Russia said on Monday it had closed a weapons-grade plutonium reactor as part of a deal with the United States to reduce the risk of proliferation from Cold War-era nuclear bomb plants. The reactor, at a secret Siberian plant founded by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, was turned off on Sunday, 45 years after it started producing plutonium for the Soviet weapons programme.
"The industrial reactor ADE-4 was finally stopped on Sunday at 11 in the morning. That is the final closure of the reactor," said a spokesman for the Siberian Chemical Combine, in the closed city of Seversk, formerly known as Tomsk-7. After the end of the Cold War, weapons-grade plutonium was no longer needed for Russia's nuclear weapons programme.
But the reactors at the plant were kept running to provide heat and electricity for the local community, and the US Department of Energy has estimated the plant produced enough plutonium for several nuclear bombs a week. The unwanted plutonium was stored at the plant, prompting environmental groups to raise questions about its security. Russia says its nuclear plants are properly guarded.
"This reactor should have been stopped a long time ago," said Igor Kudrik, an Oslo-based commentator for the Bellona environmental group. "The significance is this reactor was creating weapons-grade plutonium that no one needed."
"The weapons-grade plutonium and a massive amount of radioactive waste is stored under the ground at stores at the plant. They say it is perfectly save. We say it is dangerous." Earlier this month, the plant said the ADE-4 reactor had been stopped suddenly because a transformer that fed the electronics of the reactor had been switched off. There was no leakage of radioactivity.
Local residents have applied to the European Court of Human Rights to get compensation for an accident in 1993 when an a blast ruptured a tank containing uranium and plutonium, spreading radiation over surrounding villages.
Aid from the United States was used to help refurbish a 1950s coal-fired power plant, reducing the community's dependence on the reactors for power. Another reactor at the plant, known as ADE-5 and started in 1965, will continue to produce heat and power until June, when Russian nuclear officials say it will be finally shut down.
The United States and Russia agreed in March 2003 to shut down Russia's three remaining plutonium-producing reactors. The US is also funding an electricity and heat plant to replace a plutonium plant near the closed city of Zheleznogorsk, formerly Krasnoyarsk-26. The plant at Zheleznogorsk, which would be Russia's last, is scheduled to be shut down by late 2010. Plants that supplied material for nuclear weapons were among the best-kept secrets in the Soviet Union.