Russia To Reduce Plutonium Stockpile

Russia will reduce significantly its stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium as part of an overall cutback of its large nuclear arsenal, President Boris Yeltsin said Monday.

In a letter to the Geneva-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Yeltsin said Russia would remove 50 tons of plutonium and 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium from its military programs.

“The rate and stages of this process will be dependent on both the dismantling of nuclear weapons under the agreements on nuclear disarmament and the construction of proper storage of the material,” Yeltsin said.

The START II accord sets a warhead limit of 3,500 for both the United States and Russia, down from about 8,000. Yeltsin signed that Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the United States in 1993, although Russia’s hard-line Parliament has not ratified it.

A recent international study concluded that a total of 1,750 tons of highly enriched uranium and 230 tons of plutonium have been produced worldwide for military purposes over the past 50 years.