Russia and the United States are jointly financing
the design and construction of a new storage facility at the Mayak Chemical
Combine for fissile material from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons. Originally,
the storage site was planned as a two-wing facility and was expected to provide secure, centralized storage for
fissile material from approximately 12,500 dismantled nuclear warheads in 50,000 containers.
According to the original design, the facility would be able to store 50MT of
declared excess plutonium.[14,16] The United States was expected to
finance
half of the project costs from the Cooperative
Threat Reduction Program. However, after the 1999 General Accounting Office
evaluation of the project, it was noted that due to Russian financial
shortfalls the United States would bear the most of the costs, which had increased
from $275 million to $413 million. In addition, the
construction of the facility over the next two to three years would be limited to only
one building to store 25,000 containers, and the necessity and feasibility of
the construction of the second wing was questioned.[16]
During START negotiations in 1991, it became apparent
that Russia had inadequate storage facilities for the amount of fissile
material that was to be removed from nuclear weapons according to the treaty.
In response to the problem, on 5 October 1992, the United States signed
an agreement with Russia to spend $15 million to design a new storage facility
for Russia. That $15-million design contract was awarded to the US Army
Corps of Engineers, which then completed a design agreement with a US architecture
and engineering firm. This firm used the
All-Russian
Scientific Research and Design Institute of Energy Technology (VNIPIET)
as a subcontractor.[4,5] The United States later committed another
$75 million for the construction and equipping of the facility. The construction
of the facility ran into numerous difficulties, however. The original site
for the facility was to be at the Siberian
Chemical Combine (Tomsk-7), but when Minatom could not aquire the correct
construction permits for the Tomsk site, an alternative site at Mayak was
chosen.[4] Additionally, the original Russian plans were to store
the fissile material containers horizontally, but in 1994, Russia informed
the United States of its new intent to store the containers vertically.
This change necessitated extensive modifications in the design.[6]
Finally, in the fall of 1994, construction began on the foundation of the
facility.[4] This first phase of the facility's foundation clearing and
construction was completed in October 1996 by the Russians.[5] Meanwhile,
in March 1996, the US firm Bechtel won a design and construction contract
for the Mayak facility. Bechtel's construction of the second phase of the
foundation and of the walls was started in October 1996. Originally, the
facility was expected to be completed by the third quarter of FY 2000.[1]
Considerable difficulties in construction persisted through 1996, but according
to the US Department of Defense, by March 1997, construction was proceeding
without delay and was in fact "accelerating."[8] At that time, US officials
expected fissile material storage at the facility to begin in 1999.[9]
However, as of December 1999, the first 25,000-container storage wing was
not scheduled to be completed until 2002.[10,14] The first storage wing was
finally completed in December 2003.[15] However, transparency and other issues remain
that must be resolved before the facility can be fully utilized.
There are no immediate plans to build any additional storage wings at the site.
The United States is also providing funds for the
purchase of specific construction equipment and materials, specialized
equipment like blast doors, and more generalized equipment like heating,
ventilation, and power systems. Specifically, in October 1995, the CTR
program awarded a $2 million contract to a US firm to procure cement, rebar,
and insulating materials to be used in the facility's construction.
