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21–641PDF 2005

REDUCING THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR TERRORISM:

A REVIEW OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S

GLOBAL THREAT REDUCTION INITIATIVE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 24, 2005

Serial No. 109–67

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

JOE BARTON, Texas, Chairman 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida 

Vice Chairman 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

CHARLIE NORWOOD, Georgia 

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

CHARLES W. ‘‘CHIP’’ PICKERING, 

Mississippi, Vice Chairman 

VITO FOSSELLA, New York 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

STEVE BUYER, Indiana 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho 

SUE MYRICK, North Carolina 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

Ranking Member 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York 

FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

TED STRICKLAND, Ohio 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

TOM ALLEN, Maine 

JIM DAVIS, Florida 

JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

BUD ALBRIGHT, Staff Director 

DAVID CAVICKE, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel 

REID P.F. STUNTZ, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky, Chairman 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

CHARLES W. ‘‘CHIP’’ PICKERING, 

Mississippi 

CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

JOE BARTON, Texas, 

(Ex Officio) 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

Ranking Member 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan, 

(Ex Officio) 

(II) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Testimony of: 

Ferguson, Charles D., Fellow, Science and Technology, Council on Foreign Relations ................................................................................................ 31

Longsworth, Paul, Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Proliferation, National Nuclear Security Administration ........................................ 4

McGaffigan, Edward, Jr., Commissioner, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ........................................................................................................... 12

Rohlfing, Joan B., Senior Vice President for Programs and Operations, 

Nuclear Threat Initiative ............................................................................. 37

(III) 

(1)

REDUCING THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR TERRORISM: A REVIEW OF THE DEPARTMENT 

OF ENERGY’S GLOBAL THREAT REDUCTION 

INITIATIVE 

TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:10 p.m., in room 

2322, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Whitfield (chairman) presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Whitfield, Walden, Burgess, 

and Inslee. 

Staff present: Mark Paoletta, chief counsel; Dwight Cates; investigator; Chad Grant, legislative clerk; Voncille Hines, minority research assistant; and Chris Knauer, minority investigator. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. At this time I will call this hearing to order. This 

is the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for the Energy and Commerce Committee, and the topic of today’s hearing is 

Reducing the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism: A Review of the Department of Energy’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative. 

I want to welcome Mr. Inslee here with us today. Ranking Minority Member Bart Stupak is controlling time on the floor on the 

stem cell debate, and so Mr. Inslee will be serving as the ranking 

nmnority member at least at the beginning of this hearing, and I 

am glad you areyou were here, Mr. Inslee. 

At this time I will go on and make my opening statement. 

Over the past several years the Oversight and Investigations 

Subcommittee has held several hearings on nuclear terrorism prevention. We must prevent any effort by terrorist organizations to 

obtain nuclear materials for use against us in a radiological dispersion device or a nuclear device. A comprehensive defense against 

nuclear terrorism deserves our sustained attention. 

Our earlier hearings reviewed the efforts of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection to target and inspect sea cargo containers to stop nuclear material from entering the country at the 

border. These efforts include the installation of radiation portal 

monitors at all ports of entry that can detect nuclear material inside cargo containers. 

Today the hearing will review DOE’s Global Threat Reduction 

Initiative. The GTRI program provides an additional layer of defense on top of the effort of the Bureau of Customs and Border ProVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:42 May 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\DOCS\21641.TXT HCOM1 PsN: JOEP
2

tection. While the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is primarily focused on detecting nuclear material at our borders, the 

GTRI program is focused on identifying, removing, and securing 

vulnerable nuclear material before the terrorists can even attempt 

to smuggle it into our country. 

The GTRI program also has an extensive domestic effort to secure radioactive materials here in our country that could be used 

in a dirty bomb. This is a worldwide effort, and the challenges are 

significant. For decades the U.S. and Russia have promoted the 

peaceful use of nuclear power around the world by sharing tons of 

highly enriched uranium. With dozens of foreign countries now in 

this age of terrorism, DOE is focused on recovering this highly enriched uranium and converting research reactors to the use of 

LEU. 

The GTRI program has identified 25 research reactors here in 

the U.S. that will be converted from highly enriched uranium fuel. 

Already 11 reactors have been converted, including two domestic 

research reactors which were announced last month at Texas A&M 

University and the University of Florida. 

HEU is a major threat because it could be used in a nuclear 

bomb that could produce a catastrophic explosion. However, the 

threat of a radiological dispersion device that contaminates an area 

with a smaller amount of radiological material is also a major concern. The GTRI program is working closely with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to identify, recover, and dispose of sealed 

sources here in the U.S. 

It is important to understand that sealed sources licensed by the 

NRC are essential for medical-industrial purposes and will continue to be used in this country every day. However, until recently, 

there has been no program to recover these materials when they 

were abandoned, discarded, or no longer necessary for their intended use. 

NRC is working to upgrade security for sealed sources and has 

developed a national tracking system for high-risk sealed sources 

in use across the country. I look forward to testimony from the 

NRC and the NNSA on these important programs today. I also look 

forward to input from witnesses from the Nuclear Threat Initiative 

and the Council on Foreign Relations, who will provide their input 

on the current status of the GTRI program’s efforts to identify, remove, and secure nuclear materials. 

With that I yield back my 51 seconds and recognize Ranking Minority Member Inslee. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Chair indicated, 

Mr. Stupak is managing the stem cell issue right now. I know he 

has a tremendous interest in the Global Threat Reduction Initiative. In fact, he organized a secure briefing on this some time ago 

and we appreciate his leadership, and I will try to fill in for him 

with whatever skills I can bring to bear. 

This is a very important thing in my district. With Seattle and 

Takoma Ports in the State of Washington, we recognize the risk associated with this. We recognize how much of the material is in the 

world today, much of it still insecure, some of it padlocked, some 

of it under cybersecurity, some of it very well secured, and much 

of it perhaps maybe a chain link fence, maybe less. So I can tell 

3

you that this is of great concern to my constituents and myself as 

well, because I consider it probably the greatest threat that really 

does exist today. And there are many, but I consider this one to 

be preeminent and probably the one that we can do the most about 

by identifying and securing this particular material. 

The initiative has had some major successes today, but we have 

got a lot of work to do, and I will be particularly interested in a 

review and discussion today about how the agencies are working 

together. This is a situation because we have multiple jurisdiction 

of agencies. It does strike me that there are potentials, that there 

are cracks not being filled and perhaps duplication of effort. I am 

very interested to see how the agencies are working together, particularly on the international and domestic side. 

Obviously, the purpose of the initiative is to remove or secure 

high-risk nuclear and radiological materials around the world, and 

this is an effort that we do want to be comprehensive in addressing 

this material threat from poorly guarded facilities. 

Some of these materials are found domestically, which is why we 

have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before us today so we can 

understand better how the NRC interacts with DOE in this effort. 

Of course, we have a major international component, as carried out 

in cooperation with the Department of State and a range of international organizations such as the IAC. 

To this point the committee has conducted only limited oversight 

of this program. Nonetheless, what we have observed does appear 

encouraging, at least to me. 

The initiative has successfully removed nuclear materials from a 

variety of sources throughout the globe. It has also successfully secured material at various sites. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I will say that this is a great investment of 

taxpayer dollars. We have got to make sure that they are comprehensive. 

With that in mind, I will be looking forward to several of the 

questions we will have today, if I can allude to them now and perhaps the witnesses can keep them in mind. 

First, do we have a list of priority sites based on a realistic 

threat assessment and material risk? How do we establish that 

prioritization? Have we done that on a multiple-agency basis? 

Second, is there general agreement among the key agencies that 

we are addressing the most troubling sites and doing so in a timely 

manner? Or are there disagreements in that regard and how do we 

resolve them? 

Third, and perhaps most important, the one that we are responsible for on this side of the desk, are we adequately funding this 

effort, and is the initiative working as expeditiously as possible? In 

addition to adequate financial support, does the program have sufficient support from the U.S. State Department to place priority 

sites high on an international agenda? 

So I look forward to that discussion today and yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Inslee. 

[Additional statement submitted for the record follows:]

4

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOE BARTON, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY

AND COMMERCE

Chairman Whitfield, thank you for holding this important hearing. Although the 

words ‘‘homeland security’’ are not in its name, the Department of Energy is really 

the leader in homeland security in several areas. This hearing is about an important 

homeland security issue—reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism. 

The core purpose of the Department of Energy is to ensure the country has a fully 

functioning nuclear weapon stockpile that continues to serve as our primary deterrent against acts of war on our nation. 

The Department of Energy’s extensive knowledge and experience in nuclear weapons research and production is also relied upon to prevent the spread of nuclear 

weapons and nuclear materials. DOE is the worldwide leader in providing critical 

nuclear non-proliferation assistance to several federal agencies and international 

governments, and also provides on-the-ground programs to identify, secure, and remove vulnerable nuclear materials before they fall into the hands of terrorists. 

There has not been a successful attempt by any terrorist organization to obtain 

and use radiological material in a ‘‘dirty bomb’’ or a nuclear device in this country. 

However, a comprehensive strategy to prevent nuclear terrorism is needed to keep 

nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists, and to prevent a successful attack 

in the event terrorists were to accumulate nuclear materials. 

A comprehensive strategy requires several lines of defense, but also a good offense. The Global Threat Reduction Initiative is leading the charge for the offense. 

With the assistance of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the GTRI program has 

recovered over 10,000 sealed sources containing radioactive material here in the 

U.S. that otherwise may have been abandoned in un-secure facilities across the 

country. 

The GTRI program is also working to prioritize the recovery of highly enriched 

uranium and radiological materials in countries where terrorists are known to operate. 

Today we will learn about several successful efforts by GTRI around the world. 

While these success stories are notable, the GTRI program was just recently created, and I am concerned that the program lacks a set of performance measures 

that can be used to clearly track overall progress from year to year. I hope this issue 

can be examined today. I want to express my full support for DOE’s ongoing effort 

in preventing nuclear terrorism. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WHITFIELD. At this time I will welcome the first panel, and 

before I introduce them I would like to ask unanimous consent that 

all members of the subcommittee may have up to 7 days in which 

to introduce their opening statement, particularly since so many of 

them are not here this afternoon. So, without objection, so ordered. 

At this time on Panel I, we are very pleased to have with us this 

afternoon Mr. Paul Longsworth, who is the Deputy Administrator 

for Defense Nuclear Proliferation at the National Nuclear Security 

Administration. We welcome you, Mr. Longsworth. 

In addition, Mr. Ed McGaffigan who is a Commissioner at the 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We welcome you. 

At this time, Mr. Longsworth, we will call on you for a 5-minute 

opening statement. 

STATEMENTS OF PAUL LONGSWORTH, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION, NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION; AND EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., COMMISSIONER, U.S. NUCLEAR 

REGULATORY COMMISSION 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Inslee. 

I am going to talk about initially our five-pronged approach to 

ensure that the materials, the technology, and the expertise that 

are required in any nuclear—any weapons of mass destruction program do not fall into the wrong hands. 

5

First, our programs at NNSA. We want to secure and account for 

nuclear materials in Russia and the former Soviet Union and we 

are making progress in that area. We have accelerated our programs to secure an estimated 600 metric tons of weapons-usable 

material in Russia. To date, we have secured over 70 percent of the 

sites where these materials are stored, and we are on course to finish all of our work in Russia by 2008, a full 2 years ahead of the 

schedule established prior to 2001. In fact, this year, we will complete all of our work at the Russian Navy nuclear weapons sites. 

Second, we want to establish the capability to detect the movement or trafficking of weapons-usable materials. Through our programs like Second Line of Defense and the Megaports Initiative, 

we are working with selected countries to install radiation detection equipment at key transit choke points throughout the world 

such as seaports, airports and land border crossings, and this committee has done a lot of work in this area. We are currently operating more than 50 land border crossing detectionsites, and we expect to add several more this year. 

Third, we want to stop the production of new fissile material in 

Russia and eliminate existing stockpiles. Currently, Russia operates three reactors that produce plutonium. They need these reactors for district heating and electricity, but they produce about 1.2 

metric tons of plutonium every year. That is enough, roughly, for 

a couple of new nuclear warheads every week. 

We are working with the Russians to shut down these reactors 

and replace them with coal-fired plants, and we are on track. We 

began work at the first site in February, at Seversk, and we will 

begin at Zheleznogorsk we hope later this year or early next year. 

Fourth, we want to eliminate existing material. We do this 

through several programs. The HEU purchase agreement, which I 

know the chairman is intimately very familiar with, that is a very 

successful program. This summer we will reach the halfway point 

in blending down 500 metric tons of weapons origin HEU from 

Russian warheads. As an aside, half of U.S. uranium requirements 

are met by dismantled Russian nuclear warheads. So nuclear is 20 

percent of the overall U.S. energy mix. That means 1 out of every 

10 of these lights in this hearing room is fueled by dismantled Russian nuclear warheads. So it is a very successful program. 

Fifth, we want to eliminate or consolidate the remaining weapons-usable nuclear material and radiological materials that exist 

throughout the remainder of the world. This past May, the Department of Energy launched the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, 

which is the topic of the hearing here today. As the chairman said, 

we hope to identify, secure, recover, and disposition vulnerable 

high-risk, nuclear and radiological materials that pose a threat to 

the international community and to do so as quickly as possible. 

