Deep in the heart of Russia sits a nearly completed, $640 million concrete and steel structure designed to store plutonium from Russia’s dismantled nuclear weapons. But the Russians didn’t pay for the high-tech building at Mayak, a city devoted to nuclear weapons production during the Cold War.
American taxpayers did.
And while some cite the structure as a shining example of helping Russia reduce its dangerous nuclear stockpile, others contend the U.S. is being hoodwinked into financing an upgrade of Russia’s weapons complex, one that may make the world even less safe.
Indeed, Mayak’s rising expense–government auditors say it may end up costing the United States $1.3 billion–is a key element of a Bush administration review of all U.S.-Russia nuclear, biological and chemical non-proliferation initiatives that have blossomed during 10 years of post-Cold War diplomacy. The programs have cost the U.S. nearly $5 billion.
The aim is to reduce weapons of mass destruction and make them more secure, a vital task that Russia clearly cannot do without financial and technical aid. But now, Bush administration officials say, some such initiatives may be cut back or eliminated.
The reappraisal is overseen by the National Security Council, where weekly meetings are held with the Defense, Energy and State Departments, which run the programs. The results of the study are soon expected to go to President Bush.
The review comes as the administration charts a new course in U.S.-Russian relations, moving from rapprochement and financial assistance to one of harder bargains and arms-length diplomacy.
“We need to be aware of the fact that Russia, in particular, claims to lack the financial resources to eliminate weapons of mass destruction but continues to invest scarce resources in the development of newer, more sophisticated [intercontinental ballistic missiles] and other weapons,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently told the U.S. Senate.
The collapse of the Soviet Union left nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons spread mostly across the four new nations of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakstan and Belarus. U.S. diplomacy and money persuaded Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine to ship hundreds of missiles and warheads back to Russia, where they could be disposed of more readily.
Even before the reassessment, the administration’s tentative budget for fiscal 2002 cut at least $100 million from non-proliferation programs. The move upset influential Republican senators, including Pete Domenici of New Mexico, now head of the Budget Committee; Ted Stevens of Alaska, now chairman of the Appropriations Committee; and Richard Lugar of Indiana, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime proponent of aiding Russian disarmament. The three will remain potent forces even with the upcoming switch to Democratic control of the Senate.
Businesses and federal agencies in 26 states benefit from the Russian nuclear salvage operations, including two national laboratories in Domenici’s state.
Lugar acknowledges that “the Russians are not very cooperative in some of these places at all” and that some programs might have to go. But he says the destruction of weapons has been an unheralded success and should continue at a faster pace.
“We should have deactivated more warheads each year,” Lugar said. “From the beginning, I would have spent more. The Russians still have thousands of warheads and hundreds of ICBMs, and that is the reality of the world.”
The programs, initially focused on deactivating nuclear weapons, now include converting Russian nuclear sites to peaceful uses, retraining and finding work for an estimated 7,000 scientists and other workers, and tightening security around hundreds of often poorly guarded facilities.
Among those initiatives, the storage facility at Mayak, a central Russian city in the Ural Mountains, is a favorite of critics. Mayak was one of the Soviet Union’s 10 “secret” nuclear cities, places that couldn’t be found on a map but where nuclear weapons were built. Mayak’s main mission was to produce plutonium for each weapon’s critical core.
When the Cold War ended, Russia asked the U.S. for help in building a storage facility at Mayak for the plutonium and uranium that would be removed from weapons. The cost of such a specialized structure was estimated at $500 million. The two nations agreed to split the cost.
But by 1996, the U.S. already had spent $20 million on the building when the Russians changed their minds about the method for storing the containers of plutonium.
Kremlin’s `11th-hour’ change
“At the 11th hour, the Russians said, `We want to store it vertically,’ which would have required redesigning the whole building, which we did,” said F. James Shafer of the U.S. General Accounting Office, which reviewed the Mayak project. “At the time, we were still negotiating with the Russians for access. We never got the transparency. The Russians wouldn’t provide it, but we went ahead and built the facility.”
There may be more costs. The U.S. already has spent $37 million for containers that will be used at Mayak and it expects to spend another $650 million to help Russia prepare its uranium and plutonium for storage.
Nonetheless, the Russians are balking at earlier pledges to allow U.S. officials access to the facility when it is completed. Without such access, U.S. officials can’t be sure just what is being stored at Mayak. Still unanswered is who will pay Mayak’s $10 million annual operating costs once it opens. Proliferation experts also complain that Mayak only warehouses, and doesn’t reduce, Russia’s weapons capability.
“Mayak is a big pyramid that you cram valuable stuff into,” said Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Education Policy Center in Washington. “But how does that solve your problem?”
Champions of the storage center hold up Mayak as an example of the progress that has been made in helping Russia reduce its nuclear weapons stockpile. In 10 years, they note, Russia has dismantled more than 5,500 nuclear weapons, 1,100 missiles, 85 bombers and other arms. The only alternative, these experts say, is doing nothing, and getting nothing in return.
