The United States and Russia have not held any discussions about resuming full implementation of the bilateral plutonium elimination agreement that Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended in early October, a top U.S. State Department official said Wednesday.
Thomas Countryman, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in an interview with NS&D Monitor that while the two countries have maintained contact on issues related to nuclear security, nonproliferation, and arms control, “we haven’t talked about them changing their decision on the [Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement].”
The 2000 deal requires each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. In suspending its participation, Moscow said the Obama administration failed to uphold its end of the agreement by trying to cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina – the agreed-upon U.S. disposal method under the PMDA – in favor of an alternative plutonium dilution and disposal method.
The Russian decision, Countryman said, “is a fit of diplomatic pique that has little practical consequence. The Russians have said that they will dispose of those 34 tons as they had planned, that it will not be moved into any kind of weapons-usable stockpile.” The United States also committed itself to verifiably disposing of the plutonium. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced Monday at the conference that the IAEA would monitor the dilution and disposal of 6 metric tons of plutonium at the Savannah River Site – separate from the material covered by the PMDA – as part of its commitment to eliminate a total of 40 metric tons.
