Year
2002
Abstract
For the past year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) cooperative program for nuclear material protection, control and accounting (MPC&A) in the Russian Federation has sought to develop new, improved approaches to securing weapons-usable nuclear material throughout Russia as rapidly and efficiently as possible. In the aftermath of recent national security events, these innovative approaches to accelerating this cooperation with Russia have taken on even greater urgency. This paper describes the new approach that has been developed within the Office of Nuclear Material Protection to accelerate the implementation of cooperation at the sites of the Russian nuclear weapons complex, which contain the majority of proliferation-attractive nuclear material in Russia. This innovative approach involves conducting \"contract symposia\" which bring together representatives from DOE, the Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy (MinAtom), and the US and Russian site teams for face-to-face meetings to formulate and approve assurance procedures and contracts to implement MPC&A upgrades at the respective sites. This approach is significant in that it has resulted in an acceleration of the program's implementation, such that the overall timeframe for completion of site upgrades has been compressed by between two and three years. Five contract symposia have been held since July 2001. This paper will describe for the first time the structure of the symposia and the results at each site where a symposium has been conducted.