Richard G. Lugar, United States Senator for Indiana

Podolsk, Russia – U.S. Sens. Dick Lugar and Sam Nunn, authors of the landmark Nunn-Lugar Act, toured the Luch Scientific and Industrial research facility located south of Moscow, Russia, where highly-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel, including fuel originally exported by Russia to various research reactors around the world, is being down-blended to low-enriched uranium. The tour and site visit was a part of their ongoing activities in Russia in celebration of the 15^th Anniversary of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.

Luch is one of Russia’s best-known scientific research facilities in materials sciences. Its activities have direct applications in the defense and aerospace sectors, including in high-temperature materials, lasers and space reactors (the TOPAZ reactors used in the Soviet and Russian space programs). Under the Department of Energy’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative, Luch has received four shipments of high-risk nuclear fuel from various locations around the world, including from Latvia, Libya, Germany, and most recentlyPoland.

HEU is directly usable in nuclear weapons. The U.S. Department of Energy is currently executing significant efforts with Materials, Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) and Materials Consolidation and Conversion (MCC) activities at Luch. That began in 1995, have resulted in security upgrades at the site and in consolidation of the HEU there—from 50 areas and 17 buildings to just five areas in four secure buildings. Since MCC activities began at Luch, Eight metric tons of HEU has been down-blended at the site. Luch is also receiving Russian research reactor fuel for down-blending under the Global Threat Reduction Initiative.

“The work that Sam and I saw being undertaken here, today, and the work we were briefed on shows that when Russia and the United States work together our two nations have the capacity to accomplish much in the area of nuclear security. We have seen, at this site, our relationship develop from assistance to cooperation, and now we must work on moving toward partnership and sustainability in these areas.”

In November 1991, Lugar (R-IN) and Nunn (D-GA) authored the Nunn-Lugar Act, which established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. This program has provided U.S. funding and expertise to help the former Soviet Union safeguard and dismantle its enormous stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, related materials, and delivery systems. In 2003, Congress adopted the Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act, which authorized the Nunn-Lugar program to operate outside the former Soviet Union to address proliferation threats. In 2004, Nunn-Lugar funds were committed for the first time outside of the former Soviet Union to destroy chemical weapons in Albania, under a Lugar-led expansion of the program.

The Nunn-Lugar scorecard now totals 6,982 strategic nuclear warheads deactivated, 653 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) destroyed, 485 ICBM silos eliminated, 101 ICBM mobile launchers destroyed, 613 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) eliminated, 436 SLBM launchers eliminated, 30 nuclear submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles destroyed, 155 bombers eliminated, 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles (ASMs) destroyed, 194 nuclear test tunnels eliminated, 355 nuclear weapons transport train shipments, 12 nuclear weapons storage site security upgrades, and 9 biological monitoring stations built and equipped. Perhaps most importantly, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan are nuclear weapons free as a result of cooperative efforts under the Nunn-Lugar program. Those countries were the third, fourth and eighth largest nuclear weapons powers in the world.

Beyond nuclear elimination, the Nunn-Lugar program secures and destroys chemical weapons and biological weapons, and has worked to reemploy scientists and facilities related to weapons of mass destruction in peaceful research initiatives. The International Science and Technology Centers, of which the United States is the leading sponsor, engaged 58,000 former weapons scientists in peaceful work. The International Proliferation Prevention Program has funded 750 projects involving 14,000 former weapons scientists and created some 580 new peaceful high-tech jobs.

Lugar makes annual oversight trips to Nunn-Lugar sites in the former Soviet Union.

On the web:

The Nunn-Lugar program: http://lugar.senate.gov/nunnlugar/

The Nunn-Lugar scorecard: http://lugar.senate.gov/nunnlugar/scorecard.html

The Nuclear Threat Initiative: www.nti.org

The annual CTR report has details on the program: http://www.dtra.mil/documents/oe/ctr/FY08%20CTR%20Annual%20Report%20to%20Congress.pdf.

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