Soviet nuclear legacy seen as global threat

Financial Times ^ | June 29 2002 | Nicholas George

[knighthawk]

Walk past the overflowing rubbish bins and through the crumbling entrance façade of Atomflot, Russia's harbour for nuclear-powered civil vessels in the arctic city of Murmansk, and you are greeted by a set of gleaming white booths.

They sit incongruously in the rundown foyer, equipped with electronic sluice gates, cameras and a range of metal detectors and sensors. Completed in April, they are the most visible result of an internationally funded effort to improve protection at a site that is part of the security headache caused by the Soviet Union's nuclear legacy.

At this week's G8 summit, leaders agreed to spend $20bn (€20.6bn, £13bn) over the next decade in further securing nuclear materials in Russia, citing the attacks of September 11 as evidence of the need for what is called the G8 global partnership against the spread of weapons and material of mass destruction.

The Murmansk area, with its plethora of military bases and nuclear waste dumps, will be one of the prime targets of the initiative.

In the case of Atomflot, western experts are particularly alarmed that it handles highly enriched uranium, which can be used for weapons, unlike most civilian nuclear facilities. The uranium is used as fuel to power Russia's fleet of nuclear ice breakers.

"Atomflot really was a weak spot in the Murmansk area as you did not even have the military protection system," says Ole Reistad at the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority.

To counter this, Sweden, the US, UK and Norway have funded several physical-protection projects on the site. Since September 11, amid increased fears that terrorists may attempt to gain nuclear materials, security procedures at Atomflot have been tightened further.

Behind the booths, a new perimeter fence and a reinforced vehicle entrance, the transport ship Lotta is unloading used nuclear fuel that it has brought to the civilian port from decommissioned nuclear navy submarines that are waiting to be broken up in military ports along the Kola peninsular.

Segej Perevoztjikov, deputy technical director of the Atomic fleet with the Murmansk Shipping Company, says fuel from 29 submarine reactors has been dealt with since 1996 but there are "over a hundred more".

At the quayside, the used fuel is transferred into unmarked rail trucks for the journey to a recycling plant. The trucks look like normal ore wagons, "so that terrorists cannot identify or follow them", Mr Pervoztjikov says.

Lars van Dassen, the director of the Swedish Nuclear non-proliferation assistance programme, has been involved in protection work at Atomflot and says the perception of threat has changed dramatically since the attacks in New York. "Previously people had thought of spent fuel as self-protected, as it emits deadly levels of radiation. Suicide attacks have changed that thinking," he says.

"There is also a realisation that even materials with lower levels of radiation may be targeted for use in so-called 'dirty bombs'."

Russia is the only country to maintain a fleet of nuclear-powered civilian vessels, with eight ice breakers to keep open the ports and rivers along the lengthy arctic coastline.

Standing on the bridge of the ice breaker Tajmyr, Captain Aleksander Olsjevskij says the advantage of such ships is their ability to stay at sea for extended periods. "We could stay out for three and a half to four years depending on the workload without refuelling."

But away from the relative safety of Murmansk in the small ports and rivers of the Siberian coast they are vulnerable to attack.

"The problem is that the ice breakers are mobile nuclear power plants and they are at risk of being hijacked and used for blackmail," says Morten Bremer Maerli, a nuclear-terrorism expert at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and leader of a Swedish-Norwegian project that fitted protection on one ice breaker for about $1m.

This meant new doors and alarm and identification systems to make sure only authorised crew can enter restricted areas. "We also needed to ensure that there were procedures for shutting down the reactor if the boat came under attack," Mr Maerli says.

Two other ships have been secured and there are plans for further work.

However, as with many international projects aimed at dealing with nuclear security and waste in Russia, the plans have been held up by the failure to sign an agreement to provide insurance cover for liability in the case of accidents. Officials hope the G8 initiative will help boost security and and enable this hurdle to be cleared.

[knighthawk]

Ping