GTRI works to achieve this mission by converting targeted research reactors around the world that use highly enriched uranium 

to a low-enriched uranium fuel. We try to then repatriate the spent 

fuel and fresh fuel from these facilities back to the U.S. if it’s U.S. 

origin or back to the Russian Federation if it’s Russian or Soviet 

origin. 

We secure high-risk vulnerable radiological materials that might 

pose a threat to the United States or our allies, and we identify 

6

and address nuclear and other radiological materials that had not 

been previously addressed, and we call these gap materials. These 

are, in many cases, materials that are neither Russian nor U.S. origin that might have been created in an indigenous program in a 

country around the world. 

The reason we are so concerned with this material is obvious. If 

terrorists were able to get, particularly fissionable material, HEU 

or plutonium, they would have overcome the most critical step in 

constructing a nuclear weapon. According to the International 

Atomic Energy Agency, only 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium is needed for a nuclear explosive device. Therefore, any civilian research reactor, especially those that possess HEU, we believe 

we need to focus on on a time-critical basis. 

We prioritize our work by applying risk-based approaches to 

identify vulnerable nuclear materials and radiological materials. 

This risk-based approach is informed by several criteria, including 

but not limited to the type and quantity of the material involved, 

the security conditions at the site where the material is located, 

and the regional and country issues where the material is actually 

located. So how secure is the country; is there known terrorist activities in that country? 

To help ensure that GTRI is prioritizing our efforts, we conducted last year the Global Materials Removal and Research Reactor Security Study. This study drew from both classified and unclassified data and there was an attempt to put into one classified 

report, using all sources, the locations and quantities of all materials that we view to be a risk to the United States. We use that 

report as a living document, and that is the report that guides 

where we do our work and what materials we focus on. 

I would like to go just very briefly to the various component of 

GTRI. I mentioned that we are trying to convert the reactor cores 

that use HEU. We do this by converting cores that can be converted, using existing technology as quickly as possible. We also 

are developing a new variety of fuel to convert cores that, because 

of the way the reactor is designed or the mission that it has to 

carry out, requires a much higher density of neutrons. That variety 

of fuel does not exist today. We have targeted 105 reactors worldwide. Of these 105, 40 have already converted to a low-enriched 

core; 35 can convert with available fuels, and we are queuing those 

up to be completed on an accelerated basis; 30 cannot convert using 

existing technology, and that is why we have doubled the budget 

to develop this new variety of fuel to convert those last remaining 

reactors. 

To show the world that we are practicing what we preach, we are 

also working, as the chairman noted, to convert domestic reactors, 

and this year we have identified two reactors that we will convert, 

the University of Florida and Texas A&M. And we will be making 

a decision in the future about what additional U.S. reactors need 

to be converted. There are 14 remaining in the U.S; 8 can be converted; 6 require the new fuel that we are working on. 

Once we have converted the reactor, we want to return the spent 

fuel and fresh fuel and any bulk materials that might be used in 

targets or other activities at the site back to Russia and the United 

States, and we do that by bringing those materials back to a secure 

7

location. In Russia’s case, we bring it back to a facility where we 

have already provided security upgrades. 

One of the most important things to keep in mind is that these 

reactors are in countries that are sovereign countries, and they 

must agree to convert the reactors. As Mr. Inslee pointed out, there 

is a diplomatic strategy that has to be carried out in order to convince the countries that the reactors can meet their missions, 

which are medical isotope production, industrial uses, research 

uses, very legitimate and very important missions. Our task is to 

convince them that they can convert and meet their missions, but 

to do so in a safe way. 

Last month, I chaired with my Russian counterpart Ivan 

Kamenskikh, a working group to set a schedule for the return of 

fresh and spent fuel from all remaining Russian origin sites. We 

have set our deadline as 2010 to have all of that material back into 

Russia. They are working on a regulation now that would make it 

legally possible for them to do so. There is no current regulation. 

They don’t have the regulatory authority to repatriate that fuel. 

I will quickly go through this. The U.S.-origin fuel, we have extended the window during which U.S.-origin HEU fuel can be 

brought back into the United States. We extended that window by 

10 years. We estimate that there are 40 countries with about 20 

metric tons of material that we need to bring back to the U.S. 

Moving on to RDDs, since September 11 we have focused with 

increasing emphasis on the threat that radiological sources pose. 

There are two components to our work. There is a domestic component and an international component. Domestically we have recovered roughly 10,500 excess sources. We work very closely with the 

NRC. They tell us when a licensee has orphan sources, and we mobilize our teams to go retrieve those sources and bring them to a 

secure location. 

Last year, Congress gave us an 18-month window and told us to 

get 5,000 sources. We got 5,500. So this program is to date very 

successful. We estimate that there are probably another 15,000 additional sources that we will have to recover that will be declared 

excess that we will have to recover over the next 5 years domestically. 

Internationally we are currently engaged with about forty countries. We do so bilaterally with each the countries. We also work 

with the IAEA to form regional partnerships. We also work with 

other countries who have a regional role like Australia in the 

southern Pacific region, and we work with law enforcement such as 

Interpol. 

Since the program’s inception, we have completed radiological security enhancements at 125 worldwide facilities and recovered 63 

Russian civilian radioisotopes, thermal electric generators, or RTG. 

Thus far in 2005 alone, we have secured 56 sites in countries 

such as Belarus, Colombia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Russia and the 

Ukraine. 

There are at least an additional 16 high-risk countries with over 

100 facilities that our International Radiological Threat Reduction 

Program will address over the coming years. 

8

With that, Mr. Chairman, I will conclude. I want to thank you 

for holding this hearing and we look forward to answering your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Paul Longsworth follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL LONGSWORTH, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE

NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION, NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the nonproliferation activities of the 

U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). In 

the past, nuclear non-proliferation focused on preventing non-nuclear weapon states 

from acquiring such weapons. That’s still important, of course. In the aftermath of 

9/11, we have intensified our efforts to keep nuclear material and nuclear weapons 

out of the hands of terrorists. The NNSA has accelerated and expanded its implementation of a five-pronged strategy to deny terrorists and states of concern the materials, technology, and expertise needed to develop nuclear weapons. 

First, we want to account for and secure nuclear material in Russia and 

the former Soviet Union. We are making progress in improving security measures at facilities in Russia and the former Soviet Union. We have accelerated our 

programs to secure an estimated 600 metric tons of weapons-usable material in Russia. To date, we have secured over 75 percent of the sites where these materials are 

stored and we are on course to finish this work by 2008—a full two years ahead 

of the schedule established prior to 2001. We will complete our work to secure Russian Navy warhead and nuclear fuel sites by 2006. We are moving rapidly to identify and secure all remaining 12th Main Directorate and Strategic Rocket Forces 

warhead sites. We expect to complete work on the Strategic Rocket Force sited by 

the end of 2007. Also, as discussed at the recent Bratislava Presidential Summit, 

we are exploring ways to accelerate our schedule in securing the 12th Main Directorate sites. 

Second, we want to establish a capability to detect the movement or trafficking of weapons usable nuclear materials. Through our programs like Second Line of Defense and Megaports, we are working with select countries to install 

radiation detection equipment at key transit choke points throughout the world—

such as sea ports, airports, and land border crossings—to detect proliferation and 

trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials. We currently operate more than 50 

land border crossings and have already equipped two seaports, with 3 more expected 

this year. 

Third, we want to stop the production of new fissile material in Russia 

and eliminate existing stockpiles. Russia currently operates three plutonium 

producing reactors, which—together—make 1.2 MT of plutonium each year. That’s 

enough for roughly a couple of warheads a week. The U.S. has agreed to build replacement, coal fired plants to make it possible for Russia to shut down these reactors. We are making progress in this area as well. In February, we began work at 

the first site, Seversk. 

We are also working to eliminate existing material. More than 231 metric 

tons of Russia’s HEU has been converted to non-weapons grade material for use in 

commercial power reactors under what is often called the ‘‘Megatons to Megawatts’’ 

program. Altogether, 500 metric tons of Russia’s HEU will be converted and used 

as fuel in civilian nuclear power plants. The U.S has declared 174 metric tons excess 

at we are currently down-blending this material at U.S. facilities. Additionally, 

through our plutonium disposition program, we are working with the Russians to 

eliminate 68 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium—34 metric tons in each country—enough for over 17,000 nuclear weapons. 

Fourth, we want to eliminate or consolidate the remaining weapons-useable nuclear and radiological materials that exist throughout the remainder of the world. This past May, DOE launched the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) to identify, secure, recover and/or facilitate the disposition of vulnerable, high-risk nuclear and radioactive materials that pose a threat to the international community, as quickly and expeditiously as possible. GTRI works to achieve 

this mission by converting targeted research reactors around the world from the use 

of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, repatriating Russian- and U.S.-origin HEU fuel, securing and/or disposing of vulnerable, 

high-risk radiological materials that pose a threat to the United States, and identifying and addressing nuclear and radiological materials not previously addressed by 

existing nonproliferation efforts, the so-called ‘‘gaps’’. 

9

There is a good reason we are so concerned with the materials mentioned above—

particularly HEU and plutonium. If terrorists were to get access to plutonium or 

HEU, they would have overcome a significant step in the pathway to a full weapon. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that about 25 kg of highly enriched uranium is enough to manufacture a nuclear explosive device. That’s why civilian research reactors that possess HEU are a new and time-critical focus of GTRI. 

PRIORITIZATION

DOE prioritizes its work under GTRI by applying a risk-based approach to identify vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials that pose a threat to the United 

States and the international community. This risk-based approach is informed by 

several criteria, including, but not limited to the type and quantity of material, security conditions at the site, and location of material. However, participation under 

GTRI is voluntary in nature. Therefore, diplomatic breakthroughs or voluntary offers by countries may also impact GTRI’s prioritization and schedule. This approach 

is applied to all sites, countries, and regions prior to GTRI taking action and committing resources. 

Because participation in GTRI programs is voluntary, NNSA’s success in achieving the objectives of each individual program is contingent upon reaching diplomatic 

agreement with each individual country on the best path forward to address their 

high-risk nuclear material. 

To help ensure that GTRI was prioritizing its efforts in the most effective way, 

DOE undertook a comprehensive worldwide survey entitled ‘‘Global Materials Removal and Research Reactor Security Study’’ (GMRRSS). This study, which drew 

from both classified and unclassified data, focused on research reactors and associated facilities given the large number of research reactors in the world that still operate with HEU. The study was coordinated with the U.S. interagency, including 

the Department of State and the National Security Council, and is intended to serve 

as a ‘‘living document’’ that will be updated as new information becomes available. 

Based on the results of the study and our risk-based approach to identify highrisk, vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials, GTRI is targeting several countries of highest concern. We will continue to work closely with the Department of 

State and the NSC to implement a coordinated DOE action plan. 

I would next like to go into a little more detail about our GTRI program elements—first, specifically focusing on our efforts to eliminate use of the several metric tons of HEU that exist at research reactors throughout the world. 

REDUCED ENRICHMENT FOR RESEARCH AND TEST REACTORS

The Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors, or RERTR, program 

mission is to minimize and, to the extent possible, eliminate the use of HEU in civil 

nuclear applications by working to convert research reactors and radioisotope production processes to the use of LEU fuel and targets throughout the world. Specifically, GTRI is:

1. Developing advanced, high-density LEU fuels; 

2. Providing assistance to research reactors for feasibility studies, conversion analysis and licensing support; 

3. Converting research reactors to the use of LEU fuel; and 

4. Developing and demonstrating LEU-based radioisotope production techniques. 

We are currently targeting 105 research reactor around the world for conversion 

to LEU fuel under the RERTR program. Of these 105 reactors, 40 have already converted, 35 can convert with available LEU fuels, and 30 cannot convert with available LEU fuels. To address this, we are accelerating our work to develop higherdensity LEU fuel in order to enable the conversion of these 30 reactors ‘‘the FY05 

RERTR budget is more than double that of the preceding year. We have also set 

an aggressive goal of 2014 to complete conversion of all 105 targeted research reactors to LEU fuel. 

Another important development under RERTR is that, beginning in FY05, GTRI 

is working to convert two domestic university research reactors to the use of LEU 

fuel—one at the University of Florida and the other at Texas A&M. Former Secretary Abraham pledged under GTRI to achieve the conversion of all U.S. domestic 

research reactors by 2013. 

RECOVERING AND REPATRIATING HIGHLY-ENRICHED NUCLEAR FUEL

In addition to our reactor conversion efforts, we have two complementary programs that focus on the recovery and repatriation of research reactor nuclear fuel 

containing HEU. The Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return (RRRFR) program enVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:42 May 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\DOCS\21641.TXT HCOM1 PsN: JOEP
10

sures that Russian-origin HEU fresh and spent fuel at foreign research reactors is 

returned to Russia and the Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel Acceptance program ensures that U.S.-origin HEU spent fuel is returned to the United 

States. Both of these efforts work closely with our RERTR program to reduce and 

eventually eliminate the use of HEU in civilian nuclear research reactors and related facilities throughout the world. 

