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Nunn-Lugar at 15 still a misunderstood teenager at home, thanks to The Washington Post
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So the visit was worthy of some coverage, and it got many of the higher echelon members of the Moscow press corps out of their offices and within camera range of some of the Cold War era’s most secretive nuclear dinosaurs. Their copy reflected with John le Carre-esque flair the cloak and dagger undertones of this venture - and was riddled with factual errors and lack of context about CTR to a point of marring the programme’s reputation in the hostile political waters it faces back home.
The main disfigurement present in most reports was a remarkable misunderstanding of the history of the Nunn-Lugar project and basic errors about those nonproliferation efforts afoot in Russia that actually are Nunn-Lugar related. Take, for instance, the travelogue by The Washington Post’s David Hoffman, who followed Nunn and Lugar to the sites they visited, and whose articles on the visit I have singled out for special citation. By missing clear examples of ineptitude perpetrated over several years by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its nonproliferation efforts in Russia, he inadvertently assigns the blame (much as he is trying to propagandize American largesse to poor old Russia and deflect criticism of Nunn-Lugar for a stalled CTR programme) to CTR. A catalogue of Hoffman’s errors, slips of pen and flat-out ignorance show how this came to be the case in one of two newspapers most thoroughly read by US nonproliferation policymakers.
On September 1st, Hoffman wrote an article headlined “Americans Given Rare Access To Russian Nuclear Warehouse,” (available at www.washingtonpost.com) which began:
“YEKATERINBURG, Russia, - For the first time in 3 1/2 years, Russia on Friday allowed visiting American officials to look inside the world's largest fortified warehouse for nuclear materials, a graveyard for plutonium that Russia has tried to keep closed.”
Right in the lede, Hoffman spills the beans that he really has no idea what he is writing about. That no American officials have been on the site of “the world’s largest fortified warehouse for nuclear materials” would surprise Bechtel employees who routinely visit what is known less mystically as the Mayak Fissile Materials Storage Facility (FMSF). Further advancing his air of pseudo-espionage, Hoffman cryptically continues his thought, writing: “a graveyard for plutonium that Russia has tried to keep closed.”
His use of “closed,” could have a double meaning, to whit: Russia has shrouded the facility in secrecy, as well as Russia has tried to keep it literally shut, such that it cannot function as “a graveyard for plutonium.” The latter interpretation would be more correct, but, as we read on, we discover that Hoffman doesn’t know enough about the FMSF and the colossal problems that have derailed the initial intentions behind building it to deploy that double entendre.
The following paragraph in Hoffman’s story provides even bigger howlers:
The Fissile Material Storage Facility (…) with walls 23 feet thick that are designed to withstand earthquakes and airplane crashes (…)
I’ll stop the embarrassing playback there.
This point about falling planes, which Hoffman states with such authority that he doesn’t even bother to source it, has, in fact, been vociferously refuted by many Russian structural engineers and nuclear scientists familiar with the project. The above ground facility was designed in the pre 9/11 era when engineers weren't really taking airplane strikes into account. Bechtel naturally will not say if the facility could withstand such a scenario, even while its Russian counterparts openly admit that it could not bear up under such an attack. The notion that it could withstand a direct hit form a jet airliner is nothing but propaganda from the Pentagon (another building, incidentally, that can't really withstand a direct hit by a jet airplane without significant loss of life and structural damage).
Hoffman writes that a major stumbling block for the smooth transparent running of FMSF facility is that Russia will not tell the Untied States, as Congress has required, how much plutonium it plans to store in the facility itself. True enough at first glance – but relying on Rosatom press shill Igor Konyshev for that piece of information – or any information - as Hoffman does, won’t even get him an accurate quote on what day it is. Lugar does acknowledge to Hoffman that: "There is a disagreement over the amount of information we require and what they (the Russian’s) are prepared to give."
But this, as Lugar has said countless times in other interviews about Nunn-Lugar programmes across the board, is a perennial state of affairs with the Russians that is not specific to the FMSF. What Hoffman really means to convey – but, being unaware of the fact, cannot - is that the Russian’s aren’t secretive about how much plutonium they plan to store at the FMSF, but rather want to stay mum about where it is coming from. However, even that is no longer an issue, which Hoffman would have been able to illustrate had he done any research on the facility at all.
Here is what he missed: Former atomic energy chief Alexander Rumyantsev said in full public view two years ago that Russia would not be storing any of the 50 tons of plutonium it was slated to load into the FMSF. So Hoffman’s point about Russian secrecy on this issue is moot. But, Hoffman, like so many of his colleagues in the western press corps in Moscow, often cite as “secret” what they have not been able to find out because they have not done rudimentary homework, and have instead relied on people like Igor Konyshev, whose job description is to tell all comers that the information they seek is a “state secret,” to connect the clichéd dots for them.
