The Secret Effort To Clean Up a Former Soviet Nuclear Test Site

Lasrick writes "The Plutonium Mountain report has just been released by the Belfer Center at Harvard. It describes the remarkable effort the U.S. made to get the Russians to recognize the nuclear proliferation risk they left behind at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test when the Soviet Union collapsed. In this interview with Siegfried Hecker, he describes how he and other scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory recognized the risk to world security as the Semipalatinsk site became overrun with metal scavengers. Quoting: 'The copper cable thieves were not nomads on camelback, but instead they employed industrial excavation machinery and left kilometers of deep trenches digging out everything they could sell. We were concerned that some of that copper cabling could lead to plutonium residues.'"

Comments

I know a guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

His name is Borat and he is from The Great Khazakstan...

Original article worth a read

[bryanandaimee]

Reading the summary I thought "No big deal, so some contaminated dirt is out there and someone might refine it for a few grams of plutonium residue."

But then I decided to read the article. It was slashdotted of course so I went on Google and found the article at a non-slashdotted site. (I know, not really the slashdot way.) All I can say is, HOLY PLUTONIUM Batman! Not residue from tests, but hundreds of pounds of plutonium metal in useable form. Enough for dozens of nuclear bombs. And they capped it and left it there! And now they are telling the world where it is. I'm speechless. (Other than the preceding text of course.)

Re:Original article worth a read

[Russ1642]

I read a book a while back called The Atomic Bazaar. Getting your hands on nuclear weapons materials isn't as difficult as it should be.

Re:Original article worth a read

[icebike]

All I can say is, HOLY PLUTONIUM Batman! Not residue from tests, but hundreds of pounds of plutonium metal in useable form. Enough for dozens of nuclear bombs. And they capped it and left it there! And now they are telling the world where it is. I'm speechless. (Other than the preceding text of course.)

With the collapse of the soviet union, packing up that much plutonium and trucking it back to Russia would have been a fools errand. I suspect those involved didn't expect the disruption to be permanent, and didn't think the local population had any capability utilize it, or to even understand what they had under their feet.

But still, there are horror stories almost as bad right here in the US. The Hanford site is again leaking and DOE was perfectly happy to ignore it for years.

Do you suppose the Russians would reciprocate and sent people to help with Hanford?

Re:Original article worth a read

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most difficult problems with nuclear materials production is removing the desired materials (fissionable) from the undesired ones. So having hundreds of pounds of plutonium may not be nearly as big of a deal as you might think, if it is mixed in with thousands of pounds of other materials. "Dirty bomb(s)" might have been producible from the materials on the site, but actually construction nuclear weapons seems unlikely without a monumental undertaking.

No. This was unburnt fissile material - U235 and/or Pu239 - from nuclear tests, conveniently buried underground. The hard work (enrichment of U235 or making sure that there was no pesky Pu240 in the mix) had been done by Soviet weaponeers. Extracting that material from an atomic test site is nontrivial, but a hell of a lot easier than producing it from scratch.

The unstated assumption was that atomic test sites, being some of the most secure sites in any country, would remain secure. That assumption failed when the USSR broke up, and these sites became map locations in a real-life game of Fallout: former top-secret military bases left unguarded and chock-full of with loot for any intrepid, foolish, or batshiat crazy explorer to poke around in. 99% bottlecaps (copper wire), 0.99% deathtraps (hello, cancer!), and 0.01% game-altering resources for well-equipped villains with nefarious intent.

The awesome thing about this story is that weaponeers from both sides of the Cold War, deeply conscious of the need for each side to preserve its secrets (samples of melted glass from the inside of an underground Soviet test site would still be an intelligence bonanza for the US), managed to find a way to come together and secure the site without compromising each other's secrets. Good on ya, guys. And thanks.

Re:Original article worth a read

[Anonymous Coward]

With the collapse of the soviet union, packing up that much plutonium and trucking it back to Russia

While it would be ignorant of me to pretend that the Soviet Union wasn't mostly a modern version of a Russian empire, to say that everything that was Soviet must be a Russian problem after is (to exaggerate a bit) like blaming Britain when something goes wrong in Australia.

Do you suppose the Russians would reciprocate and sent people to help with Hanford?

If the Americans would let them, they'd freaking love it... a chance to show to everyone that the Americans need their help?

Re:Original article worth a read

[icebike]

to say that everything that was Soviet must be a Russian problem after is (to exaggerate a bit) like blaming Britain when something goes wrong in Australia.

Well, the present situation is sort of akin to saying anything that happens on Bikini Atoll is an American problem once the US decided to use this quiet little pacific paradise as a bomb test site. The Bikini-ans, like the Kazakhs, had no such technology then or now, and had little choice in the decision to use their land as test sites. How could it possibly be THEIR problem?