THE RUSSIAN RESEARCH REACTOR FUEL RETURN (RRRFR) PROGRAM

The United States, the Russian Federation and the International Atomic Energy 

Agency (IAEA) have identified more than 20 research reactors in 17 countries that 

have Soviet-/Russian-supplied nuclear fuel that is eligible under the RRRFR program. The Uzbekistan fresh HEU fuel shipment featured in a February CBS ‘‘60 

Minutes II’’ piece is a perfect example of the tangible results being achieved in this 

program. 

Those countries that wish to participate in the RRRFR program must agree either 

to shut down their research reactors or to convert them from the use of HEU to 

LEU fuel as soon as suitable LEU fuel can be licensed and made available. Under 

an aggressive schedule established by the former Secretary of Energy, we are accelerating repatriation of both fresh and spent HEU fuel under the RRRFR program. 

For instance, based on Secretarial commitments, we hope to complete the repatriation of all Russian-origin spent HEU fuel by the end of 2010. This schedule represents a significant acceleration of the original timelines—a full three years ahead 

of the original schedule. 

Just this past April, I co-chaired the first ‘‘Joint Coordinating Committee Meeting 

on Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return’’ meeting with my Russian counterpart, 

Ivan Kamenskikh. We agreed to an action/prioritization plan for Russian fuel return 

that should help us meet our aggressive schedule. 

To date, we have repatriated a total of 105 kilograms of fresh HEU, enough for 

four bombs according to the unclassified IAEA estimate. Russian-origin HEU has 

been repatriated to Russia from: Serbia in August 2002 (48 kilograms); Romania in 

September 2003 (14 kilograms); Bulgaria in December 2003 (17 kilograms); Libya 

in March 2004 (17 kilograms); Uzbekistan in September 2004 (3 kilograms); and 

most recently, the Czech Republic in December 2004 (6 kilograms). Numerous other 

shipments are being planned, including a shipment this week of fresh HEU and our 

first shipment of spent HEU nuclear fuel from Uzbekistan. 

Overall, by 2010 we expect to repatriate 1,370 kilograms of Russian HEU, thereby 

securing it from possible diversion for malevolent purposes. 

THE FOREIGN RESEARCH REACTOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL (FRR SNF) ACCEPTANCE

PROGRAM

Under the FRR SNF Acceptance Program, U.S.-origin fuel from research reactors 

in over 40 countries is eligible to be returned to the United States. About 20 metric 

tons of material is eligible for return under the current FRR SNF Acceptance Program. To date, a total of 6,445 fuel assemblies have been returned to the United 

States under this voluntary program, thereby reducing civil use of HEU by almost 

500 kilograms. Over the last year and a half, we have repatriated to the United 

States 418 SNF assemblies from Japan, 293 SNF assemblies from Indonesia, and 

126 SNF assemblies from Germany. 

This past November, the Secretary of Energy extended the deadline for participation in the FRR SNF Acceptance Program by ten (10) years. Prior to this extension, 

a number of countries did not participate in this program because of concerns surrounding the potential economic, financial, or scientific impact of returning the 

spent fuel. This extension will prevent disruptions of important research reactor operations, and permit continued fuel acceptance until suitable replacement LEU fuels 

are qualified and available. 

By 2019, the FRR SNF Acceptance Program expects to return or validate acceptable disposition of 22,743 U.S.-origin spent fuel assemblies from foreign research reactors. 

RADIOLOGICAL THREAT REDUCTION

In addition to addressing the problem of terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons, 

GTRI encompasses two programs that reduce the ability of terrorists to obtain material for a Radioactive Dispersal Device (RDD) or ‘‘dirty bomb.’’ An RDD disperses 

radioactivity using conventional explosives or other means and the RDD threat has 

only been taken seriously since the advent the Global War on Terrorism. The two 

components of this work in GTRI include a domestic program to recover excess and 

unwanted radiological sources that are most vulnerable to diversion or theft and an 

11

international program to assist foreign countries in securing their vulnerable, highrisk radiological sources. 

Our radiological threat reduction programs address ten radioactive isotopes that 

pose a threat for use in an RDD. These isotopes are americium-241, californium252, cesium-137, cobalt-60, curium-244, iridium-192, plutonium-238, plutonium-239, 

radium-226, and strontium-90. 

U.S. RADIOLOGICAL THREAT REDUCTION

The U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program has the mission of recovering 

vulnerable radiological materials in the United States that could be used in a RDD. 

Originally, the DOE Office of Environmental Management managed this program, 

which in 1993 began to recover certain radioactive materials that had no commercial disposition path. But, the recovery program was oriented towards environmental, health and safety concerns. In response to the threat of radiological terrorism, this program was transferred into NNSA, and priority was give to radiological materials that would be most dangerous if used by a terrorist. The program 

successfully recovered over 5,500 sealed sources in an 18-month period between October 2002 and March 2004, as mandated by Congress. To date, over 10,500 excess 

domestic sealed sources have been recovered and securely stored or disposed. This 

includes several notable accomplishments:

1. We removed 68 high-risk sources from 55 sites in Boston and New York prior 

to the national conventions; 

2. Most recently, we recovered approximately 1000 curies of cesium-137 from 5 high 

schools. 

We estimate that there will be more than an additional 15,000 sealed sources declared excess that meet our threshold criteria and would be available for our program to address over the next 5 years. 

INTERNATIONAL RADIOLOGICAL THREAT REDUCTION

The International Radiological Threat Reduction (IRTR) Program identifies, secures, and/or facilitates the disposal of vulnerable, high-risk radiological materials 

located around the world to reduce the threat of a radiological attack against the 

United States or its interests. IRTR is currently engaged in over 40 countries. 

Bilateral cooperation under IRTR is buttressed by cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, regional partners such as Australia, and with 

Interpol. The IRTR has been a primary source of assistance to the IAEA’s new Office of Nuclear Security and had considerable involvement in working with Greece 

to protect against radiological terrorism during the Olympics. This program also had 

a major role in the recovery of a very large quantity of radiological material from 

Iraq. Since the program’s inception, we have completed radiological security enhancements at 125 facilities worldwide and have recovered 63 Russian civilian Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs). Thus far, in FY05 alone, we have secured 56 sites in countries such as Belarus, Colombia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Russian, and Ukraine. 

There are at least 16 additional high-risk countries with over 100 facilities that 

IRTR will address over the next few years. 

PATHS FORWARD

Under GTRI, we have aggressive plans in all of these areas. In FY05, GTRI plans 

to:

1. Convert five research/test reactors around the world from HEU to LEU fuel, in 

countries such as the Czech Republic. 

2. Repatriate to Russia 76 kilograms of fresh and/or spent HEU fuel from SovietRussian-supplied research reactors including fresh HEU from Latvia, the Czech 

Republic, and Libya. 

3. Return 359 fuel assemblies containing U.S.-origin spent fuel from foreign research reactors in countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden. 

4. Recover 1,500 U.S. excess sealed sources in the United States in FY05. 

5. Secure 105 high-priority international sites with vulnerable radiological material 

at high-risk sites in countries such as Colombia, Ukraine, Jordan, Nicaragua, 

Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Yemen. 

In FY 2006, GTRI plans to:

1. Convert four research/test reactors around the world from HEU to LEU fuel. 

2. Repatriate to Russia 130 kg of fresh and/or spent fuel from Soviet-Russian-supplied research reactors. 

12

3. Return 472 assemblies containing U.S.-origin spent fuel from foreign research reactors. 

4. Recover 2,250 U.S. excess sealed sources in the United States. 

5. Secure 125 high-priority international sites with vulnerable radiological materials. 

The specific details of our strategies and future plans in the remainder of FY05 

and in FY06 identify specific locations that may have vulnerabilities; we and our 

international colleagues consider this information sensitive. We would be happy to 

provide more specific details in closed testimony. 

CONCLUSION

I would like to thank you for this opportunity to discuss DOE’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative with you.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you Mr. Longsworth. 

Commissioner McGaffigan, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR. 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman, Congressman Inslee, it is a pleasure to be here 

this afternoon on behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to 

discuss our aggressive and comprehensive efforts to enhance the 

security of high-risk radioactive sources and research and test reactors. We believe that significant achievements have been made by 

our agency in this area over the past 3.5 years. 

Since September 11, the NRC has thoroughly reevaluated its 

safeguards and security programs across the board, and to date we 

have issued over 16 different categories of orders and confirmatory 

action letters covering hundreds of licensees and actions involving 

the radioactive materials of greatest concern. The overall approach 

is risk-informed and focuses on radioactive materials of greatest 

concern. 

We did that prioritization that Mr. Inslee talked about back in 

2002, and we have been following a program that we think is the 

right program now for several years. 

Let me enumerate a few of our successes. The Commission, in coordination with our DOE colleagues and other agencies, has taken 

the following actions: 

NRC, in cooperation with the Agreement States, issued 

advisories to licensees who possess high-risk material on March 

17th, 2003, consistent with the launch of Operation Liberty Shield. 

Those advisories went out to over 2,000 entities. 

NRC and DOE in consultation with other Federal agencies, 

issued the DOE/NRC Working Group Report in May 2003 on radiological dispersal devices and radiological exposure devices. That report defined threshold quantities of radioactive materials which are 

of highest risk and have the greatest potential for malevolent use. 

During 2002 and 2003, the Commission worked with the Departments of Energy and State and the international community to 

reach agreement on which radioactive sources are of the greatest 

concern. Those sources are set forth in the International Atomic 

Energy Agency Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources. The Code was adopted in December 2003 and 

has received very high-level endorsement by the G-8 heads of state 

at the Sea Island summit last year. 

The NRC, in coordination with the Departments of Energy, 

State, and Homeland Security, has approved a final rule amending 

13

our export and import regulations to impose more stringent controls over the Code materials. The U.S. is the first country to implement the export-import provisions of the Code of Conduct guidance documents. 

The NRC, in cooperation with DOE and other Federal agencies, 

is developing a national source tracking system, as the chairman 

mentioned, to track radioactive materials of greatest concern specified in the Code. 

The NRC has developed and is maintaining an interim data base 

of these radioactive sources for both NRC and the 33 Agreement 

States and their licensees. 

The NRC has required security enhancements for various classes 

of NRC and agreement State materials licensees, including fuel 

cycle facilities, like Paducah, large irradiators, and manufacturers 

and distributors of radioactive materials, and we are working on 

additional orders. 

The NRC has issued security orders governing the transportation 

of spent nuclear fuel, and the NRC, as mentioned by Mr. 

Longsworth, has assisted DOE to accelerate the collection of unwanted radioactive sources through DOE’s offsite source recovery 

program. 

Turning to research and test reactors, the NRC has required security plans and procedures at research reactors since the 1970’s. 

Following 9/11, the NRC promptly advised research and test reactor licensees to heighten and enhance security in accordance with 

preestablished notices to protect against radiological sabotage and 

theft of nuclear material. Subsequently, as we proceeded with our 

security review, NRC required research and test reactor licensees 

to take additional security measures, the details of which are inappropriate for an open hearing. 

The NRC has verified implementation of these measures to protect research and test reactor facilities. 

The NRC has worked with DOE to convert, as Paul mentioned, 

research reactors to low enriched uranium fuel which is a less attractive target for terrorists. 

The Commission welcomes DOE’s initiatives to convert the University of Florida and Texas A&M reactors to low enriched fuel and 

its plans to convert other research reactors for which suitable low 

enriched fuel has been developed. 

The Commission also welcomes the House Appropriations Committee action to add an additional $20 million in fiscal year 2006 

for the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors program to accelerate the conversion of domestic reactor fuel from 

highly enriched to low enriched. 

In summary, Mr. Chairman, I can assure you that the Commission and Commissioners themselves, all of us on a bipartisan basis, 

will continue to be very active in ensuring the development and implementation of enhanced controls on radioactive sources that could 

be used in an RDD or RED. 

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the committee for 

their support of section 662 of the energy bill which will allow us 

to require fingerprinting for a broader set of licensees than we do 

today and including the ones we are discussing today and do much 

more thorough background checks. 

14

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today on 

behalf of the Commission and look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Edward McGaffigan, Jr. follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF EDWARD MCGAFFIGAN, JR., COMMISSIONER, NUCLEAR

REGULATORY COMMISSION

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, it is a pleasure to appear before you today on behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to discuss 

our efforts to enhance the security of high-risk radioactive sources and research and 

test reactors. The NRC takes very seriously its responsibility to ensure the adequate 

protection of the public health and safety. Mr. Chairman, we believe that significant 

achievements have been made by our agency in the area of security. Let me enumerate a few of these achievements. 

Since September 11, 2001, the NRC has thoroughly reevaluated its safeguards 

and security programs and, to date, has issued over 16 different categories of Orders 

and Confirmatory Action Letters covering hundreds of licensees and actions involving radioactive materials of greatest concern. The NRC continues to devote considerable effort to determining what additional actions could be used to enhance the security of these materials in use, in storage, or in transport. The emphasis of this 

effort is on preventing the use of radioactive materials that have the potential to 

pose a risk to public health and safety if used in a radiological dispersal device or 

a radiological exposure device (RDD/RED). The objective of NRC’s programs to control these radioactive materials is to ensure the protection of the public and the environment and to promote the Nation’s common defense and security. The overall 

approach is risk-informed and focuses on radioactive materials of greatest concern. 

