Illicit Trade in Nuclear Materials, Technology, and Know-How

Nine hours by air and seven time zones from Moscow lies Vladivostok, the southernmost port city of Russia's Far East and home to its Pacific fleet.

The naval ports around the city have certain features in common with major military installations in the West: nuclear powered surface ships and submarines, enriched uranium fuel stockpiles, and nuclear weapons. But to researchers at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), an international policy research center at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, the Vladivostok region is the embodiment of a nuclear proliferation nightmare. Its ports are part of a politically unstable country, its nuclear material and fuel are inadequately safeguarded as a result of the degenerating economic situation in Russia, and it is a stone's throw from nations that already possess nuclear weapons or have nuclear ambitions.

At several naval bases around Vladivostok, an estimated twenty-four highly radioactive reactor cores cut out of dismantled nuclear powered submarines are either floating in bays or sitting in unsafe ground storage. The only waste depot in the former Soviet Union that once accepted such waste, the Mayak facility in Siberia, has closed its doors. Until recently, spent radioactive fuel from nuclear subs was overflowing into the water from two storage tankers docked southeast of Vladivostok (U.S. and Japanese foreign aid are now helping to alleviate the problem). Many of Russia's older nuclear submarines scheduled to be dismantled under START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) are located near Vladivostok. But the dismantling effort there is proceeding only haltingly. Similar if not worse problems are being faced at Russia's northern Severodvinsk naval facility, which also is dismantling nuclear submarines.

According to the CNS staff, base personnel and guards at the Vladivostok bases frequently go several months between paychecks, putting the job of protecting nuclear fuel second to daily survival. The harbors around the city host dozens of operational subs carrying nuclear weapons and fresh, highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel. Refueling facilities where the HEU is stored sit within the region.

The area reveals other unsettling developments. With deep budgetary cuts from Moscow, Vladivostok these days often goes without electricity. Geographically isolated from the Russian capital, and of less strategic importance to the government than it used to be, the city has had to expand its trade in domestic goods and services with Russia's traditional rival, China, to gain new revenue. That in turn has drawn to Vladivostok thousands of Chinese traders and entrepreneurs from across the border, who now compete with Russians for housing and services, elevating regional tensions.

"With a lot of underfunded, poorly guarded nuclear facilities, the Pacific fleet is especially vulnerable to nuclear espionage," claims James Clay Moltz, research professor and assistant director of the CNS, who paid a visit to Vladivostok in early 1996. "You get the sense that if guards at the naval base were offered several thousand dollars to look the other way, they would be hard pressed not to do so."

"YOU GET THE SENSE THAT IF GUARDS AT THE NAVAL BASE WERE OFFERED SEVERAL THOUSAND DOLLARS TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY, THEY WOULD BE HARD PRESSED NOT TO DO SO."

Meanwhile, Vladivostok's closest geographic neighbor and one of the world's most insular nations, North Korea, has just built a multimillion-dollar consulate in the town, even though Russian-North Korean trade is a relatively paltry $60 million per year. Speculation among local officials about nuclear espionage is rife, particularly since seventeen North Korean "farm workers" were caught earlier this year lurking around the naval facilities.

The Center for Nonproliferation Studies, founded in 1989 by William C. Potter, a professor of international policy studies and longtime analyst of Russia, has grown into one of the United States' premier research and training centers focusing on nuclear proliferation issues. The premise of the center's myriad programs is that nuclear nations have a global responsibility to keep fissile material and technology under lock and key. With Corporation and other foundation grants, it has been trying to alert the international community and the general public to the dangers of real and potential illicit traffic in nuclear materials, technology, and know-how, mainly from the former Soviet Union.

One avenue the CNS is pursuing is to train a new generation of nonproliferation experts from the successor states of the USSR. The hope is they will bring their knowledge to bear in setting sound denuclearization policies for their home countries — ensuring the physical security of nuclear material and technology and pushing for a firm worldwide commitment to nonproliferation.

