August 2013 Plutonium Mountain Inside the 17-year mission to secure a dangerous legacy of Soviet nuclear testing By Eben Harrell & David E. Hoffman Project on Managing the Atom
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- Operation ‘Golden Eagle’
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 29 would be considered classified, so getting past export controls was not a simple process. Before we started work we had to come up with an understanding regarding transparency between our two countries. As soon as we agreed on that issue we could start work.” 74
Source: U.S. Department of Defense Filling a test tunnel with a special cement compound that chemically bonds with the material in the tunnel, rendering it into a form unusable for weapons purposes. Ristvet says that he was never tempted to use the Degelen Mountain operation for espionage, but the project yielded benefits for U.S. intelligence for other reasons. Analysts could study satellite images of the threat reduction work in Kazakhstan, form a hypothesis of what exactly had been done, and then test their hypothesis against trip reports prepared by Ristvet. The hope was that the process could later help U.S. intelligence analyze suspicious underground excavation work in Iran, China and North Korea. “This was a great test case for our imagery people,” Ristvet said. Referring to the color-code of a military training exercise, he added, “It was a helpful, blue-on- red exercise.” After the completion of Operation Matchbox, Kutsenko convinced his superiors to reveal the location of three more Kolbas inside Degelen Mountain. Originally, Russian scientists suggested taking the Kolbas, which were mounted on rail-transport cars, out of the mountain, where they could be opened and filled with the cement and sand mixture that was used for Operation Match- box. The U.S. protested. The plan would require re-opening the tunnels at Degelen Mountain that had been closed by the U.S. in the 1990s. What’s more, returning the Kolbas back to the tunnel would be no simple feat given their weight once filled with cement. With discussions stalled, it was Kadyrzhanov who brought a solution to U.S. and Russian scientists—if the Russians could provide specific geographical coordinates for the locations of the underground Kolbas, Kazakh construction crews could drill from the surface, puncture the Kolba and, using a sealed conduit, pump cement into the structure. The Russians examined the plan, and decided it was feasible in one instance. For the other two Kolbas, they offered a compromise solution. The crews could fill all the space around the Kolba with concrete, mimicking the entombment technique of Operation Groundhog. To add a further layer of protection, Ristvet proposed a novel tweak to the cementing plan. He suggested adding iron to the cement mixture in an effort to make it even harder to separate the 74 Interview with Vladimir Kutsenko, October 2012. Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-year mission to secure a dangerous legacy of Soviet nuclear testing 30 plutonium chemically from the concrete and turn it into metal, which is what is required for a nuclear bomb. The mixture “added suspenders to our belt,” Ristvet said – though only for the Kolba where the cement would actually be inside the canister with the plutonium. 75
2005, nearly a decade after the original “Project Amber” memo. Kutsenko decided it was time for Rosatom to release all the remaining information about experiments performed at Degelen Mountain. This was the breakthrough U.S. scientists had long hoped for. In preparation, Russian scientists estimated the amount of material at each experiment site in the tunnels and rated the risk posed by the material. In April, 2005, Kutsenko and Stepanyuk met with Ristvet, Weber and Sullivan in Kazakhstan and presented the information. The tally wasn’t pretty. Even after Operation Nomad, Degelen Mountain still contained around 100 kilograms of recoverable plutonium—enough for more than one dozen nuclear weapons. 76 The material existed in more Kolbas inside the tunnels, but also in smaller, less secure “end-boxes,” where experiments with lower explosive yields were performed. Operation ‘Golden Eagle’ Then came a surprising revelation. In several of these end-boxes, Russia had left behind not just material, but highly-sensitive components used to build nuclear weapons. According to Stepa- nyuk, the equipment carried “maximum risk.” 77 According to a U.S. official who was involved: The ‘equipment’ included high-purity plutonium that would have easily provided materials and information that could lead to a relatively sophisticated nuclear device. 78
the material should be the first priority in any further work at Degelen Mountain. 79 According to one participant, the admission by the Russians of the high-value sites probably would not have been possible were it not for several years of negotiations and efforts to build trust by U.S. and Russian officials. 80 Even so, the Russians were cautious. In their reports to the U.S. side, they 75 Ristvet said he proposed the idea after remembering an article by scientists from Los Alamos and Livermore National Labora- tory explaining that reference samples of plutonium stored in steel containers after 25 years of storage had mysteriously reduced in quantity; the scientists discovered that plutonium was bonding to iron in the walls of the container. “This was my big contri- bution, remembering that this bond between iron and plutonium wasn’t something that simple acid wash could remove,” Ristvet says. Scientists interviewed for this article were split about the effectiveness of this intervention in preventing the recycling of plutonium into a bomb, and so is the literature. See, for example, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, “Large Scale Electrorefining of Plutonium from Plutonium-Iron Alloys,” Los Alamos, New Mexico, August 1964, http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/ lib-www/la-pubs/00319923.pdf (accessed on March 7, 2013). 76 Stepanyuk, “Liquidation of Consequences.” 77 Stepanyuk, “Liquidation of Consequences.” 78 U.S. official, private communication with the authors. 79 Ristvet said the components would allow terrorists or a rogue regime to “reverse engineer and build something extremely sophisticated.” There is a precedent for sensitive components left at a test site. Britain returned to Australia after completing its testing program at Maralinga to collect several proliferation-sensitive triggering devices used for a nuclear bomb. Interview with Carlson, September 2012. 80 Private correspondence with U.S. official who participated. Yüklə 333,26 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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