Nuclear Weapons Material and Expertise at Vinca: Coping with Yugoslavia?s Past and Potential Nuclear Weapons Programs

Yugoslavia--at least in the eyes of the West--is a pariah state. But it is a pariah state whose predecessor, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, twice had a nuclear weapons program. Should Yugoslavia?s potential nuclear capabilities concern the West today? The answer is ?yes.] Yugoslavia is not a high priority threat like Iraq and North Korea. But a number of key nuclear physicists, chemists, and engineers in today?s Yugoslavia have substantial weapons-related experience. To be sure, the largest of the two research reactors at the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences outside of Belgrade, the principal Serbian facility, is mothballed, and the once ambitious plutonium reprocessing program at the site appears to be inactive. The most visible sign of the advanced state of the former nuclear weapons programs is the 48.2 kilograms of fresh Soviet-supplied, weapons-grade uranium fuel that remain at Vinca under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. The Yugoslav weapons program never reached an advanced state. But is the West right in minimizing its proliferation risk? Is it mistaken in assigning a low priority to removal of the weapons-grade material at Vinca? And is this view based on adequate knowledge of socialist Yugoslavia?s efforts--a secret program that persisted for many years despite the country?s formal accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970?