Re:Original article worth a read

[icebike]

True, but that is only because the US has not yet collapsed like the Soviet Union.

(But don't kid youself about the security at Hanford. Its pathetic. Teenagers from near by highschools hold competitions to see who can penetrate the deepest. Its pretty easy, because its a very big site).

Re:Original article worth a read

[IgnacioB]

I don't get how 50 gallons of nearly dry Strontium at the bottom of an annulus (that's the empty space between two tanks) with cameras watching it is anywhere near "almost as bad" as the tens or hundred of kilograms of plutonium spread across the equivalent of small European country, but whatever. People forget they're paying a bill for an arms race and the legacy of cleaning up from a hastily engineered atom bomb in WWII and subsequent Cold War ain't cheap! To the tune of BILLIONS of dollars actually. Russians have been (and continue to visit and help) at Hanford. That was part of the article about building trust. I've visited with them before...bright folks with some incredible experience and wisdom.

Re:Original article worth a read

[idontgno]

That was back in '85. I'm sure that in 2013 plutonium is available in every corner drug store, but in 1985 it was a little hard to come by.

The solution to pollution is dilution

[Gothmolly]

Spread it out everywhere, it's the quickest way to get rid of it.

Re:The solution to pollution is dilution

[IgnacioB]

The old "dilution is the solution to pollution" theory. It doesn't work so well on thinks like transuranic waste. So, what level of "spreading" is OK? What happens when streams concentrate it downstream into the oceans and it gets into fish? Is it OK to eat a salmon with 100 nanocuries of Pu239 or a steak with 1 microcurie of Cesium 137? It may be quick, but it's not the best...or even the easiest. In fact, stabilization is the far better way to go and let time take care of it.

Re:The solution to pollution is dilution

[IgnacioB]

Yes and No. It is a high alpha emitter, but that is low-energy and blocked by a piece of paper. It's not a big beta or gamma producer. The problem is more the poisonous effects and internal deposition....as alpha can make it through several nearby cells easily. This notion of spreading it out is rather ludicrous. Even if you could collect it all up (think big mining operations that produce massive amounts of waste itself) and then tried to spread it...it's a heavy metal and likes to clump. Unless you suddenly have hundreds of billions of dollars in your pocket to do all this....it's far better to secure it in situ as best as possible with your tens or hundred of millions of dollars.

Huh? Why do we care?

[bobbied]

What is the concern here? That a bunch of metal scavengers would make off with enough Plutonium to do what? Make a dirty bomb? Pretty unlikely.

I must be in the dark or something, because I just don't see this as a serious issue. Three are a whole lot of other issues in the old USSR that deal SERIOUS radiation hazards. There are multiple rusting submarine hulks and surface ships with spent fuel still on board just sitting there and their industrial energy production made a huge mess all over the place. The test range is not a big risk compared to all this.

Now if they start seeing a bunch of North Koreans showing up hauling off equipment... THEN I get worried...

Re:Huh? Why do we care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Poisoning themselves? Selling plutonium-contaminated copper to companies/countries wiring up cities? Selling such plutonium-contaminated copper to companies in China or elsewhere, ending up in toys and lighting fixtures and the such in the US (somehow or other bypassing border checking)?

Are you sure you RTFA?

[DaveAtFraud]

The "test site" is an area about the size of Begium or New Jersey depending on which geographic comparison works better for you. The primary reason for getting and keeping the Russians involved was because they knew where to look (from TFA). Yeah, it's kind of "security through obscurity" but it's a big area and part of the effort was to seal the nastier hot spots so it would take a significant effort to come in and dig them up. Finally, part of the continuing effort is to monitor the area with drones, seismic sensors, CCTV, etc. There's also a little bit of trying to scare off the metal scavangers by hinting that the copper cables and other metals that they might be able to recover are radioactive and could be VERY unhealthy to be around.

Cheers,
Dave

Nunn-Lugar: when government works

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

A Democrat and a Republican saw a genuine national security threat and agreed on a way of combating it without macho bullshit. They pushed their solution through even though it involved the unpalatable idea of sending money to a former enemy full of people certain to steal it. As this story shows, it worked.

Re:Nunn-Lugar: when government works

[interkin3tic]

I think the timing was also right. That was in 92 before the news really went full tilt with selling tickets to partisan boxing. It also helped that the communist "threat" had just collapsed. The powers that be were preoccupied with figuring out who we should be afraid of next to justify more defense spending, and anyway this sent some money their way.

Re:Metal Market Manipulation.

[instagib]

Metal manipulation by Goldman Sach is why metals cost so much.

This is offtopic, but the source article is a longish, but really good read:
A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

Banks: not only too big to fail, but also too big to be controlled, and the main reason for all large scale economic troubles.