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Monitoring Stockpiles
Mayak Storage Facility Transparency
Written by Matthew Bunn. Last updated by Matthew Bunn on 19 October 2007.
Status
![[ click here for larger photo ]](/web/20100410124149im_/http://www.nti.org/images/cnwmphoto_monmayak1_sm.jpg) Demonstration of technology useful for Mayak transparency. |
From the outset of the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility project, the United States and Russia have agreed in principle that the United States would have the right to some form of monitoring of this site, having paid for its construction. Unfortunately, however, while the facility was commissioned in December 2003, as of January 2004 no transparency agreement had yet been finalized — though U.S. officials believe that an agreement during 2004 is within reach.[1] The discussions are still difficult even though the United States has abandoned the most controversial measures it had once sought, which had been designed to increase confidence that the material to be stored in Mayak was not just weapons-grade, but actually came from dismantled nuclear weapons.[2] |
As of the fall of 2007, an agreement, if one is eventually concluded, is only expected to be able to confirm that the plutonium stored in Mayak is "consistent with" having coming come from dismantled nuclear weapons – that is, that it is weapon-grade, and possibly also that it is metal form.
History of Mayak Transparency Discussions
The Mayak project began when Russia requested help in providing secure storage for fissile material from dismantled nuclear weapons, saying that the absence of suitable storage space for such material could pose a critical bottleneck to Russian warhead dismantlement. [3] Russia pledged that material stored in a facility built with U.S. help would never again be returned to weapons. Hence, the Department of Defense informed Congress that this would be the purpose, and proposed to Russia that transparency measures be worked out to confirm that this purpose was being fulfilled — in particular, to confirm that:
-
the material in the facility was safe and secure;
-
the material came from dismantled nuclear weapons; and
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the material was not being returned to nuclear weapons.[4]
The Department of Defense saw these as requirements for U.S. funding of the project, and perceived the monitoring that would be involved as unilateral—that is, in return for U.S. funding, Russia would provide this level of transparency, without any reciprocal transparency at U.S. facilities. This approach was somewhat confused, however, by the fact that during the early years of discussions, the United States government was also seeking agreement on other types of transparency that would apply to the same Mayak facility—bilateral monitoring, under what was known (redundantly) as the "Mutual, Reciprocal Inspections" (MRI) initiative (launched by then-Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary and then-Minister of Atomic Energy Victor Mikhailov in 1994),[5] and multilateral monitoring, in which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would monitor the material at Mayak and comparable U.S. storage facilities under the U.S.-Russia-IAEA Trilateral Initiative, launched in 1996. U.S. Mayak transparency negotiators made clear that if one of these other monitoring regimes were agreed to and implemented, and fulfilled some portion of the objectives of the proposed Mayak transparency measures, then the unilateral measures could be correspondingly scaled back, rather than having multiple sets of inspectors confirming the same things—but nonetheless, explaining to Russian negotiators exactly what overall monitoring approach the United States was actually seeking for the Mayak facility became quite a challenge.
The MRI discussions, however, had largely ended by the end of 1995, and the Trilateral Initiative had largely collapsed by 2002, focusing the main discussions of transparency at Mayak on the unilateral measures to be implemented in return for Nunn-Lugar assistance. With the facility already built and being loaded, Russian officials have had few incentives to complete the transparency agreement.
Formal negotiations of a Mayak transparency agreement (or amendment to the implementing agreement) began in October 1997. By August 1999, after seven rounds of discussions, measures to confirm that the material was safe and secure, and measures to confirm that it is not being returned to weapons were agreed.[6] Thus, the key issues have focused on measures to confirm that the material being placed in the facility came from dismantled nuclear weapons. This became particularly problematic after 1996, when, in the wake of Russian President Boris Yeltsin announcing that the Mayak facility would be opened to IAEA inspection, Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM, now a federal agency known as Rosatom) decided that rather than storing weapons components themselves in the facility, they would store material that had been re-shaped, so that its form was no longer classified.[7] (Rosatom plans to store the plutonium in solid 2-kilogram spheres.)[8] U.S. technical experts concluded that there was no way for any kind of measurements on the reshaped material to provide confidence that the material originally came from dismantled warheads, and the United States therefore proposed that it be allowed to monitor "upstream" from the Mayak storage facility, at the site where the reshaping would be done.
