Los Alamos played key role in bilateral effort

Russian secure storage facility commissioned

After an extensive twelve-year bilateral effort, the Russian Fissile Material Storage Facility (RFMSF) located at Mayak was commissioned by Minatom Dec. 10, 2003. The RFMSF is a United States-sponsored secure storage facility built to hold fissile material derived from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons. The complex is about the size of the Pentagon's footprint and will be the largest, most secure such facility in Russia. Russia plans to load 24 metric tons of weapons useable plutonium, but it has a capacity of 100 metric tons, should additional excess material be declared.

This $412M project is one of the most successful Nunn–Lugar programs. It is expected to become fully operational and begin receiving plutonium sometime in 2004, after all integrated systems testing and personnel training have been completed, and security measures have been activated. Completion of this facility is considered to be the largest single step toward safeguarding the international stockpile of weapons useable material and contribution to international nonproliferation efforts.

Los Alamos played a key and continuous role from the project's inception to its completion with more than 190 staff participating. Over the history of the RFMSF project, Los Alamos had three broad roles: to provide advanced nuclear material facility technology to modernize the Russians' approach to nuclear safety, and fissile material control, and accountability; to technically evaluate the facility design, construction, and pre-operational state to confirm the facility will meet its mission and provide safe, secure, and ecologically sound storage of fissile material; and to provide and evaluate state-of-the-art technology for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to support facility transparency measures for future verification activities during operations.

The Laboratory's achievements over the life of the project were numerous, despite many obstacles. Within this challenging environment Los Alamos provided the Russians extensive access to Western methods and technology to perform their own nuclear safety analysis that would stand up to international scrutiny. Lab researchers reviewed the thermal design of the RFMSF and thermal environment of the plutonium and led a large bilateral thermal program of analysis and full-scale experiments that confirmed a substantial thermal margin in the design. This effort determined the plutonium capacity could be increased from 33 to 100 metric tons, sufficient to hold all of Russia's excess plutonium for the foreseeable future.

Los Alamos also completed a technically comprehensive safety and ecological analysis and evaluation that confirmed the safety adequacy of the facility per U.S. and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety standards; evaluated the adequacy of the facility measures for fissile material control, physical protection and accountability, and facility security; and provided the technical backbone of the U.S. transparency program by conducting an extensive radiation measurement campaign for a database for nondestructive fissile material mass measurements and providing expert support to the U.S. transparency negotiating team.

These many efforts culminated in the successful completion of the facility and confirmation that its is capable of making the world a safer place.

This article was contributed by Los Alamos researcher F. Jeffrey Martin, of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Division.

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