Up to another $75 million is available for other equipment.[5]
The facility is surrounded by a concrete wall and rows of barbed wire and
has three guardhouses. The walls of the facility itself are said
to be eight meters thick, and the roof is covered with almost four meters
of concrete, tar, and gravel. The facility was designed to withstand
an earthquake measuring eight on the Richter scale, and to survive a flood
or the impact of a jet plane crash. It is not designed to withstand
the effects of a nuclear bomb.[13]
The annual appropriations for the fissile material storage facility were
as follows:
FY 1994
$55.0 million
FY 1995
-----
FY 1996
$29.0 million
FY 1997
$66.0 million
FY 1998
$57.7 million
FY 1999
$60.9 million
FY 2000
$64.5 million
[11,16]
This CTR project is unique in that half of the funding was supposed to
come from Russia and half from the United States. According to former CTR
Office Director Laura Holgate, the United States did not anticipate US
spending on the facility to exceed $275 million: a figure that was the
proposed funding cap of an earlier provision in the House of Representatives.[9]
However as of May 1999, the Fissile Material Storage Facility Budget through
2001 stood at $397.6 million.[11,12] That amount is distributed as
follows:
Design
$9.1 million
Construction
$175.0 million
Equipment Purchases & Installation
$171.5 million
Transportation
$6.5 million
CLS
$2.1 million
Project Support
$33.3 million
As noted above, an additional $15 million was spent on the
early design of the facility.[11]
The Defense Department planned to request $301.2 million in FY 2000-04 for
the facility. This amount included $172.2 million above and beyond
previous plans, in order to permit a second storage wing to be constructed.
The additional US funding was also necessary because of Russia's inability to
fulfill its financial responsibility in the project.[12] In
FY 2000, however, the US Congress instituted several restrictions on expenditures. The construction of the second wing of the facility was tied to progress
on a transparency agreement with Russia, detailed cost estimates for the second
wing, and certified evidence that the capacity of the first wing is not
sufficient for the storage of weapons-origin material.[16] As of January
2004, these requirements had not been met.
As of January 1999, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors
were to join eight US monitors at the Mayak facility.[13] The US is also
providing assistance for the training of personnel who will use the new
equipment in the storage facility. Additionally, the US Department of Energy has
included the Mayak facility in its
MPC&A program for enhancing the physical protection, control, and accounting
of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. A control and accounting system
being developed in Sarov was
expected to be installed in the facility in November 2001.[14]
When the first wing was completed in December
2003, the Mayak press service declared that it had state-of-the-art protection
against natural disasters, mechanical or technical failures, and terrorist acts
and met the most up-to-date requirements for the
radiation protection of personnel, population, and environment.[17] The estimated
service life of the facility was 100 years.[18] Sources: [1] Department of Defense, "CTR Update: Russia," 19 September
1996. [2] "Contract For Fissile Storage Facility In Russia To Be
Awarded In February," Post-Soviet Nuclear and Defense Monitor, 31
January 1996, p. 4. [3] Sergey Sergeyev, Novosti newscast, 10 May 1996; in "Nuclear
Waste Storage Site Under Construction in Urals," FBIS-TEN-96-006. [4] Graham T. Allison, Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy (Cambridge:MIT
Press, 1996), p. 106. [5] "Background Document: The Cooperative Threat Reduction
Assistance to Russia," 16 January 1997, as found on the website of the
Stimson Center's Nuclear Roundtable, http://www.stimson.org/rd-table/ctr-russ.htm. [6] "Russians Fail to Provide Changes in Design of Nuclear
Storage Facility," Post-Soviet Nuclear & Defense Monitor, 14
March 1995, p. 7. [7] Figures provided by CTR Program Office, U.S. Department
of Defense, 2 October 1997. [8] Franklin C. Miller, Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Security Policy (Acting), Statement for the Record before
the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Senate Armed Services Committee,
5 March 1997. [9] "Interview: A Look Forward...Cooperative Threat Reduction
Director Laura Holgate," Post-Soviet Nuclear & Defense Monitor,
7 April 1997, p. 9. [10] "Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program," Powerpoint
Presentation by the US Department of Defense, 20 January 1999. [11] "Fissile Material Control," Powerpoint Presentation
by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Department of Defense, 3 May 1999. [12] Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative, US Department
of State, March 1999. [13] Svetlana Dobrynina, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 4 January 1999; in "Ozersk to Host Nuclear Storage Facility,
"FBIS-UMA-99-004. {Updated 5/23/99 PBI}
[14] Thomas Kuenning,
Cooperative
Threat Reduction Program: Overview & Lessons Learned (Washington,
DC: Defense Threat Reduction Agency, December 1999), pp. 16-17. [15] Yevgeniy Tkachenko, "Na khimkombinate 'Mayak' prinyato v ekspluatatsiyu
khranilishche oruzheynykh delyashchikhsya materialov," ITAR-TASS, 16 December
2003; in Integrum Techno,
http://www.integrum.com. {Entered 3/22/04 CC} [16] Russian Nuclear Security and the Clinton Administration's
Fiscal Year 2000 Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative: A Summary of
Congressional Action, Russian-American Nuclear Security
Advisory Council Web Site, http://www.ransac.org,
February 2000, p. 17-18. [17] "Goskomissiya podpisala akt priyemki v ekspluatatsiyu khranilishcha
delyashchikhsya materialov na PO 'Mayak'," Nuclear.ru Web Site, http://www.nuclear.ru, 16 December 2003.
