Excerpt from Disposing of Plutonium in Russia: Hearing Before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, March 9, 1993 For the past two decades, the Governmental Affairs Committee has carried out oversight hearings on proliferation threats and has written public laws on nuclear export criteria, such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act, going back as far as 1978. With this back ground, the Governmental Affairs Committee will today examine the disposition of some 500 tons of highly-enriched uranium and 100 tons of plutonium extracted from weapons of the former Soviet Union. Since a nuclear weapon can be made with mere kilograms of these materials, a loss of less than 100th of a percent of these 600 tons could enable a Saddam Hussein, for instance, to make a nuclear weapon. The uranium part of the fissile stockpile can be addressed much more easily than plutonium because it can be diluted with natural uranium and used as reactor fuel. On February 18th, General Burns and Minister Mikhailov signed a u.s.-russian joint agree ment to do this, but the price on the 500 tons of heu has not yet been set, and this is one of several uncertainties which we want to explore today. Plutonium cannot be diluted or modified to prevent its use in weapons. In addition, except for weapons use, it is generally agreed that plutonium is a financial burden. It is more expensive to use than uranium, and it is difficult to protect and to monitor. In order to address these problems, the u.s. And Russia have agreed to design a large storage facility which could be located near the town of Tomsk. This probably is the best near-term solu tion available to us, but I am concerned for the longer term. The Russians have stated they want to move to a plutonium economy, with a new reprocessing plant and new breeder reactors. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.