For a number of years, there were U.S.-Russian negotiations over the possibility that the United States would provide hundreds of millions of dollars of additional assistance to cover a large part of the costs of reshaping the plutonium components, in return for Russian agreement to allow U.S. monitors to conduct measurements before the components were reshaped, to provide confidence that before reshaping, the plutonium was in fact in the form of weapons components. U.S. and Russian technical experts developed an approach based on confirming with a simple "yes" or "no" whether an object in a canister had certain attributes that would provide some confidence that it was a weapon component—for example, that it was made of plutonium with at least a threshold percentage of plutonium-239, that it was made of metal, that it was roughly symmetrical, and that it contained at least a threshold mass of plutonium. The machines to do these measurements would include built-in "information barriers" to ensure that nothing more than the "yes" or "no" answer was provided to the monitors, while at the same time allowing the monitors to authenticate that the machines really were measuring that properties that had been agreed. [9] In August 2000, a demonstration was carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in which six attributes of both unclassified plutonium sources and a U.S. plutonium weapon component, or "pit," were measured, with both U.S. and Russian technical experts taking part.[10]
The talks on assistance and monitoring upstream from the Mayak storage facility, known as the Processing and Packaging Implementation Agreement (PPIA, pronounced "papaya") discussions, were eventually abandoned: Russia was unwilling to accept this upstream monitoring, and the United States was unwilling to offer comparable monitoring at the facilities where its pits would be converted to unclassified forms, despite assertions by the U.S. team, and the joint technical demonstration, that the requested measures could be performed without undue intrusiveness and without revealing classified information. Thus, under current plans, Russia will reshape the plutonium components into small solid plutonium spheres without U.S. help, and there will be no Mayak transparency measures outside the facility itself.
By 2003, with the facility completed and little progress on completing a transparency agreement, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) escalated the issue to a higher political level, with then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz writing to then-Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumiantsev to call for completion of the agreement.[11] Rumiantsev wrote back reiterating that Russia was committed to completing and implementing transparency arrangements for Mayak. For much of fiscal 2005, DOD stopped most of the technical work on Mayak transparency it was sponsoring because of the lack of an agreement. [12] DOD reports that negotiations in 2004 and 2005 made "significant progress" in resolving the final details of a transparency agreement, but "several differences on technical issues remain." [13]
In January 2006, the United States proposed that a Mayak transparency accord take the legal form of an annex to the extension of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) umbrella agreement. Russian negotiators rejected that approach, and the two sides eventually agreed to de-link Mayak transparency from the CTR extension.[14] During 2006, the two sides worked to negotiate a new legal framework to permit the transparency measures to be implemented; that legal framework would govern the technical specifics in the draft "Transparency Protocol" for Mayak. By early 2007, the Department of Defense reported that the two sides had reached "agreement in principle" on a "framework agreement" on the legal issues, which the Department expected would provide the basis for completing the technical issues in the protocol, which would ultimately be annexed to the framework agreement.[15]
The two sides hope to complete an agreement by the end of 2007. It may take some time thereafter, however, to procure, install, and begin operating the agreed transparency equipment.
Outline of a Potential Mayak Transparency Agreement
The goals DOD is seeking to achieve in the Mayak transparency agreement are now more limited than they once were. As a result of the Bush administration's 2001 threat reduction policy review, the United States is only seeking to confirm that the containers stored in Mayak contain weapon-grade plutonium—that is, that it was consistent with having come from dismantled weapons, not that it had actually come from dismantled weapons—and that each container holds at least an agreed threshold quantity of such plutonium. [16] Reportedly, measures to confirm that the material is weapon-grade have been largely agreed for several years, but measures to confirm that the mass of the material in each canister stored at Mayak exceeds the agreed threshold have remained a problem area. [17]
DOD expects that the transparency protocol will permit monitors to use an "Inventory Sampling Measurement System" to measure radiation emissions from selected fissile material containers. Initially, the system will take isotopic measurements to confirm that the material is weapon-grade. "Subsequent enhancements" to the system would then be used to confirm that the containers measured contain an "acceptable quantity" of material. [18]
Some key elements of the proposed monitoring arrangements are not believed to have changed greatly since a 1999 draft of the agreement was described by the General Accounting Office: [19]
- U.S. monitors could inspect the Mayak storage facility six times per year;
- During each inspection, U.S. monitors would be allowed to download data from the facility's own material accounting and control system, the system the Russians would use to identify, scan, and track each container of material;
- U.S. monitors would be able to randomly select up to 120 storage shafts per year for examination (some 4 percent of the total number of storage shafts, containing almost 2 metric tons of plutonium). For each of these shafts, they would be able to verify the identifying tags on the containers, and scan one container to confirm its contents;
- Twice a year, Russia would inventory a selection of the containers with U.S. participation.
Overall, the transparency negotiations for the Mayak storage facility represent a classic example of the problems with what might be called a "pay-per-view" approach—demanding that Russia accept inspections in return for assistance, without offering any comparable inspections on the U.S. side. With U.S. funding for construction continuing despite the transparency impasse, Russian negotiators have had little incentive to conclude the agreement, and no incentive at all to accept any measures perceived as potentially sensitive. [20] U.S. assurances that its proposed monitoring could be done in a non-sensitive way rang hollow when the United States was unwilling to offer similar monitoring at its own facilities. This problem was exacerbated because it was perceived by the Russian side as a walk-back from the "mutual reciprocal inspections" initiative of the mid-1990s, under which stored fissile material in both the United States and Russia would have been subject to inspections, not just material in Russia.