MEASURES TAKEN TO ENHANCE SECURITY OF SOURCES

There are millions of radioactive sources in the United States and although these 

sources are in the possession of a large number of organizations, only a small fraction of those sources would present a credible terrorist target and are therefore considered radioactive materials of greatest concern. This is because most licensees use 

radioactive material that is in very small quantities; has a short half-life; is relatively inaccessible; is in a form which cannot be readily dispersed; or has a combination of these attributes. We have applied a graded approach to security that is 

generally consistent with the potential radiation risk from these materials. 

Mr. Chairman, the Commission in coordination with our Department of Energy 

colleagues, has taken the following actions to improve the security of high-risk 

sources:

• NRC, in cooperation with the Agreement States, issued advisories to licensees to 

enhance security measures on March 17, 2003, consistent with the launch of 

Operation LIBERTY SHIELD. 

• NRC and DOE, in consultation with other Federal agencies, issued the DOE/NRC 

Interagency Working Group Report on RDD/REDs in May, 2003. This report defined threshold quantities for radioactive materials which are the highest risk 

and have a potential for malevolent use. 

• During 2002-2003, the NRC Commission worked with the Departments of Energy 

and State and the international community to reach agreement on which radioactive materials and sources are of the greatest concern. Those sources are set 

forth in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Code of Conduct on the 

Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources. The Code of Conduct was approved 

by Member States at the IAEA General Conference in September 2003. The 

U.S. Government committed to implement the Code of Conduct in late 2003, 

and it was then endorsed by the G-8 at the Sea Island summit in 2004. The 

threshold values in the Code of conduct are in substantial agreement with the 

values contained in the DOE-NRC RDD report. 

• The NRC, in coordination with the Departments of State, Energy, and Homeland 

Security, has approved a final rule amending its export and import regulations 

to impose more stringent controls over the Category I and Category II materials 

defined by the IAEA Code of Conduct with the exception of radium-226 (Ra226), a naturally occurring radionuclide which the NRC does not currently have 

the authority to regulate under the Atomic Energy Act. This rulemaking implements a key element of the Code of Conduct and its guidance documents by increasing licensing requirements, as well as notice and consent requirements. 

The United States is the first country to implement the export-import provisions in the Code of Conduct guidance documents. 

15

• The NRC, in cooperation with DOE and other Federal agencies, is developing a 

National Source Tracking System to track radioactive materials of greatest concern specified in the IAEA Code of Conduct on a permanent basis. The NRC 

is working closely with the Department of Energy, the Agreement States, the 

Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the 

Department of Transportation, the Department of State, the Department of 

Commerce, the Department of Defense and the Federal Bureau of Investigation 

to ensure that the system addresses needed functions and minimizes unnecessary duplication. NRC will involve the public through our rulemaking process. 

• The NRC has developed and is maintaining an interim database of Category I and 

II radioactive sources for both NRC and Agreement State licensees. This database will be maintained until the National Source Tracking System is complete. 

• The NRC has required security enhancements for various classes of NRC and 

Agreement State materials licensees, including independent spent fuel storage 

installations, fuel cycle facilities, large irradiators, and manufacturers and distributors of radioactive material. Orders for NRC and Agreement State materials licensees in the medical academic and industrial fields (e.g., blood 

irradiators, gamma knives, radiographers, well loggers, etc.) are currently in 

final stages of development. 

• The NRC has issued security Orders governing the transportation of spent nuclear fuel, and Orders governing the transportation of other radioactive materials in quantities of concern are also currently in the final stages of development. 

• The NRC has implemented the Homeland Security Advisory System for NRC and 

Agreement State licensees. 

• NRC has assisted the DOE, where possible, to accelerate the collection of unwanted radioactive sources through the DOE’s Offsite Source Recovery Program. Since its inception in 1997, the DOE program has recovered over 10,000 

sources from approximately 400 locations in the United States and the DOE has 

consistently been very responsive to NRC requests for assistance. 

RESEARCH AND TEST REACTORS—SECURITY/CONVERSIONS

The NRC has required security plans and procedures at research reactors since 

the late 1970s in accordance with our regulations. The security programs and systems are required to provide early detection, and assessment of and response to unauthorized access or activities. These security programs also include control of access to facilities, emergency response personnel (e.g., University Police, Local Law 

Enforcement Agency, or contract security forces), alarms, other devices and procedures to detect unauthorized activities. Response forces are required to respond to 

all indications of unauthorized penetrations or activities. 

Following September 11, 2001, the NRC promptly advised research and test reactor licensees to heighten and enhance security in accordance with preestablished notices to protect against radiological sabotage and theft of nuclear material. Subsequently, as it proceeded with its security review, NRC required research and test 

reactor licensees to take additional security measures. These additional security 

measures were focused on protecting against land-based assaults and insider attacks. More specifically, these additional security measures include, but are not limited to, enhancements to access authorization and controls, communication systems, 

and vehicle and package searches. The additional security measures also include 

heightened coordination with appropriate local, State, and federal resources. 

The NRC has verified the implementation of these measures to protect research 

and test reactor facilities. Further, NRC maintains regular communications with 

other Federal agencies (including the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the 

National Counter-Terrorism Center) to continue assessing potential threats to all 

classes of licensees including research and test reactors. We have conducted consequence assessments of these reactors and have concluded that there is a low risk 

to public health and safety from potential threats. 

The NRC has worked with DOE to convert research reactors to low enriched uranium fuel which is a less attractive target for terrorists. The Commission welcomes 

DOE’s initiatives to convert the University of Florida and Texas A&M reactors to 

low-enriched fuel, and its plans to convert other research reactors for which suitable 

low-enriched fuel has been developed. The NRC, DOE and research and test reactor 

licensees also have been cooperating on efforts to identify irradiated fuel which is 

no longer needed and ship it to a DOE facility. This cooperation is based on NRC 

and DOE initiatives recognizing that keeping unneeded fuel onsite is an unnecessary risk under the current threat environment. Considerable progress in this reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:42 May 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\DOCS\21641.TXT HCOM1 PsN: JOEP
16

gard has been made. The Commission welcomes the additional $20 million the 

House Appropriations Committee approved for FY 2006 for the Reduced Enrichment 

for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program to accelerate the conversion of domestic research reactor fuel from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium. 

The NRC has recently taken the initiative to identify various unwanted radioactive materials, such as fission chambers, fission foils, fission plates, and various 

government-owned materials at NRC licensed research reactors and has informally 

requested DOE to assist with their removal. 

In summary, Mr. Chairman, I can assure you that the Commission is and will 

continue to be very active in ensuring the development and implementation of enhanced controls of radioactive sources that could be used in an RDD/RED. I also 

want to take this opportunity to thank the Committee for their support of Section 

662 in the Energy Bill (H.R.6) which will allow us to require fingerprinting for employees at the facilities we have been discussing today. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the Commission and stand ready 

to answer any questions you or the other members of the Subcommittee may pose.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Commissioner. 

We appreciate the testimony of both of you, and each member 

will have 10 minutes for questions if we want to use that time. 

Mr. Longsworth, let me first ask you, how much money was appropriated for the GTRI program for 2005? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. It was about $93 million. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. What was it prior to that? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. It was $69, $70 million, roughly. So it was a 

fairly significant increase. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. So do you feel like you have sufficient funds to—

I know you always need more, but do you feel that you have sufficient funds to be effective in what you are doing? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Well, we have set very aggressive goals in 

terms of the number of reactors we want to convert and the schedule by which we want to do that. We are fully funded to meet our 

mission requirements today. If we were given a broader mission to 

convert U.S. reactors, which we have only identified two currently, 

we are not funded for that, but we are fully funded to—over our 

5-year budget plan to meet requirements that we have—we have 

been given. 

I will add, the radiological source recovery is what I refer to as 

a dialable program. You can spend more and get more work. We 

think that our program currently is a credible program and it’s 

adequate to meet the risk, but that is a program you can—if you 

add more money, we will just recover more sources. If you take 

away money, we will recover fewer. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. In November 2004, the GAO issued a report on 

the GTRI program, and they specifically said that DOE had not 

reached agreement with 11 of 23 countries that still have U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium to return to the U.S. Now, this report 

is about 6 months old. Can you give us an update on your progress 

to reach agreement with those 11 countries? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Yes. As I said earlier, even though the reactors in question and the fuel were—really have their origins in Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace Initiative. So we gave countries access 

to our reactor technologies and have supplied them fuel over the 

years, but they are sovereign countries who either have to agree to 

convert their reactors. 

We are working with most of those countries. I will note that 

some of them are countries that we are not as concerned with 

such—like France and Britain, that we don’t think pose the same 

17

kind of threat that, say, other reactors might in other parts of the 

world. We are working with all of the countries on that list to get 

all of that work done by 2014. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. I might add that we will go into executive session when this is over to get it into a little bit more classified material, and so I appreciate your comment on that. 

In reading some of the testimony of some of the witnesses on 

Panel II—I don’t remember which one, and maybe it was both of 

them—but they made the point that instead of Russia and the U.S. 

being so focused on returning highly enriched uranium to the U.S. 

and to Russia, that we might be better off finding a safe storage 

place, wherever it may be, and that they would recommend that. 

What are your comments about that? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Well, one thing I did not mention and I am 

remiss in not mentioning is while we are discussing the conversion 

of the reactor and the return of the material itself, we also have 

efforts to secure these locations where the material is stored. So we 

do go in in almost every case and provide security upgrades at the 

site where this material is located, if it’s HEU and it is one of our 

targeted reactors. 

We don’t provide security for LEU, low enriched, reactors, so we 

do do that where we can. Obviously there is a 5-megawatt U.S.-origin reactor in Tehran. We have not provided security or any work 

there, but the countries where we can work, we do. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. All right. Now GTRI has developed criteria for 

identifying and recovering specific high-risk radioactive sources 

based on the potential for the source to be used in a dirty bomb, 

and it is my understanding that NRC uses a different method that 

was developed by theInternational Atomic Energy Agency for identifying high-risk sources. So there seems to be a little bit of inconsistency between the two agencies, and I know that the administrator, Linton Brooks, wrote a letter to Chairman Diaz in February 

2005 touching on this issue. Would the two of you respond to this 

different approach that you have? 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Mr. Chairman, the approach that we arrived 

at in 2003 in the international process was derived from the joint 

DOE-NRC working group report. We negotiated that with our 

international partners through the International Atomic Energy 

Agency. We got to within a factor of 3 on every radionuclide that 

is of concern. The factor of 3 is the threshold level, and frankly the 

modeling errors are on the order of a factor of 10. 

So we use the IAEA Code of Conduct because the purpose of the 

Code is to put in place mutually reinforcing export-import regimes 

so that the national cradle-to-grave controls for these high-risk 

sources reinforce each other. That is the goal, and I believe over 

50 nations have committed. We are well in front of any other nation in terms of meeting our commitment to the Code, but our colleagues at DOE—I will let Paul speak for himself—in some cases 

we use the term ‘‘high risk’’ a little—high risk in source recovery 

isn’t the same as the IAEA Code, and his international programs 

for resource reasons isn’t the same, but it—so the words for us, 

when I say high risk code, I mean Category 1 and 2 codes covered 

by the Code of Conduct to which about 60 nations have committed. 

18

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Our mission is not to focus on safety or environmental issues. We only focus on removing threats. What we 

have tried to do with our standard, which we think is consistent 

with the Code of Conduct, is not—it would be, I think, erroneous 

to say that we are inconsistent, but we have tried to set up a range 

of curie levels that set a floor for action on our part. What that 

means is we can actually address sources down to that level, if 

needed, and if they need other risk criteria. 

So our standard is a—it is apples and oranges compared to what 

I think the NRC works with on the Code of Conduct, but they are 

not inconsistent. We are just trying to do another mission. So we 

have set a floor. The floor is actually a range of values, and we can 

take action if we find a source in Kazakhstan, for example. That 

floor sets the boundary below which we cannot secure the source. 

So we have tried to set a floor. We don’t get every source that 

meets down to that level, but we use it as a guide, and we also look 

at other factors in that country. We look at risk factors. We look 

at terrorist activities, the enforcement of regulations in that country. So we have a broad, flexible program because we do have limited resources and we want to address the highest-risk sources 

first. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. To explore this just a little bit further, in his letter that Mr. Brooks wrote to Chairman Diaz, he specifically said 

that it is timely to further develop the unified U.S. position on the 

security of high potential consequence radioactive sources and to 

present this position to the international community that is also in 

need of unifying guidance and clarification. Would you agree with 

that statement? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Yes, sir. I worked for Ambassador Brooks. I 

agree with him.This is the Code of Conduct as we were discussing 

it, but this Code is—it explicitly does not address malevolent uses 

of sources. So it is explicit that it does not address, for example, 

terrorist uses of radiological sources, and that is what we are all 

about. That is our only mission is addressing that. So we are—

what we are trying to do is to try to get the international community to focus on the issue of malevolent uses of sources. I think that 

is——

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Mr. Chairman, I think there might be a slight 

disagreement here in that we believe—and Commissioners were involved in the negotiation of the revised Code of Conduct in 2003. 

