#6
Toronto Star
March 31, 202
Danger seen in sale of nuclear savvy
Moscow is pushing to capitalize on nuclear expertise — with few safeguards
By Olivia Ward
EUROPEAN BUREAU
MOSCOW

AT RUSSIA'S oldest nuclear power station, a rundown establishment near St. Petersburg, some despondent employees have taken to vodka to get them through their shifts.

Others have joined the country's growing legion of hard drug users. Two have died of heroin overdoses.

Meanwhile, in the once-elite, closed "nuclear cities" that dot the Siberian landscape, more than 100,000 skilled nuclear scientists and weapons technicians are figuring out ways to survive on pay that is lower than the cost of living.

Western officials have long known about the potential dangers that abound in the former Soviet Union's nuclear complex.

Now, there is added cause for alarm: the threat of deadly nuclear secrets, technology and materials finding their way to rogue states and terror groups eager to join a jihad against the West.

"The danger certainly exists," warns Maxim Shingarkin, a Greenpeace Russia anti-nuclear campaigner. "The nuclear industry wants to make money, so it is becoming commercialized. The scientists and technicians are only part of the problem."

Since Sept. 11, people around the world have looked on in horror as one science-fiction threat after another surfaced as a real possibility.

U.S. President George W. Bush has warned that three nations in an "axis of evil" — North Korea, Iraq and Iran — are trying to acquire new weapons of mass destruction to use against the West.

At the same time, there are persistent reports of plans by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. And bin Laden has publicly stated it is a "religious duty" to do so.

All those interested in developing such deadly weapons know the benefits of hiring experts who could save them years of trial and error. And they are also aware that the former Soviet Union is awash with personnel and materials vital for their devastating schemes.

The nuclear ministry, Minatom, denies that it has had any dealings with North Korea. But Russia has in the past worked with Iraq on nuclear-power projects and its co-operation with Iran to develop a nuclear reactor program goes back to 1992.

Russian scientists and nuclear personnel are a common sight in Tehran and other Iranian cities, sparking anxiety in Washington.

Moscow is also training Iranian scientists at Russian nuclear plants and educating young Iranian physicists and mathematicians at a prestigious Russian scientific institute.

"This is very alarming," says Alexei Yablokov, a former presidential adviser and head of the Environmental Policy Institute.

"The plans that Iran has for developing atomic energy are, of course, aimed at the goal of creating a nuclear bomb."

Yablokov is one of the few high-profile Russians to speak out against the danger of selling nuclear secrets and materials to unstable, if not belligerent, states.

Most politicians are silent on the issue or publicly support a policy that seeks to capitalize on nuclear expertise — a policy that the Russian nuclear ministry says is necessary to keep the country's sagging nuclear complex afloat.

Officials insist their contracts are strictly for peaceful nuclear development, to aid countries that need help in supplying their people with heat and electricity.

They also point out such trade partnerships are geopolitically advantageous to Russia and symbolize independence from the West.

Minatom and its business arm, Rosenergo, show no signs of slacking in their pursuit of commercial contracts. Some would argue they have little choice.

In 1998, when a new civilian director, Yevgeny Adamov, took over Minatom, the ministry faced a deep financial crisis. Its government subsidies were declining as the Russian markets crashed and only 20 per cent of the operating expenses for designing, building, overseeing and dismantling Russia's domestic power plants and nuclear weapons were being met.

Strikes, layoffs and plummeting morale resulted, along with an escalating number of safety violations at nuclear plants. Some of the power facilities were threatened with bankruptcy.

Under such dire conditions, Adamov made strenuous efforts to cut costs and find new sources of money. Not surprisingly, he looked outside Russia for revenue. As a result of these changes and an upturn in the Russian economy, the ministry has recently been able to raise salaries and begin the mammoth task of updating antiquated equipment in nuclear plants.

But some observers do not share the new confidence in Russia's nuclear industry.

"The ministry is the controller of all the nuclear resources — and that includes people," says Shingarkin. "Minatom is exporting people. They can make a profit that way. And later, when the power stations are built in countries like Iran, they have long-term agreements to service them."

Although there is no evidence that the ministry is sending its scientists to build nuclear weapons in rogue states, control over skilled personnel in post-Communist Russia is no longer iron-clad.

The possibilities for freelance peddling of nuclear expertise are considerable in the 21st century, especially when the experts have little to look forward to at home.

"The contracts in foreign countries are very advantageous for our specialists," says Ivan Gradobitov of the Union of Atomic Energy Workers. "They get paid by those countries and make better wages.

"Of course, there's always danger (of selling secrets). But we hope it's going to be possible to control it."

Iran, Iraq and China are the main countries that hire Russian experts, Gradobitov says. And among the travelling scientists and technicians are employees of the cash-strapped St. Petersburg nuclear plant.