Growing Risks

Although the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war have greatly reduced the threat of strategic nuclear conflict, this development should not obscure the existence of other very real, and in some instances new, threats involving the spread and use of weapons of mass destruction, Potter believes. The risks include not only the theft, diversion, and illicit export of sensitive nuclear material, equipment, technology, and information (such as warheads from inadequately safeguarded storage sites) but imprudent statesanctioned trade in nuclear goods and also in critical components of chemical weapons and missile delivery systems (such as gyroscopes that target missiles for both chemical and nuclear warheads). Other risks include acts of nuclear, chemical, and biological terrorism.

Alarming enough in Russia, the dangers may be even more pronounced in some of the fourteen non-Russian states that inherited nuclear power plants, nuclear research reactors, nuclear powered naval vessels, and storage facilities for nuclear fuel and waste.¹ During the cold war, Moscow often co-located its military and civilian nuclear installations, which included fuel fabrication and reprocessing facilities as well as research centers. Many of the technicians operating those installations were ethnic Russians who returned to their homeland after the breakup of the Soviet empire, robbing the successor states of experienced workers.

Also, the nature of the threat against those nuclear installations has changed. The Soviet dissolution presented the newly independent nations with international borders that were suddenly open to smugglers and other criminal elements. Not only were the civilian governments left with the loss of trained technicians, but they now had to deal with heightened security needs. In the three nations that still held strategic nuclear weapons after the Soviet collapse — Belarus, Kazakstan, and Ukraine — procedures for securing and accounting for fissile material were and still are rudimentary. (All have now relinquished the nuclear weapons in their territories for dismantling and storage in Russia.)

Compounding the lack of operational experience and technology for safely removing spent uranium is the dearth of both governmental and nongovernmental expertise on nuclear proliferation in the successor states, including Russia itself "Under the Soviet system," says Potter, "very few individuals received any training in international security affairs, let alone nonproliferation policy.

As a result, they are ill-equipped to remedy the current weakness in their nonproliferation and export control policies."

Effective border controls to prevent transfer or leakage of nuclear material and technology between post-Soviet states and through to unfriendly countries have yet to be fully implemented. Within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the loose confederation of twelve states that succeeded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Central Asian nations share borders with Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China and are just hours by auto from Iraq and India. India and Pakistan are undeclared nuclear states. Iraq's secret nuclear program has been disrupted for the present, but Iran is considered by the West to have nuclear aspirations. The proximity of these former Soviet republics in particular Kyrgystan and Tajikistan Ä to the centuries-old smuggling and drug trafficking routes makes them prime conduits through which nuclear material and technology could be spirited abroad.

No Longer a Theoretical Possibility

Already, smuggling and leakage of fissile material have passed from the theoretical what-if stage to reality. Since the Soviet Union's collapse, Potter and his research associates at the center have identified at least four instances in which highly enriched uranium or plutonium was illicitly exported from the former Soviet Union and another three cases in which HEU or plutonium was diverted from Russian nuclear facilities, fortunately seized prior to export. (See sidebar, on the center's information databases.)

A serious instance of nuclear diversion occurred in late 1993 when two former employees and a current worker at the Sevmorput shipyard near the northern port of Murmansk stole 4.5 kilograms of partially enriched uranium from the storage facility. Although Sevmorput is one of the Russian navy's chief storage depots for nuclear fuel, Potter quotes the chief Russian investigator of the diversion, Mikhail Lulik, as declaring, "Potatoes were guarded better than naval fuel."

Reassuringly, there have not been any confirmed cases of smuggling of nuclear material in or from the CIS in the past two years, although "some may have occurred but gone unnoticed because of the lack of inventory control," Potter ventures. The danger over time is that greater quantities of material will be diverted, possibly through the Caucasus and Central Asia. "The dam has not yet broken, but clearly the potential for additional diversions remains very significant because of the region's precarious social and economic situation and inadequate border controls." From their investigations, Tariq Rauf on the center's research staff and his Canadian colleague Joanne Chametski estimate there will be enough surplus plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads in Russia to make nearly 40,000 primitive nuclear bombs by the year 2003.

