The Future of Russia's Plutonium Cities

plutonium Cities I F o r almost 50 years Russia’s so-called plutonium cities, Chelyabinsk-65, Tomsk-7, and Krasnoyarsk -26, played a central role in the Soviet/Russian nuclear weapons program .’ The end of the nuclear arms race has eliminated their original mission-the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The cities are now in a critical economic and social situation due to the collapse of defense orders and dramatic changes in Russian society. Like the rest of Russia’s defense industries, the plutonium complex faces difficult decisions about its future. The plutonium complex, however, is different from other Russian industries in that its fate could have a direct and profound effect on international security. The complex will continue to supply limited-life components for Russia’s nuclear weapons and to provide for their reliability, although at a much reduced level. It will have the principal responsibility for decontamination, decommissioning, and environmental cleanup of the plutonium production facilities. Most important, the plutonium complex, already managing very large amounts of weapons-usable fissile materials, will assume responsibility for approximately 100 tons of plutonium and over 500 tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from dismantled weapons, by far the largest portion of Russia ’sweapon-grade fissile materials outside of nuclear warheads.2An economic collapse of the plutonium complex would endanger Russia’s capability to secure and eventually dispose of these huge stocks of fissile materials, and undermine the effort to stop an exodus of nuclear weapons expertise and know-how from Russia to countries seeking nuclear weapons. Ole8 Bukharin is n Research Staff Member at Princeton University‘s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. 1. The new names of the previously nameless cities are Ozersk (Chelyabinsk-65),Seversk (Tomsk7 ), and Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26). 2. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards, HEU is defined as uranium enriched in the isotope U-235 to greater than 20 percent. Higher levels of enrichment are required to use HEU for fabrication of a practical nuclear explosive device. The critical mass (the bare mass of uncompressed material required to initiate a neutron chain reaction) of 50 percent enriched uranium is a factor of three greater than that of 93.5 percent enriched uranium. Plutonium of any isotopic composition (with the exception of Pu-238) can be used to manufacture a nuclear explosive device. However, weapon designers prefer to use plutonium with high contents of Pu-239. Plutonium containing more than 94 percent Pu-239 is termed “weapons-grade”.The IAEA uses 25 kg U-235 in HEU and 8 kg plutonium as its standards for ”significant quantities” required to make simple explosive devices of the implosive type. International Security, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 1997),pp. 126-158 01997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute o f Technology 126 The Future of Russia’s Plutonium Cities I 127 Security of weapons-usable plutonium and HEU in Russia remains a grave international security concern. Diversion of even a tiny fraction of Russia’s huge inventories would be a disaster of global proportions. In particular, there is a danger that Russia’s capability to safeguard its huge stocks of weaponsusable HEU and plutonium may be undermined by an economic collapse of its nuclear infrastructure. The complex of approximately 150research institutes and production facilities,which is managed by the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom),is oversized and is not sustainable. This is dangerous because the main threat to nuclear materials in Russia is their theft by impoverished and desperate nuclear workers. Stolen nuclear material would be relatively easy to hide or smuggle across the border. Conventional techniques for detection of fissile materials, based on a combination of non-destructive assay techniques (passive gamma-ray detection and active neutron interrogation), X-ray radiography, and physical search, are likely to be unreliable under field conditions. For example, an HEU warhead component or comparable mass of HEU metal could be successfully shielded from detection inside a sufficiently thick metallic container hidden in a truck or on a merchant ~ e s s e l . ~ Smugglingof stolen nuclear materials through the permeable southern borders of Russia might be a particularly attractive option. Although not...