U.S. succeeding in new nuclear non-proliferation approach +

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/us-succeeding-in-new-nuclear-non/n20070916070909990010

AP Posted: 2007-09-16 07:09:59

DALAT, Vietnam, Sept. 16 (Kyodo) - A unit of the U.S. government specializing in nuclear matters succeeded last week in a unique non-proliferation operation which had been kept secret from the public until a cargo plane touched down in Russia on Sunday with weapons-usable nuclear materials. Revealed to a small group of reporters, the operation was a new type of preventive measure against possible nuclear terrorism that characterizes the current post-Cold War era, which some nuclear specialists call the "Second Nuclear Age" because peaceful use of nuclear materials could be applicable to weapons development. Under the project, called the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, a team of specialists from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration spent several days in the quiet southern Vietnam resort of Dalat. The operation involved transferring highly enriched uranium, originally from Russia, out of Vietnam and back to Russia, and converting an HEU-fueled Vietnamese reactor into one fueled by uranium enriched at a lower level. Highly enriched uranium has more than 20 percent of uranium 235, which is found at a rate of only 0.7 percent in natural uranium ore. Uranium enriched at a lower rate has less than 20 percent of uranium 235. Weapons-grade HEU has to be further enriched up to 90 percent. According to a senior NNSA official, highly enriched uranium that has been possessed by Vietnam since 1983 could be used for a nuclear weapon. "By removing nuclear materials like we've done today, we can ensure that this material is down-blended to low enriched uranium which cannot be used to make a nuclear weapon. So with every operation we really are making the world safer and more secure by removing these materials," said Andrew Bieniawski, NNSA assistant deputy administrator for global threat reduction, who headed the operation on Thursday. He is in charge of the GTRI program. The NNSA allowed Kyodo News and two major U.S. organizations to cover the whole process of the highly classified operation that took four days in Dalat and Ho Chi Min City in Vietnam. The operation was coordinated by the NNSA with cooperation from the Vietnamese and Russian governments and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. The IAEA inspected the quality and authenticity of the "HEU-fuel assemblies" or HEU-fuel rods that were transported by a Russian cargo plane. The process started Wednesday at the nuclear facility of the Dalat Nuclear Research Institute, where a research reactor originating in the United States, Triga Mark II, started operating in 1963. Under the U.S. Cold War project called "Atoms for Peace" in 1950s, the U.S. administration of President Dwight Eisenhower exported several dozen research reactors to allies including South Vietnam, up until the Vietnam War ended in 1975. After the war, the former Soviet Union provided HEU fuel after modifying the reactor. Vietnamese DNRI engineers on top of the reactor removed eight HEU-fuel assemblies of Russian origin from its core and carefully inserted six new Russian-made assemblies for low enriched uranium using a special 6-meter pole-shaped tool called a grapple. About 50 minutes after putting in all the new assemblies, the reactivated reactor went "critical," meaning the uranium inside the assemblies could maintain a nuclear chain-reaction. Bieniawski then announced the "conversion" of the reactor and congratulated his Vietnamese counterparts. The next day, under the close inspection of a senior IAEA inspector, 35 "fresh" HEU assemblies that had not yet been used were loaded into two special containers by two Russian engineers. The inspector, Syed N. Syed Hussin Shabuddin, a Malaysian national, picked up six rods and checked their HEU density in order to ensure that all were genuine and contained no false materials inside. After an inspection with special IAEA devices, all the HEU rods were made ready for transportation in the containers by being "sealed" by the IAEA inspector. The whole process took about four hours. Given that a fresh HEU assembly is not harmful to the human body as the radiation level is so low, chief NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said, "Fresh HEU is the easiest material for terrorists to make a crude nuclear device with." At 9 a.m. on Friday, a Vietnamese military truck carrying about 4 kilograms of HEU in the containers left the DNRI facility under heavy security. It took a mountain road through forests, accompanied by a police convoy, as well as a fire engine and other vehicles. After arriving at a local airport in a suburb of Dalat, the two HEU containers were loaded by eight Vietnamese soldiers onto a helicopter that flew them to Ho Chi Min City, where the Russian cargo plane was waiting. Having received the containers, the plane took off on Saturday afternoon on the 10,000-kilometer flight and landed in a suburb of the Russian city of Dimitrovgrad on Sunday. Established in May 2004, the GTRI has returned more than 500 kg of HEU originally from Russia, equivalent to 20 nuclear weapons, from 10 countries. After a joint statement on nuclear security cooperation was issued by U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2005, the GTRI was sped up and has completed 13 HEU-transfer operations to date. The only two countries that still possess fresh Russian HEU to be returned to Russia are Ukraine and Belarus, and Bieniawski said they have not made a final decision yet on whether to give up the HEU. The GTRI has set 2013 as a target date for removing or disposing of all Russian-originated HEU -- some 2,245 kg in both fresh and spent uranium. The NNSA aims to finish conversion of all 129 HEU-fueled research reactors in the world by 2018. The United States has converted 50 reactors and confirmed the shutdown of an additional four so far. The United States has another major non-proliferation program, the Nunn-Lugar Program, which has deactivated around 7,000 former Soviet nuclear warheads over the past 15 years. The GTRI is focusing on the civilian nuclear field where fewer security measures are implemented than for military facilities. Given that some material like HEU and radioactive materials such as cobalt and strontium stored at civilian facilities could be potential sources for nuclear weapons and radioactive "dirty bombs," the GTRI is a vital preventive tool in helping to nip nuclear terrorism in the bud. "We don't care about the past, we look to the future," Pham Hung Thai, a 33-year-old Vietnamese engineer working at the DNRI, said when asked about the project by its former enemy that could enhance nuclear security in the country. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
09/16/07 07:08 EDT