Weapons expert worries about lack of safe, secure storage for Russian nukes

Dale Klein, executive director of the Amarillo National Research Center, speaks in Rockefeller Hall's Schwartz Auditorium Nov. 10. Robert Barker/University Photography

By David Brand

A chilling insight into Russia's accounting system for its nuclear devices and weapons-grade nuclear material was given last week by nuclear weapons expert Dale Klein, executive director of the Amarillo National Research Center. Speaking on campus Nov. 10, he said: "They are still not under adequate safeguards from our perspective. There is room for improvement on a major scale."

Although most nuclear weapons once stationed around the former Soviet empire, particularly the Ukraine, are now back in Russia, accounting for those weapons continues to be a problem, he said. The United States, he noted, has the ability to account for every one of its nuclear devices in a very short period of time. "Russia still cannot account for all of theirs," he said. "We need to work with the Russians to get the material into safe, secure storage because it is in all of our interests to do so."

Klein, the Bob R. Dorsey Professor of Engineering at the University of Texas and a member of several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) committees, was speaking at a nuclear science and engineering seminar in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall, organized by Kenan Unlu, director of Cornell's Ward Center for Nuclear Sciences. The Amarillo center is operated by a consortium made up of Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University and the University of Texas.

Klein discussed the dismantling of 20,000 U.S. nuclear weapons and the withdrawal of 30,000 Russian nuclear warheads under the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START). But, he said, even while this dismantling program is openly under way, Washington is working behind the scenes to reduce the amount of weapons-grade material in the former Soviet Union. It has, for example, bought highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan to be blended down in the United States. But at the same time, 30 metric tons of the material -- that can be separated and made into weapons-grade plutonium -- were inadvertently left behind in a fast reactor. "This facility happened to be close to Iran and there is apprehension about this material moving from one region to another," he said.

In another U.S. attempt to reduce the amount of weapons-grade material, Washington is purchasing 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from Russia. If a country, a rogue state or a terrorist group were to obtain this material they could make a nuclear weapon fairly easily, whereas with plutonium it would be extremely difficult, said Klein. "We're buying this material both to give Russia cash flow and to remove material from weapons use and to convert it to a form where it will not be weapons usable anymore."

Klein answered several questions about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. Senate declined to ratify last month. At the time, one reason given by some senators for the refusal to ratify the treaty was the possible future need for the United States to test weapons systems, rather than rely, as at present, on computer modeling. Klein confirmed that reliance on "a non-testing regime" is considerably more expensive than underground testing. Mathematical simulations, he said, are both time consuming and costly.

Even without the test ban treaty, the United States and Russia are obligated under START not to fundamentally change nuclear weapons systems with, for example, a new design. This, said Klein, could present the DOE with the potential difficulty of how to rapidly reconfigure a defective weapons system. "If we have, for example, 10,000 active weapons in a stockpile system and find a fundamental flaw across the board, we are in trouble because the nuclear deterrent is gone." How long would it take to rapidly reconfigure an active stockpile without the facilities or capabilities, he asked. "These are issues we have never had to face before because we were always able to come up with new designs periodically. The issues are different now than they were a few years ago."