THE SOVIET DISSOLUTION PRESENTED THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT NATIONS WITH INTERNATIONAL BORDERS THAT WERE SUDDENLY OPEN TO SMUGGLERS AND OTHER CRIMINAL ELEMENTS.

Their data indicate it would take only about fifteen kilograms of HEU, seven of reactor-grade plutonium, or five of weapons-grade plutonium to make such a bomb. Expanding stockpiles of civilian, reactor-grade plutonium in Western Europe and Japan would be sufficient for another 47,000 bombs.²

Among governments, the concern is not so much that terrorists will obtain a nuclear weapon. "What is more likely," says Rauf, who directs the center's International Organizations & Nonproliferation Project, "is that they will steal a small amount of nuclear waste or fissile material and explode it, spreading radioactivity across wide regions, or sabotage a nuclear power plant, causing similar widespread contamination."

Most diversions of weapons-grade nuclear material from the former Soviet Union thus far have involved current and former employees who knew the location of the material and what safeguards were in place but were caught before customers could be found. U.S. officials, however, are worried that political instability in the CIS could well accelerate such smuggling attempts, particularly if terrorists or criminals try to exploit the vulnerabilities of different states. For organized crime, the payoff is cash - as much as $250,000 per kilogram of HEU or plutonium, a sum that nuclear aspirants such as Libya have reportedly offered to pay.

To date, there is no proof that Libya, Iran, or Iraq has acquired HEU or plutonium from any part of the former Soviet Union, although their attempts to acquire missile technology are well known. The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), for example, has uncovered documents indicating that Iraq received gyroscopes from dismantled Russian missiles. Observers are also on the lookout for missile contacts between Ukraine and Iraq as well as between Kazakstan and Iran.

"It would be a mistake to neglect the potential proliferation risk posed by the enormous quantities of virtually unguarded spent nuclear fuel," warns Potter. "It cannot be emphasized enough that this spent fuel containing so-called `reactor-grade plutonium' can be used to fabricate nuclear weapons.

"Moreover, spent fuel from certain kinds of reactors may be especially attractive to would-be proliferants with access to reprocessing technology, because of the unusually large proportion of HEU or plutonium present. Spent naval fuel from nuclear powered surface ships and submarines, for example, typically will have a large HEU content, while that in fast breeder reactors may contain significant quantities of low irradiated plutonium."

The presence of inadequately protected nuclear fuel depots, reactors, and naval installations across the CIS seems to be drawing certain nations to within an arm's length of nuclear sites in Russian cities. The new North Korean consulate in Vladivostok is one example. Another is Iran's apparently rising interest in the formerly closed Caspian Sea port city of Aktau, Kazakstan, home to one of only two fast breeder power reactors in the former Soviet Union.

Fast breeder reactors produce weapons grade plutonium during their energy producing process and, as such, have the potential to supply the key ingredient in bomb manufacturing. The Aktau fast breeder has been in operation for more than twenty-five years, storing much of its plutonium waste on site. Members of the CNS staff report that Iranian naval ships routinely call on Aktau, and fran has attempted to establish a consulate there since 1993.

Building a Community of Nonproliferation Experts

Given the obvious threat that improperly safeguarded material and technology pose to the former Soviet Union and the rest of the world, a priority for the CNS has been to provide the current generation of opinion leaders in the former Soviet Union - primarily parliamentarians, academics, scientists, environmentalists, and journalists - with an intense grounding in nonproliferation issues, so they can push for measures in their home countries to prevent a nuclear nightmare from becoming a reality.