[18] Yevgeniy Tkachenko, "Na khimkombinate 'Mayak' prinyato v ekspluatatsiyu
khranilishche oruzheynykh delyashchikhsya materialov," ITAR-TASS, 16 December
2003; in Integrum Techno,
http://www.integrum.com.
{Updated
1/24/00 LWB, Updated 2/7/2001 ES;
Updated 2/17/2004 MS}
PLANT 20 ACTIVITIES: Plant 20 received plutonium from Mayak's reprocessing plants, purified
it,
converted it into metal, and made weapons components out of it. Plutonium
hemispheres for Russia's first nuclear bomb were produced here. Plutonium
pits were still being made at Plant 20 in 1994.
[Thomas B. Cochran, Robert S. Norris, and Oleg A. Bukhkarin,
Making
the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin (Boulder: Westview Press,
1995), pp. 91-92.]
ARCHIVED MAYAK FISSILE MATERIAL STORAGE DEVELOPMENTS:
This section is no longer being updated.
For major recent developments, see the
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Developments file.
12/16/2003: STORAGE FACILITY CONSTRUCTION COMPLETED
On 16 December 2003, Mayak press service told ITAR-TASS that the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility (FMSF)
was ready for
operation.[1]
Experts say that the new facility has a capacity of 400 metric tons and will
allow the storage of up to 40% of Russia's
weapons-grade material stockpile. According to Mayak officials, 25 metric tons of plutonium
declared to be in excess of military needs is to be stored at the FMSF.[2,3] The
storage facility has state-of-the-art protection against natural disasters,
mechanical or technical failures, and terrorist acts. Government officials
inspecting the facility praised its compliance with the most up-to-date
requirements for the radiation protection of personnel, the population, and the
environment.[3] The estimated service life of the
facility is 100 years.[1] However, transparency and other issues remain that
must be resolved before the facility can be fully utilized. Sources:
[1] Yevgeniy Tkachenko, "Na khimkombinate 'Mayak' prinyato v ekspluatatsiyu
khranilishche oruzheynykh delyashchikhsya materialov," ITAR-TASS, 16 December
2003; in Integrum Techno,
http://www.integrum.com.
[2] Aleksey Ponomarev, "Chelyabinskaya oblast. V Ozerske zarabotalo yedinstvennoye
v mire khranilishche delyashchikhsya materialov," UralPolit.ru, 16 December
2003; in Integrum Techno,
http://www.integrum.com.
[3] "Goskomissiya podpisala akt priyemki v ekspluatatsiyu khranilishcha
delyashchikhsya materialov na PO 'Mayak'," Nuclear.ru Web Site, http://www.nuclear.ru, 16 December 2003.
{Entered 2/5/2004 DS}
8/29/2003: STORAGE FACILITY CLOSE TO COMPLETION
Regions.ru,
with reference to Ural-Press-Inform, reported on 29 August 2003 that Fissile
Material Storage Facility (FMSF) construction is nearly finished. Barring
complications, the facility will be completed in December.
