EUROPE. THE PLUTONIUM RACKET
SUMMARY: The panic in Germany about Russian plutonium smuggling - understandable though it may be - may perversely make safeguarding nuclear materials harder.
(The Economist, August 20th 1994)
"APOCALYPSE now-or later". Thus screamed the usually staid Frankfurter Allgemeine zeitung. Chancellor Helmut Kohl briefly interrupted his Austrian holiday to warn of the danger and to dispatch Bernd Schmidbauer, his intelligence adviser-nicknamed 008-to Moscow. German scientists called it a catastrophe, pointing to the threat of nuclear proliferation and mass poisoning. Officials in both the German and American governments said they had identified the spread of nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union as the greatest threat to their security. Presidents Yeltsin and Clinton are to discuss Russian nuclear smuggling at a summit in late September.
The panic had taken hold after police in Munich arrested a Colombian and two Spaniards carrying 300-350 grammes of plutonium off a flight from Moscow on August 10th - a flight which, embarrassingly, was also carrying Viktor Sidorenko, Russia's deputy atomic-energy minister. The haul supposedly was part of a four-kilogramme deal worth $250m. Weekend panic was fanned by news a few days later of the capture of a German also selling plutonium, this time in Bremen in northern Germany. The amount mentioned was tiny. But this was the fourth seizure since May. Germans are gripped by plutonium angst: everything seems to confirm their fear that Russia has lost control of its nuclear arsenal.
If that were to happen - even in a small way - the consequences would indeed be apocalyptic. Last year David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker, three western academics, estimated that Russia's stocks of weapons-grade plutonium stood at anything from 100 to 150 tonnes in 1990, and its stocks of weapons-grade uranium at 520-920 tonnes. More recent evidence makes them think that the truth is at the upper end of these estimates. Only a fraction of these huge stocks need go missing to cause havoc. To make an atom bomb would take a mere 15 kg of this uranium and five kilos of the plutonium (about the size of a grapefruit). Even in quantities too small for making bombs, plutonium is still deadly.
And yet, though nuclear smuggling of any kind is alarming, things in Russia are not as awful as they have been painted. For one thing, in all but one case the amounts of material seized have been minute "samples". There is little evidence that the promise of more metal of the same quality could have been honoured. Even German officials have privately admitted that huge payments offered to impoverished Russians in sting operations might in fact be helping to create the illicit trade.
Most important, there is still no evidence that nuclear material is coming from Russian military establishments. The fact that some of the plutonium and uranium has been of weapons grade does not mean that security at weapons dumps has begun to break down. But it may mean that security needs improving at non-military sites, a less daunting prospect. In one instance the uranium was probably fuel for a Russian nuclear submarine. In another, it could have been part of a laboratory instrument.
Six grammes of super-grade plutonium were found in a German garage in May among bits of broken glass and brush bristles. This metal, which was far purer than that used in weapons, could have come from outside the military-nuclear complex. Mark Hibbs of Nucleonics Week, a specialist journal, has discovered that although it was probably made in Arzamas-16, one of the Soviet Union's so-called "secret cities" (ie, one closed to the public), the metal was later distributed to non-weapons laboratories, from where it could have been taken. Similarly, analysis at a German laboratory in Karlsruhe showed that the 300-gramme seizure was not quite up to weapons standard. Instead it was probably fuel for an experimental Russian civil reactor.
If, as this suggests, security at Russia's military installations is being maintained, then that is good news. But since plutonium of any origin is dangerous, none of this has carried much weight in Germany. There the government began by saying that the material being smuggled had a military origin, that Russian controls are breaking down and the Russian maria is moving in. Sources in America and Britain believe it is no accident that German politicians are casting the seizures in such a light. The country's left wing has a long anti-nuclear tradition. Its right wing, which supports civil nuclear power, has made crime - and in particular the infiltration of the Russian mafia - an important plank in Chancellor Kohl's platform for the forthcoming federal elections.
Concern about the smuggling is also in keeping with Germany's international ambitions. When the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is renegotiated in 1995, Germany, which has no nuclear weapons, wants those that do to make public full inventories of their nuclear material. It thus suits German policy to show that the weapons states cannot manage their own affairs.
The result has been a furious row. Germany accuses Russia of mismanaging its nuclear materials. Russia claims that none of its "military" material is missing. Already tense, relations between western and Russian nuclear factions have worsened.
That is what makes Germany's strategy risky. It is poisoning relations with Russia when collaboration is needed, now more than ever, to help safeguard nuclear material. Sooner or later some disillusioned and impoverished Russian nuclear employee is bound to try to steal kilogrammes of plutonium. There is still no reliable inventory of Russian stocks to help prevent him. Unless all the nuclear powers work together there may never be one. Were plutonium smuggled through Armenia or Afghanistan there would be little chance of detection. It may already be passing that way. German police have found evidence which, they claim, shows plutonium-smuggling into Pakistan.
