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Moscow wants to halt reactors conversion project

WASHINGTON: Moscow has told the Clinton administration it wants to drop a joint project to convert its remaining military nuclear reactors to purely civilian use, the Washington Post reported in Sunday's editions.

Russia now proposes to shut down the reactors entirely because of delays in implementing the joint project, cost overruns and warnings by nuclear experts of a possible Chernobyl-type nuclear catastrophe, the paper said.

The project was described as an "historic" achievement in 1997 when it was negotiated and has formed a centrepiece of the Clinton administration's arms control effort.

The agreement committed Russia to halting the output of weapons-grade plutonium by the end of this year, ridding the world of enough fissile material for nearly 400 new nuclear weapons every year.

But two weeks ago, with costs spiraling and an increasingly unrealistic deadline approaching, Russian atomic energy officials told a visiting U.S. team "of a surprising change in their position," the Post reported.

The new Russian proposal would shut down the reactors altogether in favour of alternative conventional sources, the paper said. It said the Russians put the total cost of their new plan at $230 million, the bulk of which would be paid by the United States under the Russian plan.

Clinton administration officials were not immediately available for comment. But the Post cited them as voicing scepticism about the projected cost, which it said was significantly lower than previous estimates.

The Clinton administration officials were said by the paper to acknowledge that the timetable for Russia's joining a moratorium on weapons-grade plutonium production had slipped to at least 2004, regardless of whether Moscow's latest plan is accepted by the United States.-Reuters