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Eliminating Russian HEU Stockpile Needs European Help, Swedish Study Says By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — A report released this week by the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) proposes that European countries help reduce stockpiles of Russian highly enriched uranium by financing the blending down of the material to a lower enrichment level (see GSN, March 26). Russia has 1,000 to 1,500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium stored at more than 50 sites, according to the report prepared by a panel of international experts. The report warns that the radioactive material poses an attractive target to terrorists seeking to develop a crude nuclear weapon and cites concerns that Russian storage sites are poorly secured. To help reduce the risk, the report proposes that the European Union finance the blending down of Russian uranium to a level below 20-percent enrichment, making it unusable for weapons purposes. Russia would be allowed to retain the resultant low-enriched uranium, which could be sold abroad for use as civilian nuclear power plant fuel, the report says. The report estimates the total cost of the effort at $10 billion. It states that donor countries should only pay for the blending down of the material, either through interest-free loans or possible debt swaps, and not the later conversion of the material into civilian fuel. Another potential clause would require Russia to use the profits gained by the sale of the converted uranium to improve security at its nuclear material storage sites, Lars van Dassen, director of the Swedish Nuclear Nonproliferation Assistance Program at the inspectorate, said Tuesday. The proposal is similar to a U.S.-Russian effort, known as Megatons to Megawatts, which seeks to blend down 500 tons of highly enriched uranium that Moscow has declared to be in excess of its national security needs. Under the 20-year program, which was launched in 1994, Russia converts material removed from its nuclear warheads into low-enriched uranium, which is then purchased by the U.S. Enrichment Corp. for sale as civilian nuclear plant fuel. To date, the effort has eliminated more than 200 metric tons of Russian highly enriched uranium. The Megatons to Megawatts program demonstrated how “commercial means” could be used to convert weapon-grade materials to civilian purposes, van Dassen said. He said that one key difference between the U.S.-Russian effort and the proposal for the European Union — allowing Russia to retain possession of the blended down material — came out of the fact that most EU members are “violently opposed” to nuclear fuel and would be “reluctant” to take control of the uranium. An effort modeled exactly on the Megatons to Megawatts program would be seen by many EU members as an attempt to expand the use of nuclear power and would therefore be strongly opposed, he said. The SKI report has been submitted to the Swedish Foreign Office for further consideration, van Dassen said. The issue of HEU elimination is being considered “in a very pronounced manner” by Sweden, he said. Praising the European proposal as potentially useful, Matthew Bunn of Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Atom said Tuesday that any future agreement would have to be “structured carefully” to serve all interests. One hurdle the proposed European HEU deal might face, according to the report, is that Russia has not declared any additional amounts of highly enriched uranium as being in excess of its national security needs beyond that already covered by the Megatons to Megawatts program. This has led to a “lukewarm” reaction from Russia to the proposal, van Dassen said. The report also notes, though, that Russia did not designate the initial 500 tons as excessive until the United States demonstrated a willingness to purchase surplus material. Russia could have as much as “hundreds of tons” of excess highly enriched beyond the material covered by the Megatons to Megawatts program, Bunn said. Rose Gottemoeller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said today that the European proposal would need to include verification and transparency measures such as those used in the U.S.-Russian HEU deal to ensure that the downblending was actually being conducted and on military-related materials. The Megatons to Megawatts program uses both on-site monitoring by U.S. teams that visit Russian sites several times per year and a technological monitoring system to track the material when inspectors are not present. Another concern is that Russia also does not view HEU elimination as a high nonproliferation priority, van Dassen said. Under a program initiated in 2002 by the Group of Eight global economic powers to help fund nonproliferation projects, primarily in Russia, Moscow has instead chosen to focus more on nuclear submarine dismantlement and chemical weapons disposal, he said. A “main difficulty” for Russia in implementing the European proposal would be in securing adequate funding from the EU, said Danill Kobyakov of the PIR Center in Moscow. The EU has been slow to implement its funding pledge under the G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction and any possible funding increases are expected only after 2007 when a new budgetary cycle begins, he said today. Kobyakov also said, though, that he believes Russia would “be in general favorable” to the proposal. “I do not think that there are any serious obstacles to its development,” he said in a written response to questions. Also uncertain, Kobyakov said, is how the European proposal would affect the world HEU market and its possible impact on the U.S.-Russian HEU deal. He said that the issue of the commercial impact on the major international nuclear fuel companies still needed to be considered. Bunn said the proposal would not prevent the United States from reaching another HEU agreement with Russia once the Megatons to Megawatts program expires. He said the stockpiled low-enriched uranium created through the European proposal could be used to fill any future U.S.-Russian agreement, adding that the U.S. nuclear industry is already assuming that deliveries would continue once the Megatons to Megawatt program has expired.
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