Proliferation Concerns; Assessing U.S. efforts to Help Contain Nuclear and Other Dangerous Materials and Technologies in the Former Soviet Union

xv, [1] 142 pages. Footnotes. Tables. Figure. Institutional stamp and ink notation on title page. Cover has slight wear and soiling. The successor states of the former Soviet Union have enormous stocks of weapons-usable nuclear material and other militarily significant commodities and technologies. Preventing the flow of such items to countries of proliferation concern and to terrorist groups is a major objective of U.S. national security policy. This book reviews the effectiveness of two U.S. programs directed to this objective. These programs have supported the efforts of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan in upgrading the physical protection, control, and accountability of highly enriched uranium and plutonium and strengthening systems to control the export of many types of militarily sensitive items. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, concern has grown over the potential dangers posed by its large stocks of nuclear materials. The cooperative programs were initiated in the wake of reported attempts to divert nuclear materials from Russian facilities. Plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the building blocks of nuclear weapons, are located in many types of facilities and institutions in Russia and several other states of the former Soviet Union. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that tons of the material are contained in internationally acceptable security systems and that tens of tons are in partially acceptable systems; but adequate systems for hundreds of tons still must be installed. A suitcase full of plutonium or highly enriched uranium taken from one of these poorly protected sites could provide a terrorist group or rogue nation with enough material to make a nuclear bomb. Supporting the overall thrust to make this material more secure, the report makes several specific recommendations.…