A new way to handle nuclear buildup

The US and Russia have agreed to collaborate in returning weapons-grade uranium to Russia from vulnerable nuclear reactors throughout the former USSR. Analysts say the deal, signed Friday, could be the first step in a new multilateral strategy for handling the global spread of nuclear technology and material, and deterring terrorist threats.

The plan to repatriate the highly enriched uranium (HEU) coincides with growing efforts to tighten the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and better control access to nuclear technology. HEU is attractive to terrorists because it can be fashioned into a crude nuclear device with relative ease.

"We need to rethink the entire role of nuclear technology cooperation," says Charles Curtis, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, which is heavily involved in nonproliferation efforts in the former USSR. "Russia is, on things nuclear, the essential partner.... They have to be part of the solution."

US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham lauded the deal, which covers 20 research reactors in 17 countries, as a joint move to "reduce the threat of terrorism and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction."

Moscow has proposed creating a long-term repository in western Siberia to help ease the global buildup of spent nuclear fuel. But standing in the way of this and some other US-Russia collaborative efforts is an $800 million reactor project in Bushehr, Iran. Washington has insisted that Russia stop building the reactor out of fear that the transfer of Russian know-how would boost what it believes is a clandestine Iranian weapons program.

Some 80 percent of non-Russian nuclear fuel worldwide originated in the US. But while the US Department of Energy has helped Russia develop long-term storage plans for it, the dispute over Iran remains an obstacle. Russian environmentalists have also protested.

Iran, meanwhile, is on the verge of signing a fuel services deal with Russia: Moscow would provide all nuclear material to Iran for the Bushehr reactor, and then return all spent fuel. The chief of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rohani, met top Rus sian officials Sunday in Moscow to hammer out details.

As a way of keeping control of fissile material - and enticing nations to forgo expensive, self-contained nuclear fuel cycles that can also be used to make weapons-grade material - the deal is being seen as a template for the future.

Many experts and officials, including Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), want to take this a step further by creating international centers so that just a few nations would provide centralized fuel and waste services for all. "Many countries around the world think that having international centers could be beneficial, because they don't want to have to worry about the nuclear waste," says Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, who was in charge of nonproliferation policy at the Department of Energy from 1997 to 2000. "And they realize it is more economical for them to buy nuclear services."

For countries like Iran, however, which have already invested heavily in their own enrichment plans - and might also have clandestine weapons ambitions - it might be a tough sell, she says.

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