#8
Asia Times
January 15, 2003
Proliferation: All it takes is thugs with clubs
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - As the tension over Pyonyang's nuclear program develops, one serious nuclear incident in Central Asia has indicated proliferation hazards in that region.

Early in January, masked men armed with clubs forced their way into the Kyrgyz Chemical-Mechanical Plant in Keminsk district. They beat two guards and stole 23 boxes with 460 kilograms of the europium oxide powder used in nuclear reactors.

The powder had been stored at the plant since the Soviet era, when the material was supposed to be used in manufacturing the rods that control nuclear reactions at the Orlovka Uranium Plant in Kyrgyzstan's Chuiskaya region.

Experts say that europium oxide does not explode, and is slightly radioactive. Nikolai Shingariev, head of information at Minatom, Russia's nuclear power ministry, told the RIA news agency that the europium oxide cannot be used to manufacture nuclear weapons and that it is not banned by non-proliferation agreements. He conceded that europium oxide is a very expensive material, which could be stolen for merely criminal reasons. However, the theft of uropium indicates how poorly Central Asia's nuclear facilities are guarded these days.

And there are many potentially dangerous industrial sites in the volatile region. For instance, last year Russian and Kyrgyz formed a US$10 million uranium joint venture. From 2003 on, the venture's Kara-Baltinsk processing plant in Kyrgyzstan is due to process raw uranium from Zarechnoye field in southern Kazakhstan, where reserves are estimated at 19,000 tons.

There have been concerns over nuclear safety in other Central Asian states as well. Last fall, there were reports of a $4 million US-Russian joint operation with Uzbek officials to remove an estimated 70 kilograms of enriched uranium from the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Ulugbek, near Tashkent, close to porous borders with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Russia's Minatom has confirmed that the operation was discussed, but so far has not revealed any details.

Last October, Ulbinsk Metallurgical Combine (UMZ) in Ust-Kamenokorsk, eastern Kazakhstan, announced the reception of a 2 million euro grant from the EC designed to improve security of the nuclear materials stored at the plant, which produces the usual uranium used in atomic power plants.

There have been reports that up to three tonnes of plutonium have already been moved from the Aktau nuclear reactor in western Kazakhstan to UMZ, on the border between eastern Kazakhstan and Russia, which is considered more secure. The Aktau BN-350 reactor was shut down in April 1999 because the Kazak authorities considered it too isolated.

Kazakhstan held Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War but returned them to Russia after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan used to be the main nuclear weapons test center for the Soviet Union.

Last fall, five Central Asian nations agreed to a treaty declaring their region a nuclear weapons-free zone. It would prohibit Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan from developing, producing or testing nuclear weapons, or helping any other country to do so. It would also ban them from allowing other nations to station nuclear weapons there.

These days, Central Asian nations do not have nuclear weapons themselves, but are surrounded by nuclear powers Russia and China. The region is also close to nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, and Iran as well is believed to have sought fissionable material to build nuclear devices.

In their negotiations, Kazakhstan, presumably acting on Russia's behalf, reportedly insisted on a clause saying that the new treaty did not affect obligations of past treaties. Russia believes that the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) collective security treaty signed in Tashkent in 1992 gives it the right to deploy nuclear arms in Central Asia, but some former Soviet states dispute this interpretation.

On the other hand, Russia has proliferation concerns of its own. Last December, Yury Vishnyevsky, head of Gosatomnadzor, conceded that small amounts of weapons and reactor-grade nuclear materials had disappeared from the country's nuclear facilities. Instances of the loss of grams of weapons-grade or kilograms of the usual uranium used in atomic power plants have been recorded, he told journalists in Moscow.

These instances took place at plants producing nuclear fuel: Elektrostal in the Moscow region and Novosibirsk, Vishnyevsky said. He did not give further details on when the losses were discovered or how the material might have gone missing.

The International Atomic Energy Agency lists two known thefts of uranium from Elektrostal, in 1994 and 1995. In both cases, the uranium was seized by police. The agency also lists the 1994 seizure in Germany of 400 grams of plutonium brought in from Moscow.

Moreover, earlier in January, Russia shut the Mayak reprocessing plant in the formerly closed Urals city of Ozyorsk. Russia's Gosatomnadzor denied the plant an operating license for 2003 over fears that radioactive waste dumped into the nearby Lake Karachay and in specially built water tanks was tainting local water supplies. A tank containing radioactive waste exploded at Mayak in 1957 and exposed nearly half a million people to radiation in a major nuclear accident.

On the other hand, some three decades ago, the former Soviet Union carried out an agricultural research project, Gamma Kolos, to expose plants to radiation and measure the effects. All the experiments used lead-shielded canisters containing radioactive cesium 137 as a source of radiation.

In recent months, there have been fears that the cesium devices could be easily exploited for terrorism: they are small, portable and possessing a potent core of cesium chloride in the form of powder. Cesium 137, a silvery metal isotope used commonly in medical radiotherapy, emits powerful gamma radiation and is believed to have "dirty bomb" potential.

None of the cesium devices is known to have been stolen, but in some Central Asian states there are no records showing how many of the devices exist or what happened to them. Estimates of the total number of devices vary from 100 to 1,000.

Although Central Asian nuclear facilities used to be either technological or designed to produce isotopes, remnants of the former Soviet nuclear complex in the region are still believed to remain potentially hazardous. Moreover, Pyongyang's nuclear program also started with a small isotope producing facility.

The Soviet Union and North Korea signed a nuclear cooperation treaty in 1956. In 1965, Soviet experts launched Yongbyon 5 thermal megawatt reactor 100 kilometers north of Pyongyang. Its primary function is isotope production.

By 1974, the North Koreans upgraded the reactor up to 8 megawatt capacity and enabled the facility, Yongbyon Reactor I, to produce 80 percent, ie weapons grade, plutonium. In the early 1980s, the North Koreans launched their own Yongbyon Reactor II - a 50 MW MAGNOX-type facility, believed to be capable of producing some 20 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium every year. It has also been speculated that North Korea could have some nuclear material from the former Soviet republics.

According to some Russian estimates, theoretically Pyongyang could have enough plutonium for more than 60 nuclear bombs. However, Russian official news agency RIA commented on January 10 that North Korea was unable to develop operational nuclear bombs without live tests.

Subsequently, on January 12, Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov stated that North Korea's decision to quit the non-proliferation treaty "was not a security threat for Russia". However, Moscow remains keen to play a role in dealing with the crisis. On January 14, Ivanov announced that President Vladimir Putin will send a special envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, to China, North Korea and the United States, in an effort to defuse international concerns over Pyongyang's nuclear threats.

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