US, Russia Forge Ahead On Nuclear Security

(Image from SPFPA)

From Nukes And Spooks:

Relations between the United States and Russia may be their worst since the end of the Cold War, but that hasn’t stopped the sides from forging ahead with efforts to prevent nuclear weapons-grade materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.

In the latest measure of progress, U.S. and Russian experts have completed a project to strengthen security at one of Russia’s largest facilities for storing nuclear weapons-grade materials, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The facility is located at the Mayak Nuclear Association, a sprawling decades-old nuclear weapons plant that suffered accidents in the 1950s and 1960s that exposed workers and residents in the surrounding area of Chelyabinsk to radiation.

The security upgrades at the storage facility, which contains the largest amount of nuclear weapons-grade material of any such site in Russia, were funded by the United States at a cost of $15 million under an agreement that President Bush signed in February 2005 with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin while Putin was president.

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My Comment: It is amazing how mutual interests trumps ideology and politics.