Budget
Mayak transparency does not have its own publicly identified budget line. Much of the work on developing potential technologies for monitoring fissile material at Mayak has largely been funded through what is now known as the "Warhead Dismantlement and Fissile Material Transparency" program at the Department of Energy. That program received just under $15 million in fiscal 2007, but most of that was for implementation of HEU Purchase Agreement Transparency; there has been little Mayak-related work for some time, since most of the measures to be used at Mayak have already been developed. DOD transferred $22.8 million from the account for construction of the Mayak facility to a separate account for implementing transparency at Mayak. [21]
Key Issues and Recommendations
Limited ability to confirm weapons origin. The transparency measures that are now planned for the Mayak facility will build confidence that the material stored there is a type that could have come from weapons, but will not be able to confirm that all of the material did come from dismantled weapons.
- Recommendation: Given the reality that there will not be high confidence that all the material comes from dismantled weapons, and the need to ensure high levels of security for all types of separated plutonium (whether from weapons or not), the administration and Congress should consider directing the Defense Department to negotiate with Russia arrangements that would permit bringing insecure stockpiles of non-weapon plutonium or HEU to Mayak, where this is the most effective means of providing high levels of security for them.
Need for bridges between transparency regimes. Mayak transparency and HEU Purchase Agreement transparency have developed as, in effect, isolated "transparency islands" in a sea of continuing secrecy, focused on their own purposes. They therefore have not been designed to maximize their potential contribution to an overall nuclear warhead and fissile material transparency regime.
- Recommendation: To achieve maximum benefit from these transparency initiatives, the United States and Russia should seek to build "bridges" between the "transparency islands"—for example, ensuring that containers of plutonium that leave Mayak for disposition are tagged and sealed in a way that maintains continuous knowledge of them as they pass from the Mayak transparency regime to the future plutonium disposition transparency regime.
Links
| Key Resources | |
 |
U.S. Department of Defense,
Office of the Inspector General, Cooperative Threat
Reduction Construction Projects, D-2004-039 (Washington,
D.C.: Department of Defense, December 18, 2003) Download 413K PDF |
| This report provides key data on U.S.-Russian discussions over how much fissile material Mayak will store, how much has been spent on the facility, and the status of transparency negotiations. The Inspector General recommends increased attention to securing Russian commitments on what material will be stored in the facility, and on transparency. | |
|
U.S. General Accounting Office, Weapons of Mass
Destruction: Effort to Reduce Russian Arsenals
May Cost More, Achieve Less Than Planed, NSIAD-99-76
(Washington, D.C.: GAO, April 13, 1999). Download 321K PDF |
| This report outlined the fact that Russia had not accepted the transparency arrangements for the Mayak storage facility that the United States had sought. | |
|
Los Alamos Applied Monitoring Technology Laboratory, Electronic Library |
| The Applied Monitoring Technology Laboratory has a substantial number of publications related to various elements of Mayak transparency, particularly the concepts of authenticated systems with information barriers, to provide measurements of unclassified attributes of classified materials. | |
|
Thomas R. Rutherford and John H. McNeilly, "Measurements
on Material to Be Stored at the Mayak Fissile Material
Storage Facility," in Proceedings of the
41st Annual Meeting of the Institute for
Nuclear Materials Management (Northbrook, Ill.:
Institute for Nuclear Materials Management, 2000). Download 273K PDF |
| This paper provides a detailed description of the types of measurements the United States had proposed at that time for Mayak transparency, and of an experiment that was then about to be conducted on a U.S. plutonium weapon component, to demonstrate that with appropriate "information barriers," such measurements could be taken without revealing classified information. | |
| Agreements and Documents | |
|
Joint Statement by the Secretary of Energy of the United States and the Minister for Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation on Inspection of Facilities Containing Fissile Materials Removed from Nuclear Weapons, March 16, 1994. |
| Announcement of their intention "to host reciprocal inspections by the end of 1994 to facilities containing plutonium removed from nuclear weapons"—the origins of the Mutual Reciprocal Inspections (MRI) talks, which would have offered a different approach to monitoring at the Mayak storage facility and at comparable U.S. facilities. | |
| FOOTNOTES | |
| [1] | See, for example, David Hoffman, "Americans Given Rare Access to Russian Nuclear Warehouse: Nunn, Lugar, First to Visit $309 Million Facility Paid for by U.S.," Washington Post, 1 September 2007. Hoffman quotes Sergei Kirienko, head of the Russian Federal Agency for Atomic Energy (Rosatom) as predicting an agreement by the end of the year; U.S. officials have expected an agreement by the end of the year for several years. |
