City seen as possible source for contraband uranium is one of Russia's nuclear centers

MOSCOW (AP) _ Novosibirsk is located in the depths of Siberia, but despite the remoteness it's one of Russia's main areas for nuclear activity and a cause of concern for those worried about nuclear

Saturday, January 27th 2007, 7:45 pm

By: News On 6

MOSCOW (AP) _ Novosibirsk is located in the depths of Siberia, but despite the remoteness it's one of Russia's main areas for nuclear activity and a cause of concern for those worried about nuclear materials falling into terrorists' hands.

The concerns about Russia's third-largest city rose to the forefront this week after officials in the former Soviet republic of Georgia announced the arrest of a Russian man for allegedly trying to sell weapons-grade uranium to an undercover agent.

The man, who was arrested last year, initially told his interrogators the uranium came from Novosibirsk, 1,600 miles east of Moscow, Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told The Associated Press on Saturday. He later recanted his statement, but Georgian authorities sent a letter to Russia's Federal Security Service inquiring about the possible link to Novosibirsk, Utiashvili said. The agency declined to comment Saturday.

A top Russian science official has said the sample of the alleged contraband uranium provided by Georgia was too small for analysis that could determine its origin.

The episode appeared to cast doubt on Russia's ability to halt the black-market trade in nuclear materials and renewed concern about security at Russia's array of nuclear facilities.

The Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant is one of Russia's main facilities for producing enriched uranium both for use in nuclear reactors and in the higher concentration that could be used to make an atomic bomb.

In addition, highly enriched uranium has been shipped into Novosibirsk in recent years from former Soviet bloc countries, including Poland and Romania. Under a program backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the uranium is to be blended down into lower concentrations.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration funded a program to improve security at the Novosibirsk plant as part of a wider initiative to boost security at facilities throughout Russia. The NNSA says the Novosibirsk plant completed its upgrade in late 2004.

However, security apparently was lax in Novosibirsk for years before that. In 2002, the head of the agency that was then responsible for security at nuclear facilities admitted that weapons-grade nuclear material had disappeared from Russian facilities.

``Most often, these instances are connected with factories preparing fuel'' including Novosibirsk's, the official, Yuri Vishnyevsky, said at the time.

Novosibirsk was also the site of the 1997 arrest of two men who officials said intended to smuggle some 11 pounds of enriched uranium to Pakistan or China. That uranium reportedly was stolen from a plant in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.

Security at Russia's nuclear facilities was seen as deteriorating rapidly in the early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when economic hardships made black-market activities increasingly widespread and as political chaos left official lines of command and supervision shaky.

The U.S.-based organization Nuclear Threat Initiative said in a report last year that Russia remains the prime country of concern for contraband nuclear material.

``Russia has the world's largest stockpiles of both nuclear weapons and the materials to make them, scattered among hundreds of buildings and bunkers at scores of sites. Over the past 15 years security for those stockpiles has improved from poor to moderate, but there remain immense threats those security systems must confront,'' the NTI said.