2004 Press Releases
Paul Longsworth, Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) visits the Mayak Production Association in Chelyabinsk
July 28, 2004
On July 28, 2004 Paul Longsworth, Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), visited the Mayak Production Association. During his visit, Mr. Longsworth toured the plutonium and highly enriched uranium long-term storage complex at Mayak’s RT-1 plant and met with the Deputy Director Kotelnikov of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency and Mayak General Director Sadovnikov.
Deputy Administrator Longsworth witnessed first hand the results of joint U.S.-Russian efforts to improve the security of materials and facilities at Mayak under the Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) program. Since 1993 the United States and Russia have worked together to prevent the theft or loss of nuclear material. This joint effort to improve nuclear material security directly addresses a key threat to global security. MPC&A improvements are designed to keep nuclear materials secured within the facilities that are authorized to contain them, constituting the first line of defense against nuclear smuggling, and helping to prevent nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
In addition, DOE has conducted several monitoring visits to Mayak in support of the 1993 U.S.-Russia Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Purchase Agreement. Under this Agreement, the United States is committed to purchase 500 metric tons of HEU from dismantled Russia nuclear weapons over a period of about 20 years, for approximately $12 billion. The U.S. purchases low-enriched uranium down-blended from this Russian HEU for use as power reactor fuel in U.S. reactors, thus providing economic benefits to both parties. Mayak is one of the two Russian sites currently recovering surplus HEU from retired Russian nuclear weapons and converting this material to oxide for further processing and down-blending to low-enriched uranium at other Russian facilities.
At a press conference at the Yekaterinburg American Center, Longsworth said: “The success of our efforts to improve the security of materials at Mayak under the MPC&A Program is a sign of the good cooperation we have between our two countries. Mayak is also a key player in a crucial agreement, the HEU Purchase Agreement that benefits both of our countries in the economic and nonproliferation arenas. The employees of Mayak should be proud of their contributions to improving world security.”