Victories Come Slowly in Cleanup Of Soviet Bloc Nuclear Materials

Washington Post : David Hoffman reports on the efforts to contain the flow of nuclear material into the wrong hands, by following Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) on a visit to Podolsk, Russia.Last Wednesday, five green reinforced containers holding a total of 21 pounds of uranium, about a third of it highly enriched, which had been quietly removed from a research reactor in Otwock, Poland, were opened up in Podolsk and blended down for use in nuclear power plants.Lugar, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “People around the world would be reassured if they saw what we saw today.” Nunn and Lugar who sponsored legislation at the end of the cold war to remove thousands of tons of weapons-grade radioactive material from loosely guarded sites remain worried at the slow pace of the decommissioning program.