["Chelyabinskaya oblast. Stroitelstvo
khranilishcha delyashchikhsya materialov v Ozerske blizko k zaversheniyu,"
Regions.ru Web Site,
http://www.regions.ru/printnewsarticle/news/id/1215182.html,
28
August 2003.] {Entered 10/9/2003 DS}
5/2003: STORAGE FACILITY COMPLETION MOVED TO END OF 2003 In interviews
conducted in May 2003 by the
Bellona
Foundation, US government sources and Russian engineers
said that they
anticipate that the Fissile Material Storage Facility (FMSF) at PO Mayak will be
completed by the end of 2003. According to one of Russia's chief engineers
working on the project, "completed" means that all construction work at the site
is finished and the facility is ready for security system inspection. However, both US and
Russian sources do not rule out further delays.
The United States points to potential schedule delays due to the lack of facility access to US
inspectors, while Mayak's Deputy Director Aleksandr Demidov claims that the
Pentagon has held up for two years the process by failing to approve a radiation monitoring
system for the facility. In any case, both US and Russian
officials have not given an exact date by which the FMSF will be operational.
[Charles Digges, "Mayak's Plutonium Storage Facility Expected to Be Completed by
Year's End," Bellona Web Site,
http://www.bellona.no,
26 May 2003.]
{Entered 6/04/2003 CB}
2/28/2003: STORAGE
FACILITY TO BE COMPLETED BY AUGUST 2003 On 28 February 2003, UralInformByuro reported that the construction of the Fissile Material Storage
Facility (FMSF) at PO Mayak would
be completed by August 2003.
Start-up operations are scheduled to last throughout the first half of 2003.
However, some components of the FMSF financed by Russia will not be put into service
until 2004 due to a lack of funds to complete their construction. Aleksandr
Demidov, head of Mayak's
capital construction department, said that the delay would not impede the
operation of the entire facility.
["Ekonomika. Stroitelstvo
khranilishcha delyashchikhsya materialov na PO 'Mayak' budet zakoncheno k
avgustu 2003 goda,"
UralInformByuro,
28 February 2003; in Integrum Techno,
http://www.integrum.com/.]
{Entered 3/11/2003 DA}
8/22/2002: MINATOM DOES
NOT SEEK
SECOND WING OF STORAGE
FACILITY On 22 August 2002,
Chelyabinskiy rabochiy reported on Mayak's reaction to
the decision by the House Armed Services Committee of the US Congress in support
of the US administration's freeze on funding for the construction of a second wing
of the Fissile Material Storage Facility due to unresolved
transparency issues. Mayak Deputy Director Aleksandr Demidov told the newspaper that
Minatom had already informed its US
counterparts of its decision to abandon the construction of the second wing of the facility
in any case.
According to Demidov, the one-wing facility with a design capacity of 50t of
plutonium and 200t of uranium, which is to become operational by the end of 2002,
will suffice for Russia's
surplus fissile material.
[Sergey Krapivin, "Kongressmeny
vspomnili pro 'Mayak'," Chelyabinskiy rabochiy, 22 August 2002; in
Integrum Techno, http://www.integrum.com/.]
{Entered 10/21/2002 DA}
4/9/2002: STORAGE FACILITY AT
MAYAK TO BE PUT IN SERVICE BY 2003 On 9 April 2002, RosBusinessConsulting reported that the Fissile Material Storage
Facility at PO Mayak will come into operation in late 2002 - early 2003.
Testing and adjustments are scheduled to begin in August 2002.
According to Yevgeniy Ryzhov, the head of Mayak's public relations
department, the facility is built of highly reliable reinforced concrete components and
soundproof and waterproof materials.
["Vvod v promyshlennuyu
ekspluatatsiyu stroyashchegosya pri sodeystvii Soyedinennykh Shtatov
khranilishcha delyashchikhsya materialov na PO 'Mayak' v gorode Ozerske
Chelyabinskoy oblasti planiruyetsya na konets 2002 - nachalo 2003 goda,"
Nuclear.ru Web Site,
http://www.nuclear.ru/, 9 April 2002.]
