he was initially charged under Article 96 of the Lithuania Criminal Code -- "Extortion of State Property" -- he was not sentenced in Lithuania due to his conviction in Sweden. According to VATESI, the Lithuanian Nuclear Safety Inspectorate, security at Ignalina was bolstered after the case.

 

9 November 1994: A terrorist threat that was taken very seriously occurred shortly after Mazuika's arrest and also involved the Ignalina facility. In the early morning of 9 November 1994, VATESI received information from the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety about an alleged plot to sabotage the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. According to the information, a local organized crime boss (Georgy Dekanidze) threatened to blow up the Ignalina plant in the event his son Boris, who was on trial for a contract murder, were sentenced to death. On 10 November 1994, other Lithuanian authorities received an additional communication from the same German ministry indicating that preparations for the act of sabotage had been completed and would be carried out by several employees of the nuclear plant on 15 November 1994 in the event of a death verdict. Based upon this information, Lithuanian Prime Minister Adolfas Slezevicus sought the assistance of the Swedish government, which agreed to provide a team of bomb experts and trained search dogs. The team arrived on 14 November, and a search was conducted between 14 and 16 November 1994, during which time units One and Two of the nuclear plant were shut down. Physical protection of the site was increased as well, and access to the plant was very restricted. No sign of sabotage, however, was uncovered. The shutdown cost the plant $10 million. Despite the terrorist threat, Boris Dekanidze was sentenced to death on 10 November for masterminding the murder of Lithuanian journalist Vitas Lingys, who had written articles exposing extortion rackets run by the "Vilnius Brigade."

 

Fall 1996: Gosatomnadzor (the Russian nuclear regulatory agency) received an alert from one of its representatives in Rostov that an armed group from Chechnya was moving toward the Balakovo Nuclear Power Plant, a station with four VVER-1000 reactors located near Saratov, Russia. This message was passed to the MVD and the FSB, and preparations reportedly were taken to guard against an armed incursion of the plant. At the same time, an alert was issued by Rosenergoatom to all Russian nuclear plants to be on guard against possible terrorist acts. As it turned out, a group of Chechens was found to be moving along the Volga, but was stopped well before Balakovo. It has not been possible to ascertain if the group was indeed intent upon striking the nuclear power station.

 

Spring (Probably March) 1997: Five men were caught after penetrating the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, which houses four RBMK-1000 reactors. The men had reached the plant generator and reportedly had plans to try to disable the reactor and seize the control room. Although Russian authorities initially believed that the men were associated with a "green" group, the intruders appear to have hatched the attack plan for extortionist purposes. Russian authorities, who have made only vague public references to a terrorist incident at a civilian nuclear power station in early 1997, have not treated the Kursk attack as a serious incident because the perpetrators did not have the capability to implement their plan and were not linked to a larger, politically motivated group.

 

In addition to the aforementioned five cases involving sabotage, attacks, threats, or perceived threats against civilian nuclear power stations in Russia and Lithuania, there have been at least two other nuclear terrorist episodes in the past two years in Russia. One occurred in 1995 at the Severodvinsk submarine production facility, where an employee who had not been paid for several months posted a warning that the shop containing two reactors would be blown up. The second, widely-reported episode, involved the recovery of a small quantity of Cesium-137 on the grounds of Izmailovsky Park in Moscow in late 1995. The radioactive material was found by a Russian television crew at the location reportedly provided to it by Chechen leader Shamil Basayev. Russian Interior Ministry officials indicated that the material might have been obtained from an inventory of nuclear waste or an isotope storage facility in the Chechen capital. Russian authorities reportedly had previously received threats from Chechen separatists against a number of nuclear facilities, including the first breeder reactor at Beloyarsk. Russian intelligence sources also report that U.S. officials had warned the Russian government earlier that Chechnya might mount some form of nuclear-related terrorism and suggested that Russia enhance security (including air defenses) at its nuclear power sites.

Nuclear Diversion

According to conventional wisdom, since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been only four confirmed cases in which more than minuscule quantities of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium have been exported from the post-Soviet states, and another three cases in which HEU or plutonium was diverted from Russian nuclear facilities, but was seized prior to export. An additional four cases of diversion and/or export are sometimes included in the list of cases of proliferation concern, but these do not as clearly meet the standard of unambiguous sources to corroborate the diversion, or the size or enrichment level of the material. (See Appendices One and Two for a summary of the characteristics of these cases). The conventional wisdom further holds that there has been no proliferation significant diversion or export seizure since the confiscation of 2.72 kg. of HEU on 14 December 1994 in Prague. This alleged lull in illicit nuclear trafficking has led some analysts to conclude that the risk of nuclear diversion and export has diminished significantly.

Although this interpretation may be correct, it is also likely that Western observers of the nuclear trafficking scene have missed significant instances of diversion and/or export. Despite the pledges at the April 1996 Moscow Nuclear Safety and Security Summit to enhance U.S.-Russian intelligence cooperation regarding nuclear smuggling, it is doubtful if Moscow has provided Washington with any meaningful, new information on nuclear diversions. Besides the six cases of theft or loss of nuclear materials in Russia reported by Gosatomnadzor in 1996, there are credible reports of other instances of proliferation-significant nuclear trafficking since December 1994 involving the non-Russian successor states.

Potentially the most serious and sensitive case involves the possible seizure this past year in Belarus of individuals possessing HEU, which Russian and Georgian officials believe came from the I.N. Vekua Institute in Sukhumi, Georgia. Identification of the source reportedly was derived from the background of the individuals possessing the material as well as the enrichment level and characteristics of the HEU.