“I’m hoping that, over time, people will come to understand that it’s within the United States’ national interest to have warhead plants shut down,” said Rose Gottemoeller, formerly the undersecretary for nuclear non-proliferation in the Department of Energy.
Gottemoeller said that while working with the Russians is often frustrating and expensive, the projects have given American scientists and military officials a rare window onto Russia’s “holiest of holies,” its nuclear complex.
A decade ago, Lugar and then-Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) put the notion of disarming Russia into legislation, crafting a law in 1991 that authorized the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction, or CTR, within the Pentagon.
Since then, the CTR has carried out a plan that, by 2007, calls for the elimination of nearly 9,900 Russian nuclear warheads, more than 2,000 missiles, 1,400 launchers and silos, 93 bombers, and 41 nuclear submarines. Along the way, though, the Pentagon agency has strayed into several projects, some of them mandated by Congress, that by many accounts became fiascoes.
The agency lost $65 million, for example, on the Defense Enterprise Fund, a private investment initiative to convert Russian defense industries into high-tech manufacturing.
In 1995, the CTR transferred a portion of its work to the U.S. Energy Department, whose national laboratories had 50 years of experience in making and securing nuclear weapons. The department launched the Material Protection Control and Accounting program, which has helped the Russians keep track of its weapons material and better secure it.
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Since then, Energy Department contractors have installed everything from security fences to cameras to steel doors at nuclear sites. They have provided guard training and handheld devices that measure radioactive material. Computers have replaced pencil and paper as Russia’s means of tracking its nuclear inventory.
“We have a much better understanding than we did in 1994 and 1995,” Gottemoeller said. “The Russians are beginning to trust us. They know us better.”
Along the way, however, Russia has failed to pay its promised share on Mayak and several other projects, even for minimal expenses. At one point, Energy officials say, the U.S. paid for food and winter clothing for guards at a Russian nuclear center where security had been beefed up at American expense.
U.S. scientists denied access
Russia also has been stingy about granting U.S. scientists access to projects where American equipment is being installed. In 1999 alone, the Russians denied visits by U.S. officials 25 times, according to the Energy Department.
That lack of access makes it difficult to know just how effective the new security measures are. And the upgrades made so far affect just 7 percent of the estimated 650 million tons of weapons material in Russia, according to the GAO.
“Although the United States has spent $481 million to upgrade security systems at Russian laboratories with weapons-grade nuclear materials, because of access problems we may not know if some of these systems are being used as intended and properly maintained,” GAO Associate Director Harold Johnson told the Senate a year ago.
A program to dilute 500 million tons of Russia’s highly enriched uranium and sell it to the U.S. Enrichment Corp. is finally under way after years of haggling. But while that arrangement takes uranium out of Russia, critics note that it will eventually pay $12 billion to Russia’s Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as Minatom, which is still designing atomic weapons.
“We have no idea where that money’s going,” said Sokolski. “If we’re lucky, it’s going to finance dachas or Bermuda vacations [for corrupt Russian officials].”
Some Russians also are concerned about that money, and what Minatom might do with it.
“We have very big doubts that the profits from the transactions will really be spent on the lofty aims proclaimed by Minatom,” said Serbei Mitrokhin of the liberal Yabloko faction in the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament. “But we have even more doubts that any of this money is going to be spent on something socially useful.”
With the U.S. policy review under way, each government agency is waiting too see how much of its programs will remain, and just how they will fit in to what will be a decidedly different approach to Russia’s potential threat.
A task force organized by Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson issued a report in January that described the security of Russian nuclear weapons as “the most urgent, unmet national security threat to the United States today.” The 18-member task force, half of whose members are retired senators and members of Congress, recommended spending another $30 billion over the next 8 to 10 years.
Bush is not likely to buy into that strategy. Although the White House will not make its results known for several more weeks, administration officials have already signaled that changes are in the wind, well beyond the $100 million in cuts they already have targeted.
“I suspect there will be other cuts,” said one administration official involved in the review. “And frankly, some of these programs should be cut.”
Disarming Russia’s nuclear weaponry
A decade ago, two senators put the notion of deactivating Russia’s nuclear weapons into legislation, crafting a law in 1991 that authorized the Pentagon’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction. Since then, the office has helped eliminate or deactivate more than 7,600 nuclear devices.
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DESTROYED/DEACTIVATED AS OF MAY PLANNED CURRENT AS PERCENT
MAY 2001 BY 2007 OF 2007 GOAL
Warheads 5,504 9,881 55.7%
Intercontinental ballistic missiles 423 1,037 40.8%
ICBM silos 383 565 67.8%
ICBM mobile launchers 0 250 0%
Bombers 85 93 91.4
Long-range air-launched cruise missiles 483 487 99.2%
Submarine-launched ballistic missiles 209 661 31.6%
SLBM launchers 362 612 59.2%
Nuclear powered ballistic missile subs 19 41 46.3%
Nuclear test tunnels/holes 194 194 100.0%
Source: CTR
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