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Russia needs tighter nuclear checks, watchdog says
February 20, 2003
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia must urgently reform the way it accounts for and
safeguards its nuclear stockpile if it is to keep track of thousands of tons of
radioactive material, the country's nuclear watchdog said Thursday.
"The current accounting system needs serious improvement," Yuri
Vishnevsky, the director of Gosatomnadzor, told reporters.
"In many companies the system is the same as how it was in our
grandparents' time, when a woman sits with a book and writes down how much she
gave to whom."
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, generous government funding for
nuclear facilities dried up and security at even the most secret plants became
porous.
Since 1991, there have been several cases of stolen nuclear material. One of
the most serious incidents was in 1994, when three men were arrested at Munich
airport in Germany, carrying 13 ounces of Russian weapons-grade plutonium.
"In 2002, there were two or three cases when people tried to steal
radioactive material from factories. It was found, although not all the people
involved were detained," he said.
Vishnevsky said the scale of Russia's nuclear industry made it extremely hard
for officials to keep track of precise quantities -- one reason there are fears
that material for weapons could make its way to terrorist groups.
He said Russia's only civilian reprocessing plant, shut down last month over
fears radioactive water was tainting local water supplies, could regain its
operating licence.
"We have a few more questions, and if they answer them we will give a
licence by the end of March," he said.
The reprocessing plant at the Mayak facility in the Urals mountains currently
dumps medium and low radioactive waste into specially built reservoirs, but
ecologists have warned they could overflow in the spring thaw and taint local
farmland.
Mayak had the worst nuclear disaster in Russia in 1957 when hundreds of
thousands of people were exposed to radiation. Greenpeace says it is one of the
most polluted places on earth.
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