MATERIAL CONSOLIDATION AND CONVERSION: CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

The Material Consolidation and Conversion (MCC) Project began in fiscal year (FY) 1999. It is designed (a) to reduce the proliferation attractiveness of weapons-usable nuclear material (e.g., converting high-enriched uranium (HEU) to low-enriched uranium (LEU) and (b) to remove all of the weapons-usable nuclear material from Russian buildings and sites, thereby reducing the number of potential theft targets and lowering the associated long-term costs of securing that material. Through April 2002, the MCC Project had down blended almost 3 metric tons (MT) of HEU and had established rigorous technical monitoring regimes at the two Russian down blending sites – the Scientific Industrial Association (Luch) in Podolsk and the Research Institute for Atomic Reactors (RIAR) in Dimitrovgrad. However, measurable progress on the Project’s consolidation objectives, the significant expansion of its HEU conversion activity, and its involvement with the consolidation and conversion of non-weapons origin plutonium have been contingent on U.S.-Russian agreement on how to proceed with a bilateral MCC Implementing Agreement. If a mutually acceptable path forward can be defined and implemented, the MCC Project could expand its activities as early as FY02. This paper describes the development of the MCC Project, the areas in which MCC activities could expand in the near-term, and the status of the MCC Agreement discussions.