Chairman Diaz himself made a key breakthrough in identifying the 

materials of concern, a key diplomatic breakthrough, but we did 

follow the DOE-NRC working group report within a factor of 3 on 

every radionuclide. 

It is, I believe, the position not just of the Commission, but also 

the Department of State, that we do not need to renegotiate it at 

this time. We need to focus on getting the 69 nations that have 

committed to it to implement it, and that doesn’t mean—in many 

cases, Mr. Longsworth and Mr. Brooks have less resources. So if 

the Code says that three hundred curies of strontium 90 is the Category 2 level above which we control, I think DOE has chosen 

1,000 curies, that is a reasonable judgment based on the resources 

that they have. 

19

It’s better—occasionally DOE goes below the Code, and that 

causes us some concern because it gives a mixed message to other 

nations. 

And furthermore, the security—security is built into the Code. 

The reason we had it, it used to be the Code of Conduct on the 

Safety of Radioactive Sources, it became in 2003 the Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security, and we did take into account RDD 

and RED exposures in setting our threshold limits with the international community. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you for that comment. Since I have been 

reading from this letter, and it is my understanding that you all 

did see it, I would ask unanimous consent that we introduce it into 

the record. 

At this point I would recognize Mr. Inslee for his question period. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. If the U.S. reconsiders its reprocessing 

position, and there is some talk about that in this bill we have on 

the floor today, would that affect your efforts in any way, in regard 

to your relationship with these other countries that we are inspiring to responsible activity? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Well, there is reprocessing going on today, as 

you know, in France and in other countries and in Russia, and 

those facilities are safeguarded, and we think they are secure. 

There has been no allegation of diversion or any other activities at 

those facilities that would cause harm. 

I think what the U.S. is looking at from a policy standpoint is 

looking to the future for what types of reprocessing or recycling we 

can pursue for the future. We are investing funding in my program 

and in the nuclear energy program to look at that question. That 

really is the question is for the future: What type of recycling do 

you need for nuclear material? Werecycle everything else. There 

isn’t any reason why we can’t recycle nuclear material. 

There are ways technologically to recycle nuclear material that 

don’t pose a proliferation threat. For example, you can reprocess 

plutonium out of spent fuel but keep that plutonium mixed with 

the actinides, the very highly radioactive actinides. That material 

actually has a very high energy content, and it can be used in FAC 

reactors. And the U.S. and other countries, I don’t think we have 

adequately explored that concept. So there are ways that you can 

recycle nuclear material that actually don’t pose a significant proliferation threat. That is probably where we are taking our resources and looking to the future. 

Mr. INSLEE. Could either one of you describe in general terms—

we will have another session in closed session—what you consider 

your major challenges right now? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Well, my challenges are primarily diplomatic. 

We think we have—I will speak just to GTRI. We have many other 

challenges in the other parts of our nonproliferation program, but 

for just GTRI they are primarily diplomatic. And it is no fault of 

anyone’s, not the fault of State Department or ours or these other 

governments, but working with sovereign governments that perhaps don’t have good relations with the U.S. or want to distance 

themselves from the U.S., that has been one of our largest challenges. 

20

In addition to that, where the countries perhaps don’t want to 

work with us, there are other countries that view our desire to convert their facilities or down-blend their weapons-usable material, 

they think we should pay a price for that. We view it as just good 

stewardship. We believe it is a responsible step for countries to 

take, but we find that we actually have to provide incentives in 

many cases for countries to convert, and that drives up our costs 

and it slows down our progress. 

So our problems for the most part have been diplomatic in nature, engaging countries and convincing them to convert their facilities and to remove materials that could be used in weapons programs. 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Sir, I think our challenges pale in comparison 

with the Department of Energy’s. We are—the National Source 

Tracking System is a very large undertaking for us. It’s going to 

cost, for a relatively small agency, $10 to $20 million over the next 

5 years to get fully in place and implemented. We have an aggressive schedule on the information technology support that we need 

to meet that goal. This is going to be a secure data base. We are 

fully going to comply with FISMA from the get-go so we don’t build 

it in later. But it is a very aggressive schedule to get the National 

Tracking System in place. 

We also have to continue to work to complete our program of borders for additional categories of licensees. That is not a resource 

issue, really, but we do work with the 33 Agreement States, including Kentucky and Washington, to not catch them by surprise. We 

do have some dual regulation here because we are doing a lot of 

this stuff under our common defense and security authority which 

we cannot delegate to the States. 

The National Source Tracking System is an example of that. We 

have to have a uniform national system, and we are doing it primarily for common defense and security reasons. 

So those are the ones that come to mind. The resources, the 

House Appropriations Committee has given us an additional $4 

million next year to work on material security matters that was beyond our request, and we appreciate that, and we need that in 

order to continue to pursue the program that we want to pursue 

as aggressively as we want to pursue it. 

Mr. INSLEE. Could you give us an assessment of what confidence 

level we have about our knowledge, data base, of existing threat 

material, material that poses some threat? I mean, if you said with 

90 percent confidence we know about X percent that is there, is 

there any way to sort of quantify that, put any parameters on that? 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. I will say domestically with regard to the Code 

of Conduct-controlled material, we have an interim data base with 

a very high response rate, over 99 percent, from Agreement States 

and NRC licensees, and we have Oak Ridge updating it. It’s really 

not a data base. We eventually want to have 1-day transactions. If 

a source is transferred from here to here, we want 1-day notice of 

both ends of the transaction. That is what the National Source 

Tracking System will do. 

The interim data base is an annual update. We had it in place 

really by March 17, 2003, not with all the bells and whistles, but 

21

enough to send advisories out saying that hostilities are about to 

start, improve your security posture. 

So we update it quarterly. Oak Ridge is our contractor for this 

effort and we are very proud of it. We are not aware of any other 

regulator in the world that has an interim data base of IAEA Code 

of Conduct sources. Is it perfect? No. Do we have the research and 

test reactors in there at the current time? No. 

We have over—there are 1,300 entities in this country that 

have—approximately, that possess Category I or II high-risk 

sources. In the Washington area, it tends to be hospitals, George 

Washington, Washington Hospital Center, Georgetown, et cetera, 

because they have cesium blood irradiators. They have other 

sources that are used in the care of patients. In fact, there isn’t inside the Beltway—at USDA outside the Beltway there is a fair 

number of high-risk sources used in agricultural research. Inside 

the Beltway, I believe all the entities that have high-risk sources 

are hospitals. 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. In our work, we know where reactors are located and we know which ones are using highly enriched uranium. 

So where there is a physical footprint we know. There is a critical 

assembly associated with that reactor. We know where that is. 

What we often don’t know is in some cases these reactors operate 

on varying power levels. They may have different burn-up rates. So 

can we say for sure exactly how many kilograms of fuel remain at 

this site? Those are calculations that we have to do. 

In classified session I think I can tell you a little bit more about 

what we track using other sources for programs that might have 

military uses or other uses, but we do keep track of those. 

For radiological sources, internationally, that is harder because 

those sources tend to disappear in countries where there is not a 

vigorous regulatory body or licensing requirements and accountability requirements. But we are working with the former Soviet 

Union and Russia particularly to begin to identify and track down 

those sources. That is one of the primary missions we have right 

now is working at the request of the Russian Federation to go find 

their sources that they gave out during their equivalent of Atoms 

for Peace, to repatriate those, secure them and dispose of them. So 

that is a very active area for us right now; and again, it was at 

the request of the Russian Federation that we began to accelerate 

that work. 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Mr. Chairman, I might just add in response to 

something that Mr. Inslee asked at the outset, domestically, we coordinate very closely with the Department of Homeland Security as 

well as the Department of Energy. In fact, there is a government 

coordinating council for the nuclear sector. The fundamental document is the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. We work 

hand-in-glove with DHS as they prepare the sector-specific—nuclear sector coordinating plan. And there also are nuclear sector coordinating councils that bring the private sector in. One for reactors, one for—it’s being formed for research reactors, and one for 

radioisotopes, and those are DHS entities. But under the law of the 

Atomic Energy Act, we are the primary regulator for safety and security within this country. 

22

Mr. INSLEE. Quick question. Maybe it’s not too quick. Ms. 

Rohlfing is going to testify. I read some of her testimony. She said 

that given the threat, there is no comprehensive baseline inventory 

of warheads and nuclear materials that must be secured worldwide. She basically is suggesting, I think, that there is a lack of 

a risk-based global inventory on hand. Is that accurate, and if so, 

can we fix that? What is your assessment in that regard? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. She is right, there is no one document that 

has all of that information in there. Unfortunately, if you were to 

create such a document, there probably would be two or three people in the entire Federal Government that would be cleared to read 

it. So what we do is we package that kind of information into various programs. 

We have programs to address and are for the most part classified 

to address warheads. Our work with Russia is very open. We do 

that work—as I have indicated, we will be finished with all Russian Navy warhead sites this year. 

We are just embarking on an accelerated plan to secure what are 

called 12th GUMO sites, which are their large warhead 

consolidationsites in Russia. 

Any other activity that we have would be highly sensitive and 

obviously highly compartmented, but it is a misnomer to say that 

there isn’t one report, because that is absolutely true but one report wouldn’t do you very much good. We do keep track of, in a 

very centralized way—keeping these things in compartments, we 

do keep track of where we think fissionable material is, either in 

the form of a warhead, in bulk material and reactor fuel. If it’s 

weapons-usable, we are tracking it. 

The report that we prepared that I mentioned in my testimony, 

the Global Reactor and Radiological Source Report that we just finished last May, was the first time that the government had ever 

put in one document all of the material that is not part of a weapons program. We only looked at civilian programs, but that was the 

first time that we had taken all of the world’s civilian programs 

that have fissionable material and put that in one report. That report is classified. We can’t talk about that in this session and we 

did use all sources, including Intelligence Community sources. 

But adding to that, then, what we know about other countries’ 

nuclear weapons programs and the locations of their warheads and 

conditions of security would make that report even more sensitive 

than it is already. So it wouldn’t be a useful report to have in one 

document. It wouldn’t be usable by anybody. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Walden’s recognized for 10 minutes. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Longsworth, a DOE Inspector General’s report from January 

of 2004 studied DOE’s efforts to recover U.S.-origin HEU sent to 

foreign countries as you know, but according to this report there 

was no effort by DOE to recover an additional 12,300 kilograms of 

HEU dispersed to foreign countries, which was not included in the 

HEU acceptance program. The IG report is more than a year old. 

Can you tell us why DOE did not originally include this 12,300 

kilograms of HEU in its HEU recovery program and whether the 

23

GTRI program will take steps to recover this material in the future? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. I can. The decision was made in the early 

1990’s when this foreign research reactor fuel program takeback 

was initiated, and they identified a finite universe of reactors. They 

had criteria at the time that they used to identify the varieties of 

fuel and the locations. What we did last year was we realized that 

even that legal authority to take back that universe of material 

was about to expire. So first and foremost, we wanted to make sure 

we had the ability to bring back the material we had already identified, and I will say this is no criticism of anybody who has worked 

on the program in the past. We had managed that program out of 

the Office of Environmental Management, and we did it as a safety 

and environmental program. 

After 9/11 it became very clear that this material had other malevolent uses and so we—it was transferred into my program, because it was then viewed as a threat reduction program. So we 

have tried to accelerate that program since that time and have 

done so, but we are again focusing on that finite universe of material that we have legal authority to take back today. 

We are studying the other—the remaining material, which is—

I believe, and I am going to get this—it’s roughly a third of the 

U.S.-origin material was identified in the first environmental impact statement. That means roughly two-thirds is not covered. 

As I said earlier, some of that material is in countries like 

France, which we don’t worry about as much, and Germany and 

other places, but there are some troubling locations outside in that 

remaining 60 percent. We are studying ways to address that material, and we are studying what legal authority we would need in 

order to repatriate that. 

Mr. WALDEN. I also understand the U.S. has exported 15,000 

kilograms of LEU to foreign countries. How much of this U.S.-origin LEU has been recovered? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. I don’t think any of it actually. I don’t know. 

I don’t know the answer, but I can take that for the record. 

Mr. WALDEN. How concerned should we be about that? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Well, LEU is a commercial product. It is, of 

course, not useful in a weapons program unless you had a large facility, perhaps like Portsmith or Paducah, to enrich it up to a weapons grade. 

Mr. WALDEN. Can it be used for dirty bomb? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. No, it is not suitable for a dirty bomb. 

Mr. WALDEN. All right. 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Sir, we don’t have any security requirements 

beyond basic safety requirements for LEU fresh fuel. Obviously 

once it’s irradiated, then it is a different story and we have very, 

very strict security requirements at our reactors for our spent fuel 

storage facilities. But once it’s irradiated it’s potentially useful for 

a dirty bomb. That is not, if I were a terrorist, where I would go 

to get the material. 

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Longsworth, I understand that the GTRI program is working with other countries to improve the security of 

high-risk radioactive sources. For instance, you are working with 

other countries to improve security at hospitals that have radiation 

24

teletherapy units that contain large amounts of powder cesium. 

