A senior Russian official said Tuesday the United States failed to hold up its end of a bilateral nonproliferation agreement that President Vladimir Putin suspended Monday by not consulting with Russia of its plan to change its plutonium disposition approach.
The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement requires each nation to eliminate 34 metric tons of plutonium, which would be enough to power 17,000 nuclear weapons.
Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, said at the U.N. General Assembly in New York that while his nation has taken steps to fulfill its commitment, the U.S. breached the deal by seeking to cancel construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and switch to an alternative dilution and disposal method.
Putin signed a decree Monday suspending Russian participation in the agreement, citing “unfriendly” U.S. actions as threats to strategic stability. The Obama administration swiftly condemned the move.
According to Ulyanov, Russia “has created and brought to full power the BN-800 fast neutron reactor to irradiate [and] disposition weapon-grade plutonium as fuel and completed the construction of a facility for the fabrication of mixed uranium-plutonium fuel.”
Meanwhile, Ulyanov said, the MOX facility “is only two-thirds finished and the project has been suspended. The United States has not modified its reactors for the use of this fuel. Ultimately, US experts have concluded that the United States will need another 20 to 30 years to start disposing of weapon-grade plutonium in keeping with US-Russian agreements, whereas both countries were to begin disposition by 2018.”
Moreover, the U.S. “has not officially notified Russia of its intention to use an alternative disposition method,” Ulyanov said, noting that the agreement, amended in 2010, “does not stipulate the possibility of the underground burial of disposition plutonium” as the U.S. is proposing at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
