ABSTRACT
Cooperative international efforts, to assist Russia in strengthening the security of its fissile materials and in arranging for their disposal, are described and their adequacy is assessed. However, international cooperative efforts to increase the security of weapons-usable fissile materials and eliminate surplus stocks must focus on the long-term global problem as well as the special short-term problem in Russia. Reprocessing in Western Europe, Russia, Japan and India has added to this total a stockpile of almost 200 000 kilograms of separated 'civilian' but weapons-usable plutonium. Russia has a smaller-scale commercial reprocessing plant, where it reprocesses some East European and former Soviet Union spent fuel. If deliveries of Russian low-enrichment uranium (LEU) reach the equivalent of 30 tonnes of weapongrade uranium per year, they could satisfy approximately one-half of the LEU requirements of US power reactors. US and Canadian uranium miners and the US uranium-enrichment complex have therefore raised various objections to this deal.
