282 CONTEMPORARY REVIEW RUSSIA’S NUCLEAR CITIES END PLUTONIUM PRODUCTION Thomas Land USSIA is lifting its ban on foreigners at two secret military settlements R in Siberia as a first step to retiring the most dangerous surviving, Soviet- designed nuclear power plants on earth. This is a ground-breaking accord reached by Russian and American negotia- tors in Moscow. It will complete a long-argued nuclear threat reduction initiative ending plutonium production in both countries. Several other energy-related international disarmament schemes are also advancing like clockwork, says Alexander Rumyantsev, the former atomic energy minister whose department is now being phased out However, the demise of the three obsolete Siberian reactors could increase the prospect of nuclear proliferation by making thousands of Russian military scientists and technicians redundant and encouraging them to seek work abroad. The condemned reactors are some forty years of age. Their design is the one from which the bygone Soviet nuclear engineers learned lessons in order to devise the Chemoby! power plant in Ukraine ~ the one involved in the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Urgent safety upgrades are being prepared by the Russian and American experts involved in the programme even during the phase-out period in order to avert a meltdown. The ADE-4 and ADE-S5 reactors in Seversk near Tomsk, western Siberia, and the ADE-2 reactor in Zheleznogorsk, eastern Siberia, generate enough pluto- nium to produce approximately one nuclear weapon every day and a half. They also generate heat and electricity for the surrounding communities. They will continue to operate until alternative, environment-friendly replacement plants are put in place. Seversk, formerly known as Tomsk-7, and Zheleznogorsk, formerly Kras- noyask-26, are among the ten closed cities that once were at the heart of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons production complex. Built in the 1940s and early 1960s, these so-called nuclear cities used to house more than 170,000 people, mostly nuclear workers and their families. These specialized population centres are about to experience acute social problems caused by unemployment resulting from the closure of the reactors and their associated reprocessing plants. Those still living there were once spoilt with all kinds of privileges including access to the best consumer goods then available in Russia. Their perks have ended with the Cold War. But a ban on foreigners is still partially in force. In exceptional cases, for- eigners holding advance permissions have been granted access to work on joint projects. The cities remain generally off limits to anyone but those engaged in nuclear work programmes, and their dependants. Agreement has now been reached between the US and Russia on Western access to these Russian nuclear cities, marking another step toward shutting downRUSSIA'S NUCLEAR CITIES END PRODUCTION 283 the plutonium producing reactors. The accord signed in Moscow provides only for access arrangements related to building the two projected coal-burning power plants. Western access to the nuclear reactors themselves remains under negotiation. The Moscow accord will allow the American enterprises Washington Group International and Raytheon Technical Services broad access for shutting down the critical reactors and replacing them with coal-fired heat and electricity plants. The work will cost $466m, financed by Washington. “This will bring us to the end of production of weapons-grade plutonium in Russia’, said Spencer Abraham, the American energy secretary, on reaching agree- ment with Rumyantsev, his Russian counterpart. The deal, added Rumyantsev, demonstrated that Russia and America were ‘friends and partners’. Their original breakthrough accord had been clinched in Vienna on the sidelines of a recent United Nations conference about the threat posed by crude radiation dispersal devices, or dirty bombs, in the hands of international terrorists. Washington Group International is a provider of premier services worldwide in nuclear energy, science, engineering, construction and related areas. Raytheon is a global defence contractor. The third major industrial partner in the deal is Rosatomstroi, the Russian contractor, a subsidiary of Minatom, the atomic energy ministry which is currently being wound up. The reorganization of the ministry's functions among other, existing admin- istrative authorities has just been launched by the Kremlin. It is part of an enor- mous reform programme intended to adjust Russia’s unwieldy and obsolete military-industrial complex to evolving perceptions of the demands of the twenty-first century. This may well emerge as the centrepiece of innovations initiated during President Vladimir Putin's newly won second term in office. Indeed, the plutonium programme is also part of the change. Basically, the US companies are to pass construction funds to Rosatomstroi, which will in turn hire a labour force and supervise the actual work. The US firms will also oversee the construction of the fossil-fuel plants. The Russians remain in charge of the reactor decommi ning. Washington Group International will oversee work at the Seversk site. There, the US will provide assistance in refurbishing an existing fossil fuel plant to produce electricity lost from the shutdown of the reactors. The refurbishment work is estimated to take five years, enabling the reactors to close. Major work at the Seversk site will include refurbishing or replacing existing coal-fired boilers, providing one new high-pressure coal-fired boiler, replacing turbine generators, completing the construction of the fuel supply system and refurbishing the industrial heating unit and ancillary systems. In addition, Russia plans to build a plant at Seversk to transform weapons- grade plutonium to mixed oxide fuel. Construction on the $1bn plant is to start early in 2005. Raytheon Technical Services will oversee work at the Zheleznogorsk site.284 CONTEMPORARY REVIEW There, the US will provide assistance in building a new fossil fuel plant. The estimated time of completion for the project is eight years. Major work at the Zheleznogorsk site will include the provision of a co-gen- eration boiler, an extraction/condensing steam turbine, heating boilers, a fuel handling system, an ash removal system, environmental controls and a hot water pipeline to connect the new plant with the district heating system. According to figures published earlier, the Seversk project would have to produce 1810 megawatts-thermal (MWt) of energy and the Zheleznogorsk pro- ject 765 MWt in order to replace the losses due to the closure of the reactors. These are the last of Russia’s original 13 plutonium-producing plants slated for dismantlement. The US has already shut down all of its own 14 plutonium- production reactors. According to reliable but unofficial estimates, Russia has 125 tonnes of weapons plutonium stored at various sites — and sometimes under dubious security arrangements — around the country. The US has declared that it holds 100 tonnes of plutonium. These are quantities far in excess of their perceived defence needs. A report recently drawn up by Russian nuclear regulators and provided to US officials states that the three surviving military reactors are in such poor physical condition that their conversion to civilian use could result in a Chernobyl-type accident. Several prominent American nuclear experts — among them Princeton University’s Frank von Hippel and Harvard University’s Matthew Bunn, both former White House non-proliferation advisors — have also urged against the conversion of the reactors. The situation is grave because, unlike US reactors, these plants lack essential safety features such as concrete containment domes capable of holding radiation in case of an accident leading to major leaks. They have potentially fatal deficiencies in the areas of design, equipment and materials. US inspectors have visited the plants and prioritized a series of urgent safety upgrades proposed by Russian experts in order to avert disaster during the final phase and shutdown of the reactors. These will be designed and put in place under the authority of the US energy department's Pacific Northwest National Lab at a projected cost of $25m. Significantly, these upgrades will not extend the life of the reactors. All this has not prevented Moscow bureaucrats from singing the praise of the accident-prone Soviet reactor design and Pravda news service from endorsing their claims. ‘It should be stressed’, states Pravda, ‘that such engineering prob- lems have never occurred in the US (because) no American military reactor has ever worked at the capacity of a combined-cycle plant. American nuclear power specialists have admired Russian engineering talents in the field. However, as it often happens in the technological world, advantages unexpectedly turned out to be disadvantages . . .” Both Russia and the West are also worried by the repercussions of large- scale unemployment among its nuclear specialists. A year ago, Lev Ryabey, then the first deputy minister of atomic energy, warned that Zheleznogorsk was facing