When you are finished with security enhancements at foreign hospitals, are they more secure than what NRC requires for security 

at hospitals with teletherapy units in America? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. In some cases yes, in some cases no. It depends on the security conditions in the country. What we have 

done in some countries is we do some simple things like put bars 

on windows so that somebody couldn’t steal a source and throw it 

out to a waiting car and drive away. We put alarms on the actual—

in the oncology clinics on top of the—with the machines that have 

the sources inside. 

It’s very low—it’s for the most part low tech. We assess whether 

they have response forces and what the response time might be if 

somebody attempted to take that source, either usually off hours 

when nobody’s using the source. But it varies from country to country, and it is driven primarily by the security conditions in the 

country. 

Mr. WALDEN. Do you think in the end, though, that those hospitals will have a more secure environment than ones here as required by the NRC? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. It’s going to vary dramatically from hospital 

to hospital. It’s without a specific example. 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Sir, I don’t believe so. We have had together 

with the 33 Agreement States very robust requirements at the hospitals for such large sources over the years, before 9/11. 

Since 9/11 we have advised them and we expect soon to issue orders to approximately 700 university research facilities and hospitals that have these sorts of materials to further enhance security. 

One of the issues that we deal with when we meet with that 

community is the cost of some of our additional controls, and we 

try to take that into account. We try to be reasonable, but our security requirements are solid. They are about to improve for that category of licensees very shortly. The staff has promised us the orders very shortly for that category of licensees that—hospital licensees. 

I, unfortunately, see doctors at the Washington Hospital Center 

more than I would like to, and I talk to the head of oncology there, 

and that—we rely basically—our philosophy in this country is to 

rely on local law enforcement and to have very—have multiple 

means of contacting local law enforcement within minutes. 

That is basically what our—and we expect the local law enforcement to help us, in addition to all the safety things we do to make 

sure people don’t come in contact with these sources because it 

would be a real problem for them. 

Mr. WALDEN. Well, how do the GTRI program security improvements at foreign hospitals compare with what NRC requires? It’s 

just all over the map; is that what you are saying? 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. This is an area where I am not sure we have 

had—we have—I think the fault is on both sides. We coordinate 

with the DOE Office of Security through this Government Sector 

Coordinating Council. The DOE Office of Security doesn’t work for 

Mr. Brooks or Mr. Longsworth, and so whatever documents they 

have been using at foreign hospitals, like in Athens last summer, 

25

are not something that we have cleared in our documents. We only 

found out recently and have shared with them, we weren’t necessarily sharing with them. We were sharing with the 33 States 

but weren’t sharing with them. We have some problem here, but 

we are following on that. We are going to fix this. We are going 

to fix it promptly. We are going to be talking to Deputy Secretary 

Sell next week with all of the Commissioners, but this was not as 

coordinated as I think it might have been. 

I think within both of us, Paul has been given a mission overseas, and we are a regulatory agency and the timelines of the two 

don’t always intersect. He felt that he needed to do stuff in Athens 

last summer. We are still working on the orders with the 33 Agreement States and the private sector to make sure and it is also security information. Hospitals don’t have procedures for security information, and we are trying to help them in that area. So there is 

a sort of walk-before-you-run thing. 

Mr. WALDEN. But GTRI is planning to provide guidance for security enhancements at hospitals and at other facilities too that use 

high-risk sources here in the U.S., aren’t you? 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. I think that what is happening, sir, and we 

are coordinated on this through the IAEA, there is a—there is 

some draft security documents that we, DOE and Department of 

State are currently working on. 

And we will coordinate on those documents before we go to other 

nations. And that is a commitment. That is a commitment. 

Mr. WALDEN. But I am informed GTRI has a pilot program working now? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. We have done some work here. Let me say, 

the work we have done overseas—the Athens example is a great 

example. We were asked by the Greeks to go look at their facilities 

in the run-up to the Greece Olympics to ensure that those sources 

were secured. And the work we did there, frankly, was very low 

cost at these clinics, and so we probably provided some things there 

that we might not provide other places simply because of the request of the Greek government. And the additional cost was almost 

immeasurable. We had teams there putting in extra locks and putting in bars on the window. 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. We had all of that. In the United States, we—

the blood irradiators, if you go and visit one of the local hospitals, 

Children’s Hospital or Washington Hospital Center or GW, or 

whatever, they are in the basement. They are secured. You know, 

you have all this lead shielding. That is why these things tend to 

be in the basement. And we don’t have open windows where you 

have high-risk sources. It is just not—but that mostly is prior to 

9/11. 

The additional things, we are really focusing on background 

checks. And I mentioned in my testimony, we would like the ability 

to do—the committee has given us the ability to do fingerprinting 

checks. 

Mr. WALDEN. My time has expired. Thank you for your answers 

and testimony. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Walden. 

26

At this time I will recognize Dr. Burgess for his 10 minutes of 

questioning. 

Mr. BURGESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I apologize for 

being late. So if anything I ask is covering ground you have already 

covered, again, I apologize. 

But, Commissioner, do you want to finish that last thought about 

what has changed since 9/11? 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Well, we are focused on making sure that 

there are multiple means of dealing with local law enforcement, 

and we are focused on having reliable people have access to the 

high-risk sources. But we could use additional authority, and this 

committee has provided it to us on multiple occasions, just never 

in a bill that got to the President, to have background checks and 

fingerprinting for some key individuals. We are not going to do everybody at the Washington Hospital Center, but we will do the people in the oncology department who have regular access to the 

high-risk sources if necessary. I mean, this is something we have 

to talk through with the States if we get the authority from the 

Congress. 

But the focus isn’t on guards and guns at hospitals and research 

facilities. It is on making sure that there is very robust—that the 

stuff is controlled and that we have local law enforcement support. 

And we have had that in place, I believe, since March 17, 2003, 

since Operation Liberty Shield. Everybody was advised, and they 

take our advice seriously even though the order hasn’t been issued 

to—in this category to have robust coordination with local law enforcement. That is the theory under which we proceed. 

Mr. BURGESS. Very well. 

Along the lines of the high-risk sources, the NRC has over the 

last several decades licensed some high-risk sealed sources for commercial and industrial uses such as food irradiators. And they do 

contain a significant amount of radioactivity, which could be useful 

if you wanted to make one of those disbursal devices. When the 

NRC initially licensed these sources, NRC didn’t require tracking 

of the high-risk sources. So I guess the question is, why not now 

develop that data base to track those high-risk sources? 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. Sir, we already have—we have done two 

things. We have an interim data base with the 99 percent response 

rate. And I can’t promise it is perfect, but we know the 1,300 to 

1,325 places that have high-risk material in a snapshot in time. We 

intend to issue a rulemaking which goes through all the processes 

that will allow us to have a national source tracking system which 

will have 1-day transactions. If somebody in Texas sends something 

to Kentucky, we will get both ends of the transaction within 1 day. 

It is going to be Web-based. It is going to be secure. It is going to 

take, as I said earlier, $10 to $20 million over the next—I think 

the number is $14 million, I don’t have it in my head. But that is 

just for the computer system and the support to the computer system. We have worked this with the States. We have worked it with 

our colleagues and other agencies through an interagency coordinating committee that includes the Department of Energy and the 

Department of Homeland Security. 

So we are aggressively moving out as rapidly as we can. We want 

this to be—I forget the—FISMA, is that the term? The information 

27

security oversight requirements of Congress. We want those to be 

built in from the get-go so we don’t have to patch them on at the 

end. 

The staff has the goal of having phase one of this in place by the 

end of 2006. That is a very aggressive goal in information technology space and may be too aggressive, and we will back off. We 

are not going to put in place a system that isn’t adequately secure. 

Mr. BURGESS. Very well. 

Mr. Longsworth, has the Department of Energy pursued the use 

of commercial companies and facilities for the recovery and interim-based storage of domestic radioactive sealed sources? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. We are looking at commercial disposal. Right 

now, most sources require disposal at a DOE facility. So either we 

bring them to Los Alamos in most cases and we can—we are also 

looking at expanding our disposal capacity at other sites like the 

Nevada test site. We are hopeful that there will be commercial disposal options, increased disposal commercial options for these 

sources in the future. For the record, I can get you the exact percentages that currently go to commercial disposal, which is a significant percentage. We are trying to increase that to try to get 

more capacity in the commercial sector for disposal of unused 

and—of used and unwanted sources. 

So it would be your opinion that the Department is best served 

by using the existing sources of both commercial and governmental 

solutions? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Absolutely. A mix of both is required. Now, 

some sources you will never be able to send to a commercial facility, so we will have to maintain some capability in our complex. 

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you. We are going to go a second round 

here to about 5 minutes for questions. So at this point, I will start 

a second round. 

In panel two’s testimony, which we have all read, one of them 

refers to the Schumer amendment, to the 1992—in 1992—that required recipients of U.S. HEU to commit to convert their reactors 

to using nonweapons-usable low-enriched uranium. And then at another point, they mentioned that, in the energy bill, the Schumer 

amendment was in effect removed or left nonoperable as it passed 

on the House side. Do you all have any comments on that? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Well, I will speak for the administration. We 

actually supported the Schumer bill, the Schumer amendment, that 

we think that is a good standard. I will note, one of the consequences of that standard is that it did not make any kind of economic assessment about whether a facility could convert economically or not. And not that we are promoting that, but in some 

cases, some of the users of the these highly enriched uranium targets claimed that they could not economically convert and, therefore, might shut down and cutoff the supply of much needed rare 

isotopes for medical uses. 

But we support the Schumer amendment. And one of the reasons 

we are doubling the budget for designing new reactor fuels, part of 

that work also goes to design new targets so that you don’t need 

highly enriched uranium targets to make medical isotopes. 

28

Mr. WHITFIELD. I guess, to be correct, that the language in H.R. 

6 would create an exemption from the conversion requirement if 

the cost for such conversion exceeded 10 percent. 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. I was trying to articulate what I thought the 

amenders were seeking. But let me be very clear. The administration has said we do support the underlying Schumer. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. The underlying Schumer amendment. 

Mr. MCGAFFIGAN. And I believe the Commission has supported 

the committee’s actions in H.R. 6. The only exports, we see—we follow the law. The only exports of HEU that have been at all problematic during my 9 years on the commission—and they haven’t 

been really problematic, it is just that we have been trying to follow the law—are exports of HEU to Canada and to the Netherlands. Both countries have done extraordinary things, and they are 

close allies, to try to convert first to low-enriched uranium fuel, of 

course, and then, in the case of the Canadians, they are trying, 

thus far without much success, working with Argon, to find alternatives to HEU targets for producing medical isotopes. 

So we have followed the law. We have conditioned the exports. 

That is our authority. We get executive branch views. And we have 

thus far agreed with the executive branch that the problem that 

the licensee would point out is that they are in a bit of a do loop 

in that they believe in annual reports submitted to us—I am talking about the Canadian licensee at the moment. They have to say 

that there is an active program under way—Schumer amendment 

requires that—with Argon. But if—the economics they think is prohibitive, but they haven’t tied that down, partly because they 

haven’t got the reactor working yet. So it is a very complicated area 

that staff has worked out I believe as part of the conference report. 

The last Congress’ H.R. 6, a provision that was—is certainly acceptable to the commission, and I think Chairman Diaz has said 

that in previous correspondence. 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Let me clarify also, as the Commissioner said, 

it is not possible today for the Canadian facility to convert, so there 

is no requirement to stop shipments of targets. But I think—and, 

again, we are working to try to develop those targets and to do so 

in an economic way. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Let me make sure I understand. You support the 

underlying Schumer amendment. But do you have an official position on the way the language read as it passed, the energy bill 

passed? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Let me clarify. I think the underlying Schumer amendment—we support the notion that if a facility can convert, then we should explore ways to make that possible. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Okay. 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Congress will have to make an assessment 

about whether, because of that requirement and perhaps a licensee’s inability to economically convert, that you might lose that critical isotope production. But we are trying to make it possible. Our 

mission is to try to make it possible for facilities that use HEU in 

any use to convert. That may not be economic for all users, and, 

again, that would—I think that would defer back to you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much. 

29

I will recognize Mr. Inslee. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. 

Mr. Longsworth, can you give us some sort of percentages perhaps by weight or volume of what is out there to be still secured 

or obtained, where we are and where we get to the end point? I 

mean, can you put this in percentages for us? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Percentages of how much material is out there 

and how much we have actually secured? 

Mr. INSLEE. Yes. Or otherwise secured and obtained in our own 

possession. I am just trying to get a lay perspective of where we 

are in this job. 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Well, Russia is to weapons-usable nuclear material what Saudi Arabia is to oil. I mean, most of the material is 

in Russia. It is estimated to be 600 metric tons; it may be more. 

It is most likely maybe less than that, but 600 metric tons is the 

benchmark that we use for Russian material. Now, that is just material at their facilities that are equivalent to DOE facilities. So 

their material productionsites, we think, house about 600 metric 

tons. 

There is some number of metric tons which in classified session 

we can go into that are in the form of warheads or weapons parts 

that are in their production chain. That is a smaller number, obviously. But, in Russia, again, we are working to secure all of that 

material. And we are on track to be done with everything including 

warheads perhaps as early as 2009. 