{Entered 7/8/2002 DA}
1/22-23/2002: EARLY COMPLETION
OF FISSILE MATERIAL STORAGE FACILITY THREATENED From 22 to 23 January 2002,
Russian Deputy Minister of Atomic Energy Yevgeniy Reshetnikov chaired a
meeting at PO Mayak to review the construction of the Fissile Material Storage
Facility (FMSF),
which is scheduled to be completed by August 2002. The meeting participants looked into
problems with completing the construction of the FMSF
and future operation of the facility. According to a report in the local
newspaper PrO Mayak,
the South Urals Construction Directorate, the major project subcontractor, has
not been compensated for VAT it paid for construction supplies. In addition, the
Directorate has a number of completed construction projects for which it does
not have signed contracts with the United States. Reshetnikov promised to
solve the compensation and contract issues. The FMSF is still waiting for load-lifting equipment, which a contractor in Yekaterinburg failed to ship on
time. When in operation, the facility will be guarded by Internal Ministry troops and
firefighting units, though the exact number and composition of personnel have not
been decided yet. The issue of reimbursement for the facility's external
communication system, which the United States refused to finance, also remains unresolved.
PO Mayak will supply radiation control equipment for the FMSF. In view of the
approaching completion date, PO Mayak is pushing Minatom to assist in finding
state budget financing for future facility operation costs.
[N. Peretti,
Interview with Aleksandr Danilov, PrO Mayak, February 2002; in the News
Bulletin of the Agency of Informational Coordination, February 2002.] {Entered
3/21/2002 DA}
9/18/2000: UNITED STATES, RUSSIA, AND IAEA MEET TO DISCUSS PROGRESS ON TRILATERAL INITIATIVE On 18 September 2000, Russian Minister of Atomic
Energy, Yevgeniy Adamov, Director of the US
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) General John Gordon, and International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei met in
Vienna to review progress on the Trilateral Initiative.[1] The
Trilateral Initiative, announced on 17 September 1996, is meant to develop an IAEA verification
system for weapons-origin fissile material declared excess by both the United
States and Russia and to parallel efforts by the United States and Russia to
increase fissile material transparency and arms control efforts.[2] The
idea of weapons-grade fissile material transparency originated in 1993 when US President Clinton offered to
make nuclear material declared excess to national security needs available to
IAEA inspection.
In April 1996, Russian President Yeltsin pledged to make approximately 50MT of
weapons-origin plutonium available for IAEA verification.[3] Since
the Initiative's inception in 1996, the three parties have been working
towards completing a Model Verification Agreement that would lay the
foundation for bilateral agreements between the IAEA and both countries.[1]
During negotiations in 1999, the parties announced the development of new
verification equipment and agreed to a plutonium verification process that would
include "information barriers." The "information
barriers" are techniques that enable IAEA inspectors to
verify that the weapons-origin material is actually what it was declared to be,
while maintaining the classified nature of the material.[4] The Trilateral Initiative is closely related to the
bilateral US-Russia monitoring program to be established at the Fissile
Material Storage Facility at Mayak Production
Association and the K-area material storage (KAMS) facility at the
Savannah River Site in South Carolina, since IAEA inspectors would conduct their
verification work at these two sites.[1,4] The three principals of the
Initiative are expected to meet again in September 2001.[1]
Sources: [1] "IAEA Verification of Weapon-Origin
Fissile Material in the Russian Federation and the United States," IAEA
General Conference Press Release 2000/22, 19 September 2000, IAEA Web Site, http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Press/P_release/2000/ prn2200.shtml. [2] "Trilateral Initiative on Verifying
Excess Weapons Origin Fissile Materials," US Department of Energy Press
Release, 8 November 1996; in Federation of American Scientists Web Site, http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/usiaea/docs/st961108.html. [3] "Trilaterial Initiative,"
Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation/U.S. Department of Energy Web Site,
http://www.nn.doe.gov/trilateral.shtml. [4] "Status Report on Nuclear
Weapons, Fissile Material, and Export Control. Nuclear Successor States
of the Soviet Union," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the
Center for Nonproliferation Studies, No. 6, 2001, p. 60.{Entered
4/17/01 GD}
4/98: STOP-WORK ORDER ON MAYAK STORAGE FACILITY SITE IS AVERTED On 27 March 1998, after a full review inspection of the Mayak fissile material storage
facility, the Russian State Committee on the Environment ordered that all work at the
site would be halted if past-due paperwork was not filed by 15 April. The Committee requested
that Mayak and the storage facility contractor (Bechtel National, Inc.) submit
a revised environmental impact statement. Officials at Mayak submitted the necessary documentation by 30 March,
thereby avoiding interruption of the construction.