"About 10 experts went to foreign countries from the plant," says Oleg Bodrov of the Green World environmental group in nearby Sosovny Bor. "I know that they participated in work on a power station in Iraq, for instance. They were outstanding specialists and their work was very successful."

Russia steadfastly denies it is taking part in any military nuclear programs in the countries where its experts are working.

But the United States, which is embarking on a massively expensive missile defence program to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles, has played up the possibility that hostile countries might be on the road to developing the catastrophic weapons.

However, Russian scientists familiar with nuclear weapons programs say none of the "axis of evil" states has the kind of delivery systems needed to attack the United States.

In the case of Iran, the program was moving slowly and haphazardly, said one missile scientist who spent five years observing Tehran's progress toward developing new weapons systems.

"It was a huge mess," Vadim Vorobei recently told the New York Times, explaining that Iran's missiles could travel little more than 1,000 kilometres and were incapable of landing anywhere near the United States, nearly 10,000 kilometres away.

North Korea, whose missile program is more advanced, has recently cut back. And Iraq is under heavy scrutiny from the international community and faces imminent attack from the United States.

More immediately worrying than large-scale national programs to develop nuclear missiles are reports Al Qaeda has been working toward obtaining small, portable nuclear weapons or radioactive materials for a "dirty bomb" that could be set off with conventional explosives but contaminate a large territory.

Over the past five years, articles in the Arabic press have claimed that bin Laden hired Russian and Iraqi scientists to develop a reactor that could produce nuclear materials for a "suitcase bomb."

Notes and blueprints seized from Taliban strongholds during the war in Afghanistan contained diagrams and instructions on creating nuclear weapons and radioactive conventional bombs.

A small nuclear bomb weighing about 60 kilograms is capable of destroying several city blocks and contaminating the area where it was detonated for decades.

There have also been allegations that money gained from large-scale Afghan drug sales was used by Al Qaeda to finance a nuclear program.

According to the news magazine Al-Watan Al-Arabi, bin Laden created an underground laboratory to convert stolen, highly radioactive nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union into miniature nuclear weapons that could be used for terror attacks.

The process could take many years to complete, however, and scientists say creating a portable nuclear bomb is more complex and technically challenging than making a simple "dirty" weapon that would accomplish the same effect for a terrorist.

Either way, the very mention of nuclear terrorism strikes fear into the hearts of politicians and ordinary people.

The United States feels especially vulnerable. Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington was well aware of the dangers posed by nuclear terrorism.

"The most urgent, unmet national security threat to the U.S. today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nations and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home," concluded a U.S. government task force in 2001.

It cited hair-raising examples of attempted nuclear smuggling, including a plan by four Russian sailors from a nuclear submarine in the Far East to make off with radioactive material stolen from the vessel's safe.

As well, an employee of a Russian nuclear research centre was caught trying to sell secret nuclear weapons designs to Iraqi- and Afghan-based agents for the equivalent of $4.5 million.

Such discoveries led American opponents of the lavishly expensive Strategic Defence Initiative to suggest that, instead of worrying about a spaced-based missile defence system, Washington's money would be better spent helping Russia safeguard its nuclear weapons, material and personnel, including finding decently paying jobs for impoverished nuclear experts.

Several nuclear aid programs have been launched since the end of the Soviet Union, but American politicians have not supported them with much enthusiasm and the Bush administration appears to be on the verge of cancelling some of them.

The task force called for as much as $30 billion (U.S.) to be set aside to boost aid, but at present, even a fraction of the sum seems unlikely to be allocated.

The timing of the cuts seems especially bad, because although Russia's nuclear safety may have improved somewhat with the strengthened economy, the increasing loss of control over nuclear materials and personnel through creeping commercialization is creating more hazards than ever.

Apart from securing its nuclear plants, Russia also has a problem safeguarding its huge stockpile of poorly monitored radioactive waste.

In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, on the Black Sea, a search is under way for at least two small nuclear generators believed to be hidden in a forest after being apparently abandoned when a Soviet military base was shut down.

In the far-eastern Russian region of Chukotka, investigators found a more horrifying scenario — the remains of 85 generators left along the Arctic coast in the 1960s and '70s lying exposed on the shore of the Bering Sea.

Some of the highly radioactive devices had been stripped down for scrap metal. A local politician called them "easy targets for a terrorist attack."

The combination of loose nuclear materials and hungry nuclear scientists is a perilous one for Russia and for the West. And in spite of heightened fear of terrorism, it has not got through to the leaders of either side.

"Even peaceful nuclear plants and materials can be dangerous, and there is a real failure to understand that," Yablokov says.

"The most effective way to stop nuclear proliferation is to pay attention to the public and environmentalists. They are the first people who notice the danger and they're not afraid to speak out. But the authorities are not listening."