So another western reporter bungles another dispatch out of Moscow for the sake of deifying American interests there, and telling yet another tale of how the ungrateful children of Russia are unwilling to listen to their Washington school masters. After all, Hoffman and the rest of the Moscow press corps have their hands full trying to explain why Russia’s ex-KGB President Vladimir Putin really is a democratic kinda guy now that he controls enough oil to give OPEC night sweats. Who wants to get bogged down with the particulars of nonproliferation policy? Isn’t it easier to take the intentions of the Nunn-Lugar programme at face value and write up a nice little homily about how America could really help if it weren’t for all those “secrets”? What is so dangerous about that, especially considering that the culture of secrecy surrounding anything nuclear in Russia is still pervasive?
For starters – aside from just being an expedient lie with which Hoffman can paper over his ignorance - it completely misrepresents the entire cause of Nunn-Lugar. By not asking any tough questions about why a $375m project (Hoffman erroneously reports the figure as $309m) has been languishing unfinished for 14 years, he consequently doesn’t get any answers. So, here are a few that I have ferreted out over the years:
Communication between American contractors and subcontractors is abysmal, but that is not necessarily the Russians’ fault. Bechtel, hired by the Pentagon, has hired so many sub-contractors that, according to former CTR chief, Ken Meyers, the project has run aground on questions about what kind of telephone system they want to install – touch tone or rotary - and when and what kind of security measures they will get around to testing. No wonder no one can get a simple progress report.
These snafus are issues that Nunn and Lugar have both distinguished themselves as being candid about, and both have expounded at length about the irritations of having too many chefs salting this nuclear soup. Instead, Hoffman feels obligated by whatever propaganda model he is following to dodge these tough questions and contents himself with quoting Lugar on the programme’s successes at destroying Russia’s chemical weapons arsenal – a laudable achievement, obviously, but hardly the point when 50 tons of Russian weapons plutonium is at stake.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Hoffman’s story is dangerous because it outright fails to discuss the conditions under which the Russians have decided they will not be storing any plutonium at the FMSF - which points to deeper failings within the American nonproliferation effort as a whole.
Originally the facility was going to be a final resting place for surplus weapons plutonium, and later, a weigh station for weapons plutonium on its way to be converted to mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel for burning in conventional reactors. The latter, at least, was the plan when Putin and former US President Bill Clinton signed the US DOE-run (as distinguished from Nunn-Lugar run) Plutonium Disposition Agreement of 2000. This agreement stipulated that Russia and America would convert 34 tons of surplus weapons plutonium a piece. But early on, disputes emerged about how to best achieve this. One camp favoured vitrifying the plutonium in radioactive glass, thus rendering it impossible for thieves and governments alike to use it, and storing it at the FMSF. This was by far a cheaper and far more effective method for rendering the plutonium useless - and one that the Russians may have been able to afford.
Instead, the DOE, guided by Laura Holgate (now, incidentally a staffer at Nunn’s non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative) negotiated terms for burning the plutonium in MOX fuel. Only a couple of problems: Some $2 billion was required to build MOX fabrication facilities in Russia, and Russia’s workforce of VVER-1000 reactors would have to undergo millions of dollars worth of possibly futile experimental upgrades to burn the fuel. Holgate’s rationale at the time was that the Russians flatly refused to consider vitrification as they wanted to get at least some use out of the plutonium. So she signed up for the so-costly-as-to-be-otherworldly option of MOX. What she hadn’t counted on was that the Russians didn’t want to burn their plutonium in MOX either. They wanted to keep it around for use in their continued flirtation with breeder reactors – the fabled perpetual motion machine of the nuclear industry that both burns plutonium and produces plutonium fuel as waste. The only thing standing between Russia and realization of this plan – besides the unreliable science supporting the theory of breeder reactors – was the absence of a MOX fabrication plant, which, as a side benefit, can fabricate plutonium fuel for breeder reactors as well.
The plan to dispose of plutonium via MOX, despite America’s unilateral push to build a $4 billion MOX plant at the DOE’s Savannah River Site in Aiken, Georgia, turned into a giant boondoggle for Russia. The past few years have seen US MOX supporters quietly shuffled out of the DOE, causing a rapid erosion of support for helping Russia build its own MOX facility. Moscow, noticing the odd new odor in the wind, announced it would not be storing any of its plutonium at the FMSF –representing one of the larger failures of American nonproliferation policy to date. Putin, as evidenced by his recent escalation of Cold War rhetoric and nuclear bomber flyovers of NATO territories, is quite happy to have the plutonium stored in the warheads from whence it was meant to come.
The empty warehouse about which Hoffman writes and assigns such mystery is really not a mystery at all, but rather a serious and troubling sign that the Russian-American surplus weapons plutonium problem is no closer to being solved now than it was in 1993. Hoffman is unaware that the fallow warehouse is even a side effect of this critical impasse and is content to blame those shifty Russia for any kinks in the plan. He thereby forgoes giving American readers – whose taxes are paying for the successes and screw-ups alike - any realistic accounting of the blame that should be laid at the doorstep of the US DOE for failing over the course of 15 years to come to any plausible agreement with Russia about the plutonium.
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