["Russian Stop-Work Order Averted on
Mayak Storage Site," Post-Soviet Nuclear & Defense Monitor,
Vol. 5, No. 8, 27 April, 1998, p. 2.]{Entered 2/7/2001 ES}
4/97: US OFFICIALS TO VISIT FISSILE MATERIAL STORAGE FACILITY CONSTRUCTION
SITE The US-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation
(Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission) agreed to allow representatives from the
US Department of Defense to visit the Mayak fissile material storage facility
construction site. In addition, the commission signed an agreement that
will exempt US equipment sent to Mayak from taxation. As of April 1997,
Mayak received $100 million worth of technology. The total cost for
the construction of the storage facility is estimated to be $353.7 million.
[Yadernyy kontrol, No. 28, April 1997,
p. 11.] {Entered 11/21/97 EV}
10/96: FISSILE MATERIAL STORAGE FACILITY: FOUNDATION COMPLETED The foundation slab and walls for the Mayak (Chelyabinsk-65) fissile material
storage facility was started in October 1996, and the facility and
equipment design and procurement are scheduled to be completed in FY 1998.
The facility, which will house 40 percent of Russia's weapons grade plutonium
and will operate under IAEA safeguards, is scheduled to be finished by
the third quarter of FY 2000. In March 1996, the US firm Bechtel won the
design and construction contract to build the facility at Mayak. Since
the project's inception in 1992, $15 million has been spent on its design.
and $75 million for construction in 1996-1997. Minatom will approve the
equipment, construction, and work force, but did not have any input into
the contract selection.
Sources: [1] Department of Defense, "CTR Update," 19 September 1996. [2] "Contract For Fissile Storage Facility In Russia To Be
Awarded In February," Post-Soviet Nuclear & Defense Monitor,
31 January 1996, p. 4. {entered 10/31/96 mew}
9/27/96: GAO REPORT: HOLD FUNDS FOR MAYAK FACILITY UNTIL PROGRESS MADE The US General Accounting Office suggested in its latest review of the
CTR Program that Congress withhold funding for the Mayak nuclear materials
storage facility until officials resolve the issues of US access rights
to the facility, and US access rights to data on the material contained
therein. The facility will house approximately 50,000 containers of fissionable
material from dismantled nuclear weapons. Russia has assured the US that
only materials derived from dismantled weapons will be stored at Mayak,
that those materials will not be re-used for weapons, and that it is prepared
to agree to full joint accountability and transparency measures. However,
an agreement outlining those measures and their implementation has yet
to be concluded.
[GAO, "Weapons of Mass Destruction," GAO/NSIAD-96-222, 27
September 1996.] {Entered 2/11/97 mew}
10/94: US REFUSES TO FUND FISSILE STORAGE FACILITY AT MAYAK Minatom is planning to build a modular storage site at Chelyabinsk-65.
Minatom would like the US and Japan to help finance the facility, but thus
far, the US Department of Energy has refused to provide funding.
[Mark Hibbs, "Minatom Shifting Gears On Plans To Build Fissile
Storage Sites," NuclearFuel, 24 October 1994, p. 14.]
Page last updated 22 March 2004 The development section in this file is no longer being updated. For major
recent developments, see the
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Developments file.
Comments or questions? Contact Elena Sokova at MIIS
CNS: Elena.SokovaATmiis.edu
For major recent developments, see the
