Nuclear Cities Initiative

This article has multiple issues. Please help or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (November 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (November 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The Nuclear Cities Initiative is an initiative which purports to support the now struggling community and structures of post-USSR nuclear research, aimed at preventing nuclear proliferation.^[1]

History[]

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, concerns about the fate of the Soviet "nuclear cities" fell into the hands of Russia. It was in these secret, highly restricted cities that the Soviet Union designed and produced its nuclear weapons. Due to the great importance of these cities, they were generously funded by the Soviet Union. After the fall of the USSR, the 600,000 residents and workers of these cities were left enormous funding problems over the past decade of political, social, and economic difficulties in Russia.^[2]

Despite attempts by Moscow to create self-sustainable infrastructure, the attempts ultimately failed. The RANSAC, now the , responded by launching the Nuclear Cities Initiative. The initiative was brought about after a 1997 report by the RANSAC recommended action to prevent the "nuclear know-how" of the workers in the cities falling into undesirable hands. United States president Bill Clinton and Russian leader Boris Yeltsin made the deal in September 1998, confirming their approval of the overall concept. In 1999 $15 million were procured from American assistance programmes, but a Russian financial crisis and Congress' decision to halve funding to $7.5 million reduced funding to the project.^[2]

The project at first worked only on a few of the cities; Russia disallowed development elsewhere until success could be proven in a handful of cities first.

In 2001, the U.S. General Accounting Office criticised the progress made so far, and recommended merging NCI and the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention into a single programme to improve efficiency. By the end of the Clinton administration, over $30 million had been secured for the project, but this was heavily cut by the following Bush administration who reduced expenditure to $6.6 million. However, the 2002 , which merged IPP and NCI, resulted in a substantial increase in funding to $42 million as it brought funding from the budget, which was further increased by $15 million after the September 11 attacks.^[2]

Russia's Ten Nuclear Cities ^[2][]

1. Sarov (location of VNIIEF-Federal Nuclear Center and Avangard Electromechanical Plant). Formerly known as Arzamas-16.
2. Snezhinsk (location of -Federal Nuclear Center). Formerly known as Chelyabinsk-70.
3. Zarechnyy (location of ). Formerly known as Penza-19.
4. Novouralsk (location of Ural Electrochemical Combine). Formerly known as Sverdlovsk-44.
5. Lesnoy (location of ). Formerly known as Sverdlovsk-45.
6. Ozersk (location of Mayak Production Association). Formerly known as Chelyabinsk-65.
7. Trekhgornyy (location of ). Formerly known as Zlatoust-36.
8. Seversk (location of Siberian Chemical Combine). Formerly known as Tomsk-7.
9. Zheleznogorsk (location of Mining and Chemical Combine). Formerly known as Krasnoyarsk-26.
10. Zelenogorsk (location of Krasnoyarsk-45 Electrochemical Plant). Formerly known as Krasnoyarsk-45.

References[]

External links[]

• Nuclear Cities Initiative, Nuclear Threat Initiative, at www.nti.org.
• Nuclear Cities Initiative, at www.y12.doe.gov.