Russian City May Be Source for
Uranium
Associated Press by Jim Heintz
January 27, 2007
(For personal use only)
Novosibirsk is located in the depths of Siberia, but despite the
remoteness it's one of Russia's main areas for nuclear activity and a cause of
concern for those worried about nuclear materials falling into terrorists'
hands.
The concerns about Russia's third-largest city rose to the forefront this week
after officials in the former Soviet republic of Georgia announced the arrest of
a Russian man for allegedly trying to sell weapons-grade uranium to an
undercover agent.
The man, who was arrested last year, initially told his interrogators the
uranium came from Novosibirsk, 1,600 miles east of Moscow, Georgian Interior
Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told The Associated Press on Saturday. He
later recanted his statement, but Georgian authorities sent a letter to Russia's
Federal Security Service inquiring about the possible link to Novosibirsk,
Utiashvili said. The agency declined to comment Saturday.
A top Russian science official has said the sample of the alleged contraband
uranium provided by Georgia was too small for analysis that could determine its
origin.
The episode appeared to cast doubt on Russia's ability to halt the black-market
trade in nuclear materials and renewed concern about security at Russia's array
of nuclear facilities.
The Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant is one of Russia's main facilities
for producing enriched uranium both for use in nuclear reactors and in the
higher concentration that could be used to make an atomic bomb.
In addition, highly enriched uranium has been shipped into Novosibirsk in recent
years from former Soviet bloc countries, including Poland and Romania. Under a
program backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the uranium is to be
blended down into lower concentrations.
The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration funded a program to improve
security at the Novosibirsk plant as part of a wider initiative to boost
security at facilities throughout Russia. The NNSA says the Novosibirsk plant
completed its upgrade in late 2004.
However, security apparently was lax in Novosibirsk for years before that. In
2002, the head of the agency that was then responsible for security at nuclear
facilities admitted that weapons-grade nuclear material had disappeared from
Russian facilities.
"Most often, these instances are connected with factories preparing fuel"
including Novosibirsk's, the official, Yuri Vishnyevsky, said at the time.
Novosibirsk was also the site of the 1997 arrest of two men who officials said
intended to smuggle some 11 pounds of enriched uranium to Pakistan or China.
That uranium reportedly was stolen from a plant in the former Soviet republic of
Kazakhstan.
Security at Russia's nuclear facilities was seen as deteriorating rapidly in the
early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when economic hardships made
black-market activities increasingly widespread and as political chaos left
official lines of command and supervision shaky.
The U.S.-based organization Nuclear Threat Initiative said in a report last year
that Russia remains the prime country of concern for contraband nuclear
material.
"Russia has the world's largest stockpiles of both nuclear weapons and the
materials to make them, scattered among hundreds of buildings and bunkers at
scores of sites. Over the past 15 years security for those stockpiles has
improved from poor to moderate, but there remain immense threats those security
systems must confront," the NTI said.
