Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

Chapter 24. Global Partnership493the Russian nuclear weapons arsenal had been reduced to less thanone fifth of the size of the USSR arsenal.2. Physical protection, control, and accounting for nuclear materials.All of the GP participants, including Russia, attach particularimportance to this subject. 8According to expert estimates, between 120 and 150 tons of weapons-gradeplutonium and 1,000 to 1,350 tons of highly-enriched uranium(enriched to 90-percent U-235) have been produced in the SovietUnion/Russia. 9 The United States believes that at the beginningof the 1990s Russia had 603 tons of HEU and weapons-grade plutonium(very attractive for theft), and that 252 buildings at 40 differententerprises were in need of modernization of their nuclear materialssecurity systems. 10 According to official sources, 61 Russian organizationshad access to nuclear materials in 2000. 11 Most of these weapons-gradematerials are located in the “closed cities” of the RosatomState Atomic Energy Corporation, as well as in certain enterprisesand research institutes near Moscow. The amount of nuclear materialat such sites varies from a few kilograms to several dozen tons. 12The closest MPC&A cooperation has developed between Russiaand the United States. 13 By the time the GP was established, the U.S.Department of Energy had installed safeguards systems completely ornearly completely in 115 of the 252 buildings housing the 192 tonsof weapons-grade nuclear materials. Work had been completed at 81buildings containing 86 tons of nuclear materials, while another 31buildings holding 106 tons of nuclear materials had been subjectedto so-called “rapid upgrade.” Work had begun at sites holding an additional130 tons of nuclear material. In 1999, the U.S. Departmentof Energy initiated its Material Conversion and Consolidation<strong>Program</strong> for Russia, under which Russia was to remove the nuclearmaterials from 50 buildings situated at five different companies by2010 and convert 24 tons of HEU into LEU for storage. For variousreasons, however, implementation of this program has stalled. Between1993 and 2001, the United States spent a total of 797.3 million dollarson improvements to the Russian MPC&A <strong>Program</strong>. It allocated 293million dollars to the program in 2002; 235 million dollars in 2003;258.5 million dollars in 2004; and 294.7 million dollars in 2005. Since2006, the amount spent has been gradually declining, yet the U.S. allocationshave increasingly focused more on similar programs in otherstates of the CIS. By 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy will havespent an estimated 2.2 billion dollars on the MPC&A program. This