| [2] | For discussion, see, for example, U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General, Cooperative Threat Reduction Construction Projects, D-2004-039 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, December 18, 2003). |
| [3] | As it turned out, Russia appears to have provided sufficient alternative storage space over the years to avoid having fissile material storage become a constraint on the pace of weapons dismantlement. Russian officials have reported, however, that this interim storage space is not suitable for long-term storage, in part because security at the interim storage facilities relies almost entirely on large numbers of armed guards. See U.S. General Accounting Office, Weapons of Mass Destruction: Effort to Reduce Russian Arsenals May Cost More, Achieve Less Than Planned, NSIAD-99-76, April 13, 1999. |
| [4] | See, for example, discussion in GAO, Weapons of Mass Destruction: Effort to Reduce Russian Arsenals May Cost More, Achieve Less Than Planned, op. cit., and U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nonproliferation and National Security, Warhead and Fissile Material Transparency Program Strategic Plan (Washington, D.C.: DOE, May 1999). |
| [5] | See discussion in Matthew Bunn, The Next Wave: Urgently Needed New Steps to Control Warheads and Fissile Materials (Washington, D.C. and Cambridge, Mass: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Harvard Project on Managing the Atom, April 2000), pp. 45-50. |
| [6] | See DOD IG, Cooperative Threat Reduction Construction Projects, op. cit., p. 12. |
| [7] | Unfortunately the isotopic content of the material apparently will remain classified, which has required joint development of and agreement on "authentication" and "information barrier" technologies that can confirm some characteristics of the material inside the containers (such as the fact that it has enough plutonium-239 to be considered weapon-grade) without revealing other, classified characteristics (such as the specific ratios of different isotopes of plutonium). |
| [8] | See, for example, the discussion in Thomas E. Shea, The Trilateral Initiative: IAEA Verification of Weapon-Origin Fissile Material In the Russian Federation and the United States (Richland, Wash.: Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, forthcoming). |
| [9] | For discussions, see, for example, Thomas R. Rutherford
and John H. McNeilly, "Measurements on Material
to Be Stored at the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility," in Proceedings
of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Institute
for Nuclear Materials Management (Northbrook, Ill.:
Institute for Nuclear Materials Management, 2000). In
these U.S.-Russian cooperative efforts, a large technical
literature has now developed on selection of appropriate
attributes, design of information barriers, and authentication
of such measurements. For a review of these joint verification efforts, see Oleg Bukharin, "Russian and U.S. Technology Development in Support of Nuclear Warhead and Material Transparency Initiatives," in Nicholas Zarimpas, ed., Transparency in Nuclear Warheads and Materials: The Political and Technical Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2003). |
| [10] | This was called the Fissile Material Transparency Technology Demonstration (FMTTD), and supported not only Mayak transparency but also the Trilateral Initiative, and potential future warhead and fissile material transparency initiatives. For detailed accounts of the demonstration (including an overview that provides an excellent introduction to the concepts of measuring unclassified attributes of classified materials, information barriers, and authentication), see Los Alamos National Laboratory, "Fissile Material Transparency Technology Demonstration," last updated March 27, 2001. |
| [11] | U.S. Department of Defense, Cooperative Threat Reduction Annual Report to Congress Fiscal Year 2005 (Washington, D.C.: DOD, 2004), p. 65. |
| [12] | U.S. Department of Defense, Cooperative Threat Reduction Annual Report to Congress: Fiscal Year 2007 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, 2006), p. 31. |
| [13] | U.S. Department of Defense, Cooperative Threat Reduction Annual Report to Congress: Fiscal Year 2008 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, 2007), p. 21. |
| [14] | U.S. Department of Defense, FY 2008 CTR Annual Report, p. 21. |
| [15] | U.S. Department of Defense, FY 2008 CTR Annual Report, p. 21. |
| [16] | See DOD IG, Cooperative Threat Reduction Construction Projects, op. cit., p. 12. |
| [17] | Interview with Defense Department official, January 2004. |
| [18] | U.S. Department of Defense, FY 2008 CTR Annual Report, p. 21. |
| [19] | GAO, Weapons of Mass Destruction: Effort to Reduce Russian Arsenals May Cost More, Achieve Less Than Planned, op. cit., p. 10. |
| [20] | For this reason, some Defense Department officials argued for cutting off construction funding until Russia agreed to U.S.-proposed transparency measures. Other U.S. government officials successfully argued, however, that the importance of moving forward with securing tens of tons of potentially vulnerable weapons-usable nuclear material outweighed the leverage such a cut-off might offer for getting a stronger transparency package. |
| [21] | U.S. Department of Defense, FY2005 CTR Annual Report, p. 66. |
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