Mr. INSLEE. So what percentage have we obtained up to now? Is 

it half? 70 percent? What? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. Again, warheads were—they don’t tell us exactly how many warheads they have. That is at various locations, 

so that is against Russian law for them to tell us that. But we will 

be done with all of the Navy sites this year. We will be done with 

strategic rocket forces we think in 4 or 5 years. And then—and we 

think in that timeframe we can also be done with all of the 12th 

GUMO sites which tend to be larger sites and which are warhead 

consolidationsites. 

For the 600 metric tons that is in their productionsites, we are 

about halfway done in terms of volume. We are about three-quarters of the way done in terms of locations, which means that last 

25 percent of locations or sites houses a much higher percentage, 

or a much higher volume of material remains at those last few 

sites. 

Mr. INSLEE. Now, could we—is there a one-to-one correlation between our appropriations and our speed of finishing that job? If we 

are halfway through now, if we double your appropriation, can you 

get the job done in half the time? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. I don’t think it is quite that math for it depends on what year you are in. From 2001 roughly to 2002, 2003, 

we were not limited by funding. We were limited by the Russians’ 

ability to absorb our funding. We then made several breakthroughs 

where we needed additional funds. We asked for funds. Congress 

gave us some additional funds, and we have caught up. We are now 

at the point where I think we are fully funded to achieve our 2008 

deadline for the 600 metrics tons, and we are fully funded for the 

warhead work as well. 

30

There are two caveats I would put on that answer. One is for the 

600 metric tons; it requires the Russians to give us access to their 

serial production enterprises, these last—their last sites, which we 

have never been given access to. These sites have ongoing nuclear 

weapons work. They are the most sensitive sites in Russia. And I 

think one Russian told me that no Westerner has ever set foot in 

these closed sites. So getting into those sites or at least implementing programs that will enhance security of those facilities and 

doing so in a way that we can verify that the work was actually 

done, that is a challenge, and that is a roadblock that we have to 

overcome if we are going to meet the 2008 deadline. 

Mr. INSLEE. So what is the date for the 600 tons? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. 2008. 

Mr. INSLEE. 2008. 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. 2008, yes, sir. 

Mr. INSLEE. Okay. And for completion of the warheads, that is? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. 2008, 2009. We are waiting for the Russian 

federation to give us a comprehensive list of sites that they want 

to do work at. 

Mr. INSLEE. A quick question. What do you see as the most serious threat, domestic or overseas, and why? I mean, if you had to 

sort of pick the one thing that would make you lose the most sleep, 

what would you say it was? 

Mr. LONGSWORTH. In my mind, it is a lost nuclear warhead, because that is ready to use, and probably an artillery shell or something that is a man-portable nuclear weapon. That is a very lowrisk, high-consequence event. The Russians do provide better security for warheads than they do for bulk material in most cases. So 

it is a lower risk, but the consequence is high. 

At the other end of that spectrum is a potential use of an RDD 

device, which is a lower consequence but a higher probability because of the availability of those sources. But the thing that I think 

that, when we prioritize our work, we prioritize—warheads get the 

highest priority. If we are given the ability or access to secure a 

warhead site, we will divert all of our resources to do that first. 

Then we go to bulk fissionable material. This is the 600 metric 

tons. And then kind of last on our list would be an RDD. So we 

would—that is how, if you want to think of it in a rough priority, 

that is how we would prioritize our work. And that is actually in 

our budget guidance, and we manage that. We build our budgets 

based on that. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Inslee. 

Dr. Burgess, do you have any further questions? 

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, I will yield 

back. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Well, that would conclude the testimony and 

questions for panel one. I would remind you all, since you have 

been so kind to already spend an hour and a half with us, that 

after we finish the opening statements, the statements and questions for panel two, we will move into closed session in 2218. And 

that will probably be within 45 minutes from now. So thank you 

all. And we look forward to seeing you in 2218. 

31

At this time I would like to call the witnesses for the second 

panel. First, Dr. Charles D. Ferguson, who is a fellow of science 

and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Ms. Joan 

Rohlfing, who is the senior vice president for programs and operations for the Nuclear Threat Initiative. We genuinely appreciate 

your being with us this afternoon, and we look forward to your testimony. 

As you know, this is an investigative hearing, and normally, we 

take testimony under oath. And I would ask you all, do you have 

any difficulty in giving your testimony under oath this afternoon? 

And of course, you would have a right to counsel. Do you have a 

wish to have counsel with you when you testify? 

Then if you will rise and raise your right hand. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you. You are now under oath, and you 

may give your 5-minute summary of your written statement. 

And, Dr. Ferguson, we will recognize you for 5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF CHARLES D. FERGUSON, FELLOW, SCIENCE 

AND TECHNOLOGY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS; AND 

JOAN B. ROHLFING, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR PROGRAMS AND OPERATIONS, NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE 

Mr. FERGUSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman—and Congressman Inslee I see left the room—and Congressman Burgess. 

Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to this important 

hearing on GTRI. 

Because U.S. governments witnesses have ably reviewed the accomplishments to date and the progress in achieving current program goals, I will address some urgently needed enhancements. 

The United States should continue to delegitimize use of civilian 

highly enriched uranium. The United States government policy already points strongly in this direction. The GTRI Web site in particular states that one of its important goals is to, ‘‘minimize and 

to the extent possible eliminate the use of highly enriched uranium, HEU, in civilian nuclear applications worldwide.’’

Lending support for this longstanding policy, Congress passed in 

1992 the Schumer amendment to require recipients of U.S. HEU 

to commit to converting their reactors to using nonweapons-usable 

low-enriched uranium. 

Mr. Chairman, I urge your committee to strengthen the purpose 

behind the Schumer amendment. At a time when President Bush 

has identified terrorists armed with nuclear weapons as the 

gravest danger our country faces and at a time when Osama bin 

Laden, one of America’s greatest enemies, covets nuclear weapons, 

we need to make sure that U.S. legislation does everything it can 

to remove the temptation of HEU from nuclear terrorists. 

Mr. Chairman, it may be too little too late, because the House 

energy policy act of 2005, H.R. 6, was sent to the Senate recently, 

but I believe it is important to discuss some serious concerns with 

Section 603 of that legislation. If enacted, the amendment in that 

section will allow highly enriched uranium to continue to be prevalent in the marketplace. This is in direct opposition to President 

Bush’s policy of keeping these materials out of the hands of terrorists. 

32

The amendment removes the incentives in current law for isotope producers to work with the United States to resolve technical 

conversion issues and reduce the cost of converting to LEU. The 

study under the amendment is a fiction. The biggest problem is the 

amendment’s definition of feasibility of conversion to LEU, a less 

than 10 percent increase in the cost of producing isotopes. Current 

law simply defines it as a less than a large percentage increase. 

The 10 percent definition is arbitrary and has no demonstrable relationship to the commercial feasibility of isotope production or to 

the price that consumers must pay. In fact, the isotope production 

cost is only a small fraction of the total product cost. 

The study itself should weigh the cost of conversion against the 

benefit of reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism without presuming in advance what an acceptable cost would be. We already 

know that conversion to LEU is feasible because companies in 

other countries have successfully done it. The 9-year time line, 5 

years for the study followed by 4 additional years that isotope producers would have to convert to LEU, is strong evidence of the real 

purpose of this amendment: create lots of smoke in the language 

and look serious. But the real impact will be to repeal current protections for keeping HEU out of the hands of terrorists. 

Keeping current law in place will not affect medical treatment of 

any patient. As long as foreign companies make a good-faith effort 

to pursue conversion, they can continue to receive HEU from the 

United States. 

Now let me turn to another issue. The United States should promote removal of HEU from potentially vulnerable sites to any secure location, not necessarily the country of origin. GTRI is striving 

to repatriate Soviet- and Russian-origin HEU fuel and U.S.-origin 

HEU fuel back to Russia and the United States. While this objective is laudable, if GTRI encounters resistance in expeditiously repatriating HEU fuel back to the country of origin, GTRI program 

managers should develop the program flexibility to remove this 

dangerous material to any secure site. 

For instance, if a particular country holding Soviet-origin HEU 

objects to repatriating this material to Russia, GTRI managers 

should try to find a creative way to go around this roadblock. These 

managers should request, if necessary, the program flexibility to 

emphasize removing vulnerable HEU and not be tied down to restrictive repatriation policy. 

Next, the United States should mobilize its intelligence resources 

to support the mission of GTRI. To help GTRI meet the worthy 

goals of securing HEU and converting HEU fuel research reactors, 

better intelligence assessments of facilities containing HEU are urgently needed. While NNSA recognizes that the insider threat is 

the most dangerous threat to loss of HEU from these facilities, it 

is unclear whether NNSA has developed detailed intelligence profiles of each facility. If it has not already done so, Mr. Chairman, 

I recommend that your committee urge NNSA and GTRI managers 

to coordinate their program activities with the intelligence community. 

To determine how vulnerable HEU at a facility is to theft or diversion, the United States needs to know who works at each facility, how susceptible is each worker to blackmail and other means 

33

of coercion, how much scientific or commercial work is done at each 

facility, and what physical security protection measures are in 

place. A detailed intelligence profile would also determine how 

much it would cost to shut down each facility and direct workers 

to early retirement or to move their research or commercial activities to a more secure facility. The United States needs to move as 

quickly as possible along as many parallel paths to remove HEU 

from vulnerable facilities, to convert needed facilities to low-enriched uranium use and to shut down or buy out unneeded facilities. 

Now, in my remaining time, let me quickly turn to the second 

major component of GTRI, dealing with the threat of RDDs or dirty 

bombs. GTRI should work closely with the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission to apply lessons learned in the successful recovery of 

thousands of unused radioactive sources within the United States. 

As you know, Mr. Chairman, there are two regulatory systems 

within the United States: the agreement State system and another 

system that is directly licensed by the NRC itself. 

One of my students at Georgetown University in the masters degree program recently did his masters thesis on looking at the 

agreement states versus nonagreement states. He has uncovered 

evidence that the agreement states appear to be doing a much better job at controlling their radioactive sources. So, Mr. Chairman, 

I would urge your committee that we need to do an expanded 

study. Unfortunately, my student only had enough resources to 

look at four states. I believe that we need to encourage the NRC, 

GTRI, and the agreement states to work together to share information to determine the best security practices among the states. In 

the interest of impartiality, Mr. Chairman, I recommend that independent institutions such as the National Academy of Sciences perform this analysis. 

And, finally, the United States international partners should 

build a sustainable radioactive material security system. Mr. 

Longsworth talked at length about this, so I won’t go on. Let me 

just jump to what I think was not covered and needs to be covered. 

And I am not recommending phasing out radioactive materials; I 

agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that they serve very beneficial uses. 

But they can be used more wisely, and we could apply smart alternative technologies to phaseout selective high-risk radioactive 

sources. This has already been done in selected industries in the 

United States. It has saved money. It has increased safety and security. But I think we need to do a much better effort at looking 

at ways to introduce alternative technologies to make these radioactive sources even more secure. 

And one other point related to that, Mr. Chairman, is that the 

national laboratories, in particular Los Alamos National Laboratory, have done research on trying to make certain radioactive 

sources less dispersible, less potent if used in an RDD or dirty 

bomb. And what we need to do is develop a private-public partnership to try to figure out how to take those ideas and that research 

into the marketplace to try to phaseout dispersible radioactive materials and put in place radioactive materials that are more secure 

and safe. 

34

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to contribute to this hearing and to offer some recommendations to enhance national security and prevent the use of nuclear 

radioactive materials in acts of nuclear terrorism. 

[The prepared statement of Charles D. Ferguson follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHARLES D. FERGUSON, FELLOW, SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this important hearing on the Department of Energy’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative to combat nuclear and radiological terrorism. My work on preventing nuclear and radiological 

terrorism began on September 12, 2001, when I was serving in the Department of 

State’s Office of the Senior Coordinator for Nuclear Safety. On that date, I was 

asked to write a memorandum to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell warning him 

about the threat of radiological dispersal devices (RDDs), one type of which is popularly called a ‘‘dirty bomb.’’ In March 2002, I left government service to work as scientist-in-residence at the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies 

(CNS). In January 2003, CNS published ‘‘Commercial Radioactive Sources: Surveying the Security Risks,’’ one of the first in-depth post-9/11 reports on the RDD 

threat. I was the lead author of that report. Involvement in that report led to officials at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration 

(NNSA) hiring me, as a non-governmental consultant, in April 2003 to help them 

develop their action plan to secure dangerous radioactive sources that could fuel potent RDDs. I am pleased that in May 2004, then-Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham launched the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), an integrated program 

to apply NNSA’s expertise to securing, removing, and disposing of both high-risk radioactive sources and nuclear-weapons-usable highly enriched uranium throughout 

the world. 

This first anniversary of GTRI’s launch presents an opportune time to take stock 

of what GTRI has accomplished and what the United States needs to do to continue 

to strengthen nuclear and radiological security efforts. NNSA deserves substantial 

credit for working to prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism through the GTRI 

and other important programs. Because the U.S. government’s witnesses have ably 

reviewed the accomplishments to date and the progress in achieving current program goals, I will mainly provide a brief assessment of the thinking behind GTRI 

and then will address some urgently needed enhancements. 