Although rarely identified as a site of nuclear activity, Sukhumi has long been a nuclear research center and in 1992 possessed an inventory of approximately 2 kg of weapons-usable HEU. Because Sukhumi currently is under Abkhaz control, with no IAEA safeguards in place, neither Moscow nor Tbilisi knows how much HEU remains on site. Authorities at Sukhumi also appear to be without reliable information and recently requested assistance from Minatom to determine the stock of fissile material at the research facility. The most current information available to Minatom is based upon an inventory taken in 1992. Although Minatom sought to send a team to Sukhumi for the purposes of taking a physical inventory there, it was stopped at the Ahkhaz border by Russian border guards who said they could not enter without Georgian permission. No such permission was obtained, the Russian nuclear specialists returned to their home sites, and no further information is known on the amount of HEU that remains at Sukhumi.

In addition to the Sukhumi-Belarus case, Gosatomnadzor reported the loss in mid-1996 of approximately one kilogram of HEU enriched to 90% U-235 from the Tomsk Polytechnical University. The material was in a fresh fuel bundle for the university's research reactor. After an investigation by two teams from GAN and the facility, it was concluded that the bundle probably had been included inadvertently in a batch of spent fuel sent to Tomsk-7 in 1994. That date was derived from a comparison of physical inventories taken at the university. The material was never recovered. Tomsk-7 officials said it was impossible to try to find the material, and the case was closed.

The other cases of nuclear diversion reported by Gosatomnadzor appear to involve primarily low-enriched uranium (LEU) and spent fuel. Sites at which losses have been reported include the A.A. Bochvar All-Russian Institute for Inorganic Materials (VNIINM) in Moscow, which conducts research on MOX fuel and spent fuel reprocessing and waste treatment technology;[1] the Electrostal Machine Building Plant, which fabricates both HEU fuel for naval propulsion and fast-breeder reactors and LEU fuel for VVER and RMBK reactors; and the Chepetsk Mechanical Plant metallurgical plant in Glazov, which is engaged in the purification of uranium and its conversion to metal. At least one case at Glazov involved the loss of hundreds of kilograms of LEU, only a portion of which was recovered.

Notes:
[1] GAN ordered certain activities at the Bochvar Institute shut down for six months in 1994 because of lax arrangements for handling plutonium at the site.  

(For a chronology of reported nuclear smuggling cases please see the NIS Nuclear Trafficking Database.)
 

CASE I

Date of Diversion: May-September 1992

Date of Seizure: October 9, 1992

Amount: 1.538 kg of HEU in the form of UO2

Description of Material: HEU (90% enrichment level)

Point of Origin: Luch Scientific Production Association, Podolsk

Point of Seizure: Podolsk, Russia

 

Date of Diversion: July 29, 1993

Date of Seizure: August 1993

Amount: 1.8 kg of enriched uranium

Description of Material: HEU (approximately 36% enrichment level)

Point of Origin: Andreyeva Guba Fuel Storage Area, Russia

Point of Seizure: Andreyeva Guba

 

Date of Diversion: November 27, 1993

Date of Seizure: June 1994

Amount: 4.5 kg enriched uranium

Description of Material: HEU (approximately 20% enrichment level)

Point of Origin: Fuel Storage Area 3-30, Sevmorput Shipyard near Murmansk

Point of Seizure: Polyarnyy (near Murmansk, Russia)

 

Date of Diversion: ?

Date of Seizure: May 10, 1994

Amount: 5.6 grams Pu-239

Description of Material: 99.78 pure Pu-239

Point of Origin: ?

Point of Seizure: Baden-Wuertemberg (Tengen), Germany

 

Date of Diversion: ?

Date of Seizure: June 13, 1994

Amount: 800 milligrams

Description of Material: HEU (enriched to 87.7 %)

Point of Origin: ?

Point of Seizure: Landshut, Germany

 

Date of Diversion: ?

Date of Seizure: August 10, 1994

Amount: 560 grams of mixed-oxide of plutonium and uranium

(363 grams of Pu-239)

Description of Material: Mixed-Oxide (MOX) fuel

Point of Origin: Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, Obninsk (?)

Point of Seizure: Munich, Germany

 

Date of Diversion: ?

Date of Seizure: December 14, 1994

Amount: 2.72 kg of HEU in the form of UO2

Description of Material: HEU enriched to 87.7% U-235

Point of Origin: Obninsk (?)

Point of Seizure: Prague, Czech Republic

 

 

---

CASE A

Date of Diversion: 1992

Date of Seizure: May 1993

Amount: Approximately 150 grams of HEU implanted in beryllium

Description of Material: HEU

Point of Origin: Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, Obninsk

Point of Seizure: Vilnius, Lithuania

 

Date of Diversion: March 1994

Date of Seizure: June 1994

Amount: 3.05 kg of HEU

Description of Material: HEU (approximately 90%-U-235) in the form of UO2

Point of Origin: Electrostal

Point of Seizure: St. Petersburg, Russia

 

Date of Diversion:

Date of Seizure: January 1995

Amount: Less than 1 kg of HEU

Description of Material: HEU enriched to 87.7% U-235 in the form of UO2

Point of Origin: Obninsk (?)

Point of Seizure: Prague, Czech Republic

 

Date of Diversion:

Date of Seizure: March 1995

Amount: 6 kg of HEU enriched to about 20% U-235

Description of Material: HEU (20% enrichment level)

Point of Origin: ?

Point of Seizure: Kiev, Ukraine

 

Comments or questions? E-mail Cristina Chuen at MIIS CNS: Cristina.ChuenATmiis.edu

This material is produced independently for NTI by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2002 by MIIS.

HOME  |  CONTACT US  |  SITE MAP