PARTIDOS JUDICIALES

Key developments in this area in the past year in- cluded:

The Russian government decided to cut off federal subsidies for the administrative budgets of Rus- sia’s closed nuclear cities beginning in 2006. The

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move sparked protests by residents and munici- pal workers in some of the closed cities, including Snezhinsk, home of one of Russia’s two principal nuclear weapons design laboratories, and Seversk, home of another large plutonium and HEU process- ing site. At Zheleznogorsk, a closed city housing a major plutonium production site, the federal sub- sidies that will be ended amount to 60 percent of the city’s 1.8 billion ruble budget. Zheleznogorsk’s mayor warned that “we have no idea at all how the budget will be filled… A starving operator of a nuclear power unit is more dangerous than any terrorist.”130 Unless new policies are put in place to

effectively replace the subsidies in a timely way, the move will certainly increase the challenges faced by programs working to stabilize the economic situation of experts housed in these cities.

The United States continued efforts to work with former WMD scientists in Iraq and Libya, out of fear that scientists might be recruited by other prolifer- ating states or non-state groups.131 Both DOE and

the State Department contributed to efforts to redi- rect former weapons scientists to beneficial civilian work and, particularly in Iraq, to provide a minimum level of subsistence to scientists who might other- wise be tempted to sell their knowledge to other parties. To reflect the program’s wider scope, DOE changed the name of its main weapons person- nel redirection effort from the Russian Transition Initiatives—which housed both the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) and the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program—to the Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention. The administration has estimated that in Iraq some 500 scientists and an additional number of skilled technicians with some WMD-related knowledge are worthy of assistance, while the administration is targeting assistance at about 150 key personnel and 1,500 support per- sonnel in Libya.132 _{These efforts appear to have got}

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130 _{“Protest Picket in Snezhinsk (Russian),” trans. A. Deyanov, Department of Energy, UralPressInform, 22 December 2004.}

131 _{Paul Kerr, “Did Iraqi Materials, Experts Escape?” Arms Control Today (November 2004; available at http://www.armscontrol.org/}

act/2004_11/Iraqi_Materials.asp as of 3 March 2005); Mark Trevelyan, “German Spy Chief Sounds Alarm on Iraq WMD Experts,” Re-

uters News, 7 October 2004.

132 _{State Department estimates are in U.S. Department of State, FY 2006 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations}

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 2005; available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/42245.pdf as of 3 March 2005), pp. 136-137. DOE also discusses its cooperation in U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2006 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation

off to a delayed start, and the efforts in Iraq have struggled with security concerns for participants and program officials.133

In Russia, despite the September 2003 expiration of the U.S.-Russian Nuclear Cities Initiative imple- menting agreement, DOE continued to carry out NCI projects through the International Science and Technology Centers (ISTC) in Moscow and the Ukraine or the Civilian Research and Devel- opment Foundation (CRDF). The Nuclear Cities Initiative is planning to largely phase out its assis- tance for projects in Sarov and Snezhinsk and shift attention to Seversk and Zheleznogorsk, particu- larly to help the transition of these cities as the United States works to shutdown the plutonium production reactors in Seversk and Zheleznogo- rsk.134 _{Estimates suggest that some 6,000 workers}

could be made excess through the shutdown of the final plutonium production reactors and their associated reprocessing infrastructure.135

Programs focused on redirecting Russian nuclear and other WMD scientists received expanded support from others in the G8 Global Partner- ship, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Canada formally joined the governing board of the International Science and Technology Centers in Moscow and Ukraine; the United Kingdom, meanwhile, focused projects on the closed nuclear city of Seversk.136

As we have discussed in previous reports, develop- ing metrics for assessing how much has been done

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to stabilize the personnel with access to nuclear weapons, materials, and expertise is complicated by the wide range of different conceptions of the threat such programs are designed to address, and there- fore the specifics of the job to be done.137 Boiled

down to their essence, there are four conceptions of the threat to be addressed:

leakage of nuclear expertise and technologies by nuclear scientists, particularly by the estimated 2,000-3,000 individuals from the former Soviet Union who could design a bomb or make a major contribution to doing so, and the roughly 10,000- 15,000 who have at least some knowledge that could be critical to the nuclear weapons program of a hostile state or terrorist group;138

nuclear theft or collaboration with attackers by the larger number of individuals at weapons and civilian nuclear facilities who have access to nu- clear weapons or materials, including guards at such facilities;

decisions to leak nuclear technology or expertise by the facilities themselves; and

reconstruction of a Cold War–scale nuclear threat, by the return of large production facilities to mass production of nuclear weapons.139