Among U.S. government agencies, the NNSA has the unique technical and policy 

strength to tackle nuclear and radiological terror threats. It can draw on the technical talent residing in the U.S. national laboratories. In particular, Argonne National Laboratory has provided much of the technical muscle in working to convert 

dozens of research reactors worldwide from weapons-usable highly enriched uranium (HEU) to non-weapons-usable low enriched uranium. For decades during the 

Cold War, the two major suppliers of HEU-fueled reactors were the Unites States 

and the Soviet Union. Starting in the late 1970s, the United States and the Soviet 

Union recognized the dangers of HEU-fueled research reactors and began a program 

to convert these reactors to low enriched fuels. Based on the past several years of 

nuclear security work in the former Soviet Union, NNSA officials have also formed 

valuable working relationships their counterparts in this region, where large stockpiles of vulnerable radiological and nuclear materials are located. GTRI has expanded its reach beyond the former Soviet Union to include about 40 countries. 

Domestically, the Department of Energy, for decades, has had the responsibility 

to provide a secure disposal pathway for many of the most potent commercial radioactive sources. In late 2003, NNSA was wisely put in charge of this important domestic program—the Off-Site Source Recovery (OSR) Project—because the Department’s leadership recognized it is a national security program as well as a radioactive waste disposal program. The OSR Project deserves praise for successfully exceeding its congressional mandate by securing more than 10,000 at-risk disused radioactive sources throughout the United States. I believe that it should continue to 

receive needed financial support from Congress. The program expenditures to date 

have been very modest compared to the accomplishments. 

In sum, GTRI works both domestically and internationally. This broad-based approach should give GTRI the capability to apply lessons learned within the United 

States to challenges confronted abroad. 

Also, GTRI works to prevent use of the quintessential weapon of mass destruction—a nuclear explosive—and the archetypal weapon of mass disruption—a radiological dispersal device. Security experts agree that terrorist detonation of a nuclear 

35

weapon is far less likely to happen, but far more damaging, than terrorist use of 

a radiological weapon. While there is consensus on this qualitative risk assessment, 

there is disagreement among experts about how to allocate scarce government resources to combating nuclear and radiological threats. 

Should the U.S. government and its international partners spend more resources 

on preventing and preparing for the most damaging or the most likely acts of nuclear and radiological terrorism? To answer this question, I devoted more than two 

years while at CNS writing the book The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism with William Potter, Amy Sands, Leonard Spector, and Fred Wehling. Published last year, 

this book provides a prioritized plan for combating nuclear and radiological threats. 

The book’s fundamental conclusion ‘‘is that the United States must work immediately to reduce the probability of nuclear terror acts with the highest consequences and mitigate the consequences of the nuclear terror acts that are the 

most probable.’’ Because of the horrendous damage from a nuclear explosion, I believe that the United States needs to spend more resources on preventing this 

threat from occurring than preventing the much less harmful dirty bomb attack. 

Nonetheless, as discussed in detail below, a wise, but still limited, investment of 

government resources can do much to reduce the likelihood and consequences of 

dirty bomb attacks. 

The highest consequence nuclear terror act—terrorist detonation of a nuclear explosive—would have devastating effects and could cause the American people to lose 

confidence in their government. To carry out that attack, terrorists would need to 

acquire an intact nuclear weapon from a military arsenal or to seize highly enriched 

uranium or plutonium to make an improvised nuclear device. Of these three pathways to devastating nuclear terror, the highly enriched uranium route offers terrorists the easiest method, assuming that official custodians of nuclear weapons do not 

provide terrorists detailed assistance in detonating an intact nuclear weapon. Unlike plutonium, HEU can fuel the easiest to build nuclear weapon—a gun-type device—the type of bomb exploded at Hiroshima. Such a crude, but devastating, weapon would not require nuclear testing and would be within the technical capability 

of certain terrorist groups. The most significant hurdle to the terrorists is access to 

sufficient amounts of HEU. While governments must provide rigorous security 

around intact nuclear weapons and plutonium stockpiles, they must prioritize securing, consolidating, and eliminating HEU stocks in both the military and civilian sectors. Because GTRI aims to reduce and remove HEU from vulnerable locations 

throughout the world, it is on the right path. But the United States can do much 

more to accelerate efforts to secure and remove dangerous HEU. 

The United States should continue to de-legitimize use of civilian highly 

enriched uranium. U.S. government policy already points strongly in this direction. The GTRI Web site, in particular, states that one of its important goals is to 

‘‘minimize and, to the extent possible, eliminate the use of highly enriched uranium 

(HEU) in civil nuclear applications worldwide.’’ Dating back to at least 1978 with 

the beginnings of the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) 

program, the United States has been striving to remove HEU from the civilian sector. Lending further support for this policy, Congress passed in 1992 the Schumer 

amendment to require recipients of U.S. HEU to commit to converting their reactors 

to using non-weapons-usable low enriched uranium. Mr. Chairman, I urge your committee to strengthen the purpose behind the Schumer amendment. At a time when 

President Bush has identified terrorists armed with nuclear weapons as the gravest 

danger that our country faces and at a time when Osama bin Laden, one of America’s greatest enemies, covets nuclear weapons, we need to make sure that U.S. legislation does everything that it can to remove the temptation of HEU from nuclear 

terrorists. Consequently, I recommend that your committee should work to determine what it would require in terms of financial cost and political commitment for 

medical isotope production companies requesting HEU supplies to convert expeditiously to employing low enriched uranium in their isotope production reactors. 

The United States should promote removal of HEU from potentially vulnerable sites to any secure location, not necessarily the country of origin. 

GTRI is striving to repatriate Soviet- and Russian-origin HEU fuel in seventeen 

countries back to Russia; similarly, it is working to repatriate U.S.-origin fuel in 

several countries back to the United States. While this objective is laudable, if GTRI 

encounters resistance in expeditiously repatriating HEU fuel back to the country of 

origin, GTRI program managers should develop the program flexibility to remove 

this dangerous material to any secure site. For instance, if a particular country 

holding Soviet-origin HEU objects to repatriating this material to Russia, GTRI 

managers should try to find a creative way to go around this roadblock. Perhaps 

officials of the country in question would welcome sending their HEU to an existing 

secure facility outside of Russia. GTRI managers should request, if necessary, the 

36

program flexibility to emphasize removal of vulnerable HEU and not be tied down 

to a restrictive repatriation policy. 

The United States should mobilize its intelligence resources to support 

the mission of GTRI. To help GTRI meet the worthy goals of securing HEU and 

converting HEU-fueled research reactors, better intelligence assessments of facilities 

containing HEU are urgently needed. While NNSA recognizes that the insider 

threat is the most dangerous threat to loss of HEU from these facilities, it is unclear 

whether NNSA has developed detailed intelligence profiles of each facility. If NNSA 

is not already doing so, Mr. Chairman, I recommend that your committee urge 

NNSA and GTRI managers to coordinate their programs’ activities with the intelligence community. To determine how vulnerable HEU at a facility is to theft or diversion, the United States needs to know who works at each facility, how susceptible is each worker to blackmail or other means of coercion, how much scientific 

or commercial work is done at each facility, and what physical security protection 

measures are in place. A detailed intelligence profile would also determine how 

much it would cost to shut down each facility and direct workers to early retirement 

or to move their research or commercial activities to a more secure facility. Shutting 

down and consolidating vulnerable HEU facilities could result in significant monetary savings. The United States needs to move as quickly as possible along as many 

parallel paths to remove HEU from vulnerable facilities, to convert needed facilities 

to low enriched uranium use, and to shut down or buy out unneeded facilities. 

Turning to the second major component of GTRI, I want to address the issue of 

radioactive materials security. In certain respects, this issue involves a different security paradigm than HEU security. Unlike HEU, radioactive sources have a legitimate commercial use. Every day, millions of people rely on radioactive isotopes to 

perform beneficial medical, industrial, and scientific purposes. In contrast to de-legitimizing HEU use, it would cause more harm than good to completely phase out 

use of radioactive sources. That being stated, NNSA and the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission (NRC) along with international partners, such as the G-8 and the 

International Atomic Energy Agency, can work together to more smartly employ radioactive sources and ionizing radiation. 

GTRI should work closely with the NRC to apply lessons learned in the 

successful recovery of thousands of disused radioactive sources. Within the 

United States, there are two regulatory systems for control of radioactive sources. 

The Agreement States system, formed under the 1954 U.S. Atomic Energy Act, as 

amended, includes 33 states. These states have primary responsibility, with the 

NRC providing an oversight role, for licensing commercial radioactive sources within 

their jurisdictions. In contrast, the other 17 states turn to the NRC to directly license their sources. Recently, Morgan Baker, one of my graduate students at the 

Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, discovered while writing his 

Master’s degree thesis that the states under the Agreement States system appear 

to control their radioactive sources better than those states directly licensed by the 

NRC. Because of his resource and time constraints, he only examined four states. 

The GTRI’s Off-Site Source Recovery program has amassed a database of thousands 

of disused sources found throughout the United States. This database can be mined 

for valuable information as to which states have done the best job at controlling radioactive sources. Mr. Chairman, I urge your committee to direct the NRC, the GTRI, 

and the Agreement States to work together to share information in order to determine 

best security practices among the states. In the interests of impartiality, Mr. Chairman, I recommend that an independent organization, such as the National Academy 

of Sciences, perform the analysis. 

The United States and international partners should build a sustainable 

radioactive materials security system. Such a system would go beyond merely 

locking up high-risk radioactive sources. GTRI officials to a large extent recognize 

this and have been leveraging IAEA assistance as well as working closely with their 

counterparts in other countries to develop a safety and security culture. To paraphrase words of wisdom from the Bible, it is better to teach a man how to build 

his own effective security system than to keep providing security for him. Nonetheless, for countries with weak controls over radioactive sources, there is an urgent 

need for GTRI to provide rapid security upgrades. A long term sustainable solution 

involves strengthening the regulatory systems within those countries. The IAEA has 

had a program to do that since 1995. But building strong regulatory systems take 

time. They cannot just be legislated into existence. Training skilled regulatory officials requires sustained effort. Another important aspect of making the security of 

radioactive sources stronger is using these materials wisely. As explained earlier in 

this testimony, radioactive materials should not be fully phased out. Nonetheless, 

smart alternative technologies can be used to replace certain types of high-risk radioactive sources. In the fall 2003 volume of the National Academies journal Issues 

37

in Science and Technology, Joel Lubenau, a former senior adviser to the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission, and I wrote: 

The International Commission on Radiological Protection and the congressionally chartered National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements 

(NCRP) hold as a pillar of radiation protection the principle of justification. This 

principle calls for evaluating the risks and benefits of using a radioactive source 

for a particular application. Users are supposed to opt for a nonradioactive alternative if there is one that provides comparable benefit and less risk, including the risk associated with waste management. 

The NRC has taken the position that advocating alternative technologies is 

not part of its mission. The commission’s reasons, which have not been explained, might be that it believes it is only in the business of regulating the 

radioactive sources that licensees choose to use, not the business of overseeing 

licensees’ decisions to use them. Nonetheless, it can be argued that the NRC’s 

charge from Congress—to protect public health, safety, and property as well as 

provide for the common defense and security—is sufficient to require the commission to adopt the principle of justification and, at least in principle, to encourage the consideration of alternative technologies. This is not to suggest that 

the NRC should second-guess licensees’ decisions to use radioactive sources, 

simply that the commission should ensure that licensees are making informed 

decisions that take into account justification and technological alternatives. Applying the principle of justification would reduce the number of radioactive 

sources in use and thus cut the risk of an RDD event occurring. The National 

Academy of Sciences, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the 

NCRP, and the Health Physics Society have all recommended that users consider alternative technologies. 

One U.S. industry that is adopting alternative technologies is steel, itself no 

stranger to the risks and costs of radioactive contamination. Steel mills use nuclear gauges to monitor the level of molten steel in continuous casters. If molten 

steel breaks through the casting system and strikes a gauge, the gauge housing 

and even the source could melt, causing contamination. Accordingly, mill operators are replacing nuclear gauges on continuous casters with eddy current and 

thermal systems, even though they are more expensive. The tradeoff—the cost 

of alternative technology versus the cost of contamination—makes the new systems a smart choice. 

Some of the national laboratories are performing R&D to replace the most 

dangerous radioactive sources (those containing very dispersible radioactive 

compounds) with sources that pose less of a security hazard. Unfortunately, 

technology developed at the national labs is not readily available to the marketplace. At an IAEA conference on the radioactive source industry in April 2003, 

major source producers reportedly expressed interest in forming public-private 

partnerships to bring these alternative technologies to market. In the United 

States, such partnerships are sorely needed. 

Mr. Chairman, I recommend that you encourage the NRC to keep licensees informed of smart alternative technologies that can safely and securely replace certain 

high-risk radioactive sources. I also recommend that your committee encourage the 

formation of private-public partnerships to develop radioactive sources that are less 

hazardous to use in potent dirty bombs. This action plan would support U.S. security 

and complement the important national security work done by the NRC and GTRI. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to contribute 

to this hearing and to offer some recommendations to enhance national security and 

to prevent the use of nuclear and radioactive materials in acts of nuclear terrorism.

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Dr. Ferguson. 

And, Ms. Rohlfing, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF JOAN B. ROHLFING 

Ms. ROHLFING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the 

committee for the opportunity to testify today. I would like to request that my written statement be entered into the record