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Kazakh-US project to eliminate nuclear fuel

A US-based nonproliferation group and Kazakh officials yesterday unveiled a US$2 million project to eliminate nearly 3 tonnes of weapons-grade nuclear fuel that could be used to make some two dozen atomic bombs.

The project is part of nonproliferation efforts that in recent years have taken on added urgency in Central Asia, which has seen the spread of Islamic radicalism since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

It was initiated by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US-based nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the threat of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The group and the Kazakh nuclear industry shared the costs.

NTI co-founder Ted Turner used the announcement ceremony to urge the US and Russia "to reduce their nuclear weapons as much as possible."

"Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it's crazy," he said.

Under the project, about 2,900kg of nuclear fuel containing highly enriched uranium from a mothbal-led Soviet-built nuclear reactor in western Kazakhstan will be blended down so that it cannot be used to make bombs. The uranium, less than 5 percent enriched, will be used for fuel for civilian reactors.

The fuel was transported from the Mangyshlak nuclear power plant to the Ulba Metal Plant in the eastern Kazakh city of Ust-Kamenogorsk last year and is expected to be blended down here by the end of the year, according to NTI.

The project, which was launched in 2002, has been monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who on Friday was declared this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in a message that the project could serve as a model for other countries.

US President George W. Bush called the project a sign of "Kazakhstan's continued success in converting nuclear material to peaceful and productive uses," according to a message read by Robert Joseph, US undersecretary of state for international security.

The US has been involved in projects to reduce the threat of weapons material leaks out of Kazakhstan and the rest of the former Soviet Union since the early 1990s.

Kazakhstan had been a major production and test site for the Soviet military's nuclear program. Activity related to weapons of mass destruction was stopped after 1991, but the nation of 15 million was left with tons of weapons-grade nuclear material, millions of tons of radioactive waste and large contaminated areas -- all guarded poorly or not at all.

That and the weapons expertise existing in the region, given its lax border controls and economic decline, have raised fears that some of the nuclear material here could end up in terrorists' hands. Among the former Soviet region's neighbors are Afghanistan, Iran and China.

Kazakhstan used to house the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal in Soviet times, which included 1,410 nuclear warheads. The entire nuclear arsenal was moved to Russia by 1995.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who attended the ceremony, called the project Kazakhstan's contribution to global security.
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