Developing metrics in this area is particularly diffi- cult given that there is little agreement on which of these four dangers is the most important to address. Indeed, the relation of these dangers may differ from

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133 _{Joseph B. Verrengia, “U.S. Squirrel Expert Is Unlikely Patron in Iraq, Paying Ex-Weapons Scientists to Resist Temptation,” Associated}

Press Newswires, 8 January 2005; Michael Roston, “Redirection of WMD Scientists in Iraq and Libya: A Status Report,” RANSAC Policy Update (April 2004; available at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/pdf/npp/ransac_iraqlibya_scientists.pdf as of 3 March 2005);

Richard Stone, “Coalition Throws 11th-Hour Lifeline to Iraqi Weaponeers,” Science 304, no. 5679 (2004).

134 _{U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2006 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Budget Request, pp. 493-497.}

135 _{Oleg Bukharin, Russia’s Nuclear Complex: Surviving the End of the Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Program on Science and Global Se-}

curity, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, May 2004; available at http://www.ransac. org/PDFFrameset.asp?PDF=bukharinminatomsurvivalmay2004.pdf as of 8 March 2005), p. 14. DOE estimates even higher job loss- es, in the range of 10,000 to 18,000, from the shutdown of these three reactors. Data provided by DOE, April 2005.

136 _{G8 Senior Group, “Annex: G8 Consolidated Report of Global Partnership Projects” (Sea Island, Georgia, United States: G8 Summit,}

2004; available at http://www.g8usa.gov/pdfs/GPConsolidatedReportofGPProjectsJune2004.pdf as of 25 February 2005).

137 _{Bunn and Wier, Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action, pp. 75-78; Bunn, Wier, and Holdren, Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Ma-}

terials: A Report Card and Action Plan, pp. 64-72.

138 _{Estimates provided by Oleg Bukharin, Princeton University, personal communication, March 2004.} 139 _{See a longer discussion on this topic in Bunn and Wier, Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action, pp. 65-67.}

one situation to another. Addressing the problem of intellectual proliferation in the vast nuclear com- plex left to the former Soviet states, after a decade of economic transition and government-to-govern- ment collaboration, is certainly a different task than targeting the relatively limited number of scientists with critical proliferation knowledge who are trying to adjust to a dangerous, uncertain future in post- Saddam Iraq.140

Russia is a very different country than it was in the early to mid-1990s, when programs like ISTC and IPP were first established. Initially, the idea was to fund useful civilian research with short-term grants to keep key weapons scientists from becoming desperate enough to sell their knowledge before the Russian economy recovered. Although it took some time for key programs such as the ISTC to get up and running on a large scale, they played a critical role for many nuclear facilities and scientists. For example, even be- fore the worst of the 1998 Russian financial crisis, ISTC funding was covering at least a quarter of the salary funds available at the nuclear weapons design insti- tute in the closed nuclear city of Sarov.141

After several years of Russian government surpluses driven by high oil prices, and a stabilizing economy, nuclear scientists and technicians—at least those who are still working in their institutes—appear to be doing better financially. Nuclear workers in Sarov, for instance, now appear to be earning wages well above the Russian average.142 (Nevertheless, a 2002 survey

of Russian scientists, most of whom had received ISTC assistance, did find that their average income from grants nearly equaled the income from their regular salary.143) The remaining dangers appear to be less

from desperate scientists still in place who would be willing to provide sustained help to another state trying set up a complete nuclear weapons program, and more from those scientists, technicians, and se- curity personnel who have lost their jobs or see they are about to, who still might have access to nuclear material, and who might provide assistance to a state or non-state group trying to acquire a single bomb.144

(Of course, the international proliferation network led by Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan, who had a very comfort- able lifestyle and was nationally revered, shows that there may always be those who are not desperate but would still seize opportunities for greater wealth through illicit collaboration.)

These changed circumstances require a rethinking of approaches to these programs, and this is taking place. Overall, in the former Soviet Union there is an increasing shift away from short-term grants to tide individuals over until better times, toward efforts to build sustainable commercial employment for for- mer nuclear weapons scientists and workers. Yet the creation of sustainable commercial jobs remains a difficult and slow enterprise, particularly in locations as remote, and with as little experience competing in the global economy, as Russia’s closed nuclear cit- ies. At the same time, relatively short-term grants supporting useful scientific investigation can be an important tool to keep former Soviet scientists con- nected to Western scientists and scientific activity, and to open up facilities to Western access and inter- action. Indeed, such relationships may well help to reduce the willingness of former Soviet scientists to collaboration with proliferation-sensitive states or non-state groups for reasons other than the mon- etary value of the assistance.145

140 _{The original philosophy in coping with Russia, namely, tiding over scientists to stave off desperation, has largely driven the open-}

ing phase of interaction with Iraqi former WMD scientists; see U.S. Department of State, FY 2006 Congressional Budget Justification for

Foreign Operations, p. 136.

141 _{Bukharin, Surviving the End of the Cold War, p. 18.} 142 _{Bukharin, Surviving the End of the Cold War, p. 19.}

143 _{Deborah Yarsike Ball and Theodore P. Gerber, “A Survey of Russian Scientists: Will They Go Rogue or Can Western Assistance Help}

Keep Them Home?” International Security (forthcoming).

144 _{Laura S. H. Holgate, “New Approaches to Managing Nuclear Expertise” (paper presented at the 4th International Working Group}

Meeting, Brussels, Belgium, September 2004).

145 _{Ball and Gerber, “A Survey of Russian Scientists.” The authors suggest this may be the case because they find that attitudes among}

Russian nuclear, chemical, and biological scientists about collaborating with foreign authoritarian regimes differ depending on whether the scientists have received foreign grant assistance or merely Russian grant assistance—foreign grant recipients are less

In the discussion below, we will focus on three simple measures: the fraction of the key nuclear weapon sci- entists who received short-term grants to tide them over the worst times; the fraction of excess nuclear weapon scientists and workers provided with sus- tainable civilian employment for the long haul; and the fraction of Russia’s nuclear weapons infrastruc- ture eliminated. (Our measures continue to focus exclusively on Russia, as the new programs focused on Iraq and Libya are still at such early stages that it is too early to begin to assess, with the informa- tion that has been made public, what fraction of the nuclear scientists from those countries those efforts are successfully engaging.) Here, as elsewhere, it is important to try to distinguish between what U.S.- funded programs can take credit for, and what has been accomplished through Russia’s own efforts or those of others.

Stabilizing Metric 1: Key Nuclear Weapons Scientists Given Short-Term Grants

Fraction accomplished. Because there is no accepted

list of the former Soviet scientists and engineers with the most proliferation-sensitive knowledge, there is no data publicly available concerning how many of that group have received grant assistance.

From the anecdotal information that is available, as we have discussed in our previous reports, it seems likely that in the nuclear sector at least, ISTC, IPP, or similar projects have provided grants to a very large fraction—perhaps 80% or more—of those nuclear scientists and technicians most in need and seeking assistance (see Figure 3-4).146 _{Our estimate this year}

is the same, as the programs focused on short-term grants are focusing less on expanding their reach to additional individuals than on helping grant recipi- ents make the transition to long-term sustainability. Such anecdotal evidence is backed up by a 2002 survey of Russian nuclear, chemical, and biological scientists that found that fewer than 20% of those scientists who had sought Western grant assistance had failed to re- ceive any.147 These percentages are likely even lower

for the nuclear field, as the study’s authors were un- able to include scientists at nuclear weapons research institutes—which have been heavily targeted by ISTC, IPP, and DOE’s Nuclear Cities Initiative—and because the survey’s results had been calibrated to reduce the over-representation of nuclear scientists, the field re- ceiving the most foreign attention thus far. (Despite a heightened focus by U.S. programs in the last several years, the fraction reached by grant assistance is likely less in the chemical and, especially, biological areas,

likely than Russian grant recipients to say that they would be willing to work for an authoritarian regime on weapons-related work. The authors suggest, therefore, that it is not merely the short-term cash support that reduces desperation and subsequent willing- ness to work for a foreign weapons program. They also point out that there is a difference in attitudes between those who have received foreign grant assistance, and those who applied for such assistance but were rejected, suggesting that it is not just those who would be inclined to seek foreign assistance who would also be more inclined to reject collaboration with foreign authoritar- ian regimes.

146 _{Bunn and Wier, Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action, p. 68; Bunn, Wier, and Holdren, Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials:}

A Report Card and Action Plan, pp. 74-77.

147 _{There were also nearly 40% of the scientists surveyed who had never sought such assistance; see Ball and Gerber, “A Survey of}

Russian Scientists.”

Figure 3-4

How Much Stabilizing Work Have U.S.-Funded Programs Completed?

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where security sensitivities still remain high. For in- stance, some key biological facilities have yet to open to foreign assistance programs, meaning scientists who still work at these facilities have not been eligible to participate in programs such as ISTC.)

Positive results on this metric do not necessarily mean that the underlying problem has been mostly resolved. For instance, if grant assistance and foreign engagement does in fact affect scientists’ at- titudes towards working with other regimes, it is not clear whether that shift is permanent, or whether at- titudes might revert to pre-engagement levels once opportunities for foreign collaboration dry up. Also, those nuclear weapons experts who have already retired or who left their facilities for civilian jobs that have since disappeared are not readily cap- tured by this metric, because current programs offer no formal mechanism for scientists unconnected with institutes to seek assistance. These catego- ries of experts could continue to pose a risk, as they likely retain much of the earlier nuclear weapons knowledge they acquired. Finally, scientists and per- sonnel at facilities that remain completely off-limits to foreigners—including Russia’s remaining nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facilities—are not generally eligible for grant assistance, because the U.S. government requires the ability to access and at least partially audit the facility where the re- cipients work.

Instead of our measure of the percentage of scien- tists addressed, the State Department and DOE use comparable, absolute performance measures listing the number of former Soviet weapons scientists, en-

gineers, and technicians, or their institutes, “engaged” by their programs.148 Their measures do not indicate

how many scientists or institutes are targeted for en- gagement, so it is not possible to see how much of the problem the government itself believes is still not solved. In the case of the annual metric of indi- viduals engaged, it is also not clear how the results reported count those scientists receiving a second or third round of grant assistance, or who are involved in multi-year grants.

Rate of progress. On this metric (if not on others)

the effort in the nuclear sector has more or less sta- bilized, though U.S. programs have identified no clear target for ending grant assistance. As noted above, it is not clear how many, if any, key former Soviet nu- clear scientists have not yet been reached by foreign grant assistance, with the exception of those at the warhead assembly/disassembly facilities. Regardless, the focus in recent years has been shifting towards transitioning scientists and their institutes to more sustainable positions.

Stabilizing Metric 2: Excess Nuclear Weapon Scientists and Workers Provided Sustainable Civilian Work

Fraction accomplished. Total employment at the

large nuclear facilities in Russia’s ten closed nuclear cit- ies is estimated to be in the range of 120,000-130,000 people, of whom approximately 75,000 (as of 2000) were employed directly in nuclear weapons-related work.149 In 1998, Russia’s Atomic Energy Ministry (now

the federal agency Rosatom) announced that it was planning to shrink the number of defense employees

148 _{DOE’s Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (formerly the Russian Transition Initiatives) reports that over 8,000 scientists}

were engaged by the program in FY 2004; see U.S. Department of Energy, Performance and Accountability Report: FY 2004, p. 132. All told, DOE reports that nearly 16,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians have been engaged since 1994; “Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP)” (Washington, D.C.: National Nuclear Security Administration, no date; available at http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/na-20/ ipp.shtml as of 9 March 2005). The Department of State reports that its Nonproliferation of WMD Expertise program, which includes support for the ISTC and other bilateral biological and chemical scientist redirection efforts, engaged 430 “proliferation-relevant” in- stitutes through FY 2003; see U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “Department of State and International Assistance Programs,” p. 216.

149 _{See Matthew Bunn, “Nuclear Cities Initiative,” in Nuclear Threat Initiative Research Library: Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Mate-}

rials (2002; available at http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/stabilizing/nci.asp as of 3 March 2005). See also Oleg Bukharin, Frank

von Hippel, and Sharon K. Weiner, Conversion and Job Creation in Russia’s Closed Nuclear Cities: An Update Based on a Workshop Held

in Obninsk, Russia, June 27–29, 2000 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 2000; available at http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/

in Russia’s nuclear weapons complex by some 35,000