Prior to the failed August 1991 coup against President Gorbachev, nuclear nonproliferation was not a salient issue in the Soviet Union. As Potter notes, the Soviet Union adopted a "generally prudent approach" toward nuclear exports and was cautious about exporting nuclear technology to other states. "At the time, nonproliferation generated little attention in the mass media, in scholarly journals, among nongovernmental activist organizations, and among Supreme Soviet legislators. No Soviet journalists outside of the central governmental apparatus were professionally active in the field. It was only near the end of the Communist regime that the economic crisis began to undercut nuclear nonproliferation policy."

But the disintegration of central authority after the failed coup and the inheritance of diverse nuclear assets by a number of Soviet successor states found the region (outside of Russia) without a community of policy experts and specialists informed about nuclear export legislation, among other issues, or firmly committed to an international nonproliferation regime.

To the CNS's team of high-level faculty members and researchers, developing a "culture of nonproliferation" within the Soviet successor states is of paramount importance. Achieving it, they feel, will depend less on money or material than on an educational process that changes mindsets and behavior.

Explains Pottei; "We're helping people in countries like Kazakstan appreciate how nonproliferation serves their interests and why it's important to upgrade the physical protection and accounting of nuclear materials. We're not evangelists here. We believe these nations have to make their own decisions, but they have to be informed decisions. Our hope is that as they gain access to more information the logic of the situation will prevail."

Under its CIS Nonproliferation Project, the center brings approximately ten fellows from the former Soviet Union to Monterey each year for two to four months of research and course work. More than thirty government officials, policy analysts, professors, journalists, and scientists from a variety of Soviet successor states have spent time at Monterey. They include Temirbek Baicherikov, former head of the political analysis department of the Office of the President of Kyrgyzstan; Vladimir Shkolnik, Kazakstan's minister of science; Nikolai Steinberg, former chairman of the Ukrainian State Committee for Nuclear and Radiation Safety; Vladimir Orlov, a journalist with Moscow News; Anatoly Scherba, head of the Ukrainian Arms Control and Disarmament Directorate in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Dastan Eleukenov, head of the division of international security and arms control in the Kazakstan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the first few years of the program, candidates for the fellowship were identified during visits by Potter and his colleagues to the former Soviet Union. "Now that we are well known and have an established base of alumni there, we've since moved to a more formal application process," says CNS project manager Emily Ewell.

"WE'RE HELPING PEOPLE IN COUNTRIES LIKE KAZAKSTAN APPRECIATE HOW NONPROLIFERATION SERVES THEIR INTERESTS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO UPGRADE THE PHYSICAL PROTECTION AND ACCOUNTING OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS."

Many visiting fellows have held prominent positions at home and, upon the resumption of their responsibilities, have started working to implement policies and actions that further the cause of nuclear nonproliferation. For example, following their studies at Monterey, two Kyrgyz government officials helped orchestrate Kyrgyzstan's accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). After four months at Monterey, a Ukrainian fellow joined the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and facilitated that country's adoption of the Missile Technology Control Regime guidelines.

After training at the CNS, Vladimir Orlov of Moscow News opened the Center for Political Studies, which publishes the news journal Yaderny Kontrol (Nuclear Control) in Russian. A visiting fellow from Belarus established the International Institute for Policy Studies in Minsk, which specializes in domestic and international policy studies as well as nonproliferation and arms control, and another fellow established Moscow's Committee for Critical Technologies and Nonproliferation.

Education for visiting fellows ranges across the field of nonproliferation. During a typical six-week period, visiting fellows receive a variety of in-depth lectures on such topics as Proliferation as a Component of the Current Global National Security Environment; the Nunn Lugar (Cooperative Threat Reduction) Program as an Exercise in Nonproliferation; Regional Approaches to Nonproliferation; the North Korean Nuclear Problem: the NPT 1995 Conference & Decisions; U.S. Government Policy and U.S. Government Bureaucracy Regarding Proliferation; Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones; U.S. Perspectives on Proliferation Programs in the Countries of the Former Soviet Union; and a variety of subjects relating to conventional, biological, and chemical weapons.

During their course of study, fellows are also required to complete a research project relevant to the center's work. This past spring Alexander Tsvetkov, a visiting fellow from Uzbekistan's Institute of Strategic and Regional Studies, was preparing a report for his president on creating a nuclear-free zone in his country. He was also looking for ways to prevent nuclear material and technology from passing through Uzbekistan to nearby neighbors, Afghanistan and Iran.

"There are a lot of trade routes for smuggling of drugs," Tsvetkov affirms. "Our republic keeps our border strong, but we need technical assistance to improve [border controls] because of concern over nuclear materials. Through the Monterey Institute we have contact with the [Lawrence] Livermore Laboratory, and they have promised to come to Uzbekistan to discuss the problem with our scientists and government."

Fellows are encouraged to develop links with other independent organizations and foundations in the West and are taught the fundamentals of fund-raising in the hope that their projects will eventually become self-sufficient. Western groups supporting the work of former visiting fellows include the Ploughshares Fund in San Francisco, the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.

"ILL-INFORMED PARLIAMENTARIANS HAVE PROVED TO BEAN OBSTACLE TO THE ENACTMENTOFMORE EFFECTIVE NONPROLIFERATION MEASURES IN MANY OF THE SOVIET SUCCESSOR STATES."

A CNS program linked to the visiting fellows targets staff members from the Russian Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament. "Ill-informed parliamentarians have proved to be an obstacle to the enactment of more effective nonproliferation measures in many of the Soviet successor states," says Richard Combs, Jr., former chief foreign policy advisor to Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and deputy chief of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow from 1985 to 1987, who is spearheading the fellowship program. "If Russia is going to have a meaningful legislative branch and to bring pluralism into its system, it must have a competent parliament.

"If the Duma evolves into anything similar to America's Senate or House of Representatives, then staff members will be responsible for three-quarters or more of all legwork and analysis. Developing a culture of nonproliferation among Duma staffers may pay long-term dividends if they help to craft legislation that improves nuclear safeguards."

CNS's Expert Staff

Helping to accomplish the CNS'S aims in the former Soviet Union and in other parts of the world are a diverse and dedicated group of about thirty fulltime nonproliferation experts recruited by Potter to the center. They include Combs, who also served as a staff member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee; David Fischer, a thirty-year veteran of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its former assistant director general for external relations focusing on safeguards and nonproliferation policies; and Timothy McCarthy, who also serves as an UNSCOM inspector policing Iraq's weapons development programs.

All CNS key personnel seem to share a singular trait: the ability to work with intensity and dedication, yet quietly, in building cadres of nonproliferation experts. It is a style that has opened doors to them in the former Soviet Union, China, and the Middle East and in other areas of proliferation concern. In operating below the political spectrum, they can engage in discussions of nonproliferation with expert counterparts in countries where, at this time, government-togovernment talks are generally ruled out.

The center's nonproliferation efforts in the former Soviet Union are being expanded to mainland China as well. China at this time is refusing to preclude the use of force to settle its territorial claims. It has shown its willingness to export missile technology. It tested a nuclear weapon as recently as September 1996, although it has agreed to stop testing henceforth and has endorsed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

As in the center's work with visiting fellows from the former Soviet Union, the goal of the East Asian Nonproliferation Project is to begin a long-term process of engagement with counterparts and to educate and train a variety of Chinese scholars, journalists, and parliamentarians in nonproliferation concerns. Thus far, the center has developed ties with Fudan University in Shanghai, which has received approval from Chinese authorities to begin an experimental program on arms control and regional security. Initial joint CNSÄFudan studies are likely to focus on SinoÄRussian nuclear cooperation, Chinese civilian nuclear power developments, and the prospects for a nuclear weapons-free zone in Central Asia. Two Fudan professors have agreed to study at Monterey within the next year.

The Center for Nonproliferation Studies is linked with the Monterey Institute's educational programs, which draw 750 students from more than fifty countries for professional training in international careers. The institute offers master's degrees in business, public administration, policy studies, international trade and commercial diplomacy, environmental policy, foreign languages, and translation and interpretation. Currently about forty-five of the institute's students are engaged in nonproliferation training and research in the CNS.

Many of the institute's and center's former students have moved into influential positions in the U.S. departments of state, defense, and energy, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at the Hague, and the United Nations Center for Disarmament Affairs in the U.S., where they have worked on non proliferation issues.

For Information

William C. Potter, Director,
Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monte rev Institute of International Studies, 425 Van Buren Street, Monterey, CA 93940. (408) 647-4154.

Notes

1. The fourteen non-Russian states are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakstan, Kyrgystan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.
2. Tariq Rauf and Joanne Charnetski, "Swords into Ploughshares: Canada Could Play Key Role in Transforming Nuclear Arms Material into Electricity," Ottowa Citizen, 22 August 1994.

THE CNS COMPUTERIZED DATABASES

To the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies, nuclear proliferation issues cannot be addressed without first uncovering details of the problems and analyzing their significance. For this. the center depends on its extensive databases of nonproliferation information culled from publicly available. "open source." documents and publications. The databases include approximately 21,000 abstracts from more than 160 sources, and many at the CNS believe the material is as comprehensive and thorough as classified sources. An illustration of this is the center's highly respected database on nuclear smuggling incidents.

A WELL-DOCUMENTED DATABASE CAN BE USED FOR ACCURATELY TRACKING TRADE IN NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGIES AND CAN BE INVALUABLE IN PIECING TOGETHER THE EXISTENCE OF POTENTIAL NUCLEAR BOMB PROGRAMS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

A well-documented database can be used for accurately tracking trade in nuclear technologies and can be invaluable in piecing together the existence of potential nuclear bomb programs throughout the world.

"If a countly is importing bearings and certain metals, it could add up to a nuclear weapons program," says Tariq Rauf. director of the center's International Organizations & Nonproliferation Project. "No one gizmo in itself raises an alarm, but pieces can add up."

Adds scholar in residence David Fischer. 'If you had followed the open source information on Iraq, you would have been able to put together a picture of the Iraqis' nuclear aspirations. A systematic literature search can give you a good survey of hat's going on."

That is exactly what inspectors of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) did recently hen they turned to the CNS databases to provide fast and accurate data on Iraq's weapons-procurement activities during an interrogation of iraqi military officials. "The UN doesn't have focused, security-related intelligence," says Timothy McCarthy, a senior analyst who splits his time between the Monterey Institute and t NSCOM, where he serves as one of its inspectors. "UNSCOM can get information, but it takes time. Sometimes, though, we don't have time to go through government channels, In one case, we needed information on cooperativ e activities that Iraq had in the missile area with a particular country before the [Persian Gulf] war. In fifteen minutes we had a dozen papers faxed from the center to us on Iraq's agreements in that area."

Many international organizations access the center's databases for that reason. The databases are av ailable on computer disk and on the World Wide Web. Subscriptions are sold for several thousand dollars to organizations in places such as Japan, South Korea, France, and Italy and are free to nations with Ii mited financial resources. Subscribers in the U.S. include the Department of Defense. the Custonis Service, the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency. and the Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories.

The CNS's nuclear-related databases geared toward the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) include:

The CIS Nuclear Profiles Database, which surveys nuclear assets in each Soviet successor state, including civilian nuclear power capability, fuel cycle facilities, and nuclear weapons as well as export controls. disarmament activities, and key organizations.
The CIS Nuclear Chronologies, which track illegal activities involving the transport of nuclear materials and the exodus of specialists from the commonwealth.
The CIS Nuclear Library Annex, which offers a variety of publications from the commonwealth, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and other organizations.
The CIS Nuclear Import/Export Database. Which tracks international commerce in nuclear technology.
The CIS Environmental Abstracts. which address ecological problems associated with nuclear power and weapons and management strategies. legislation, and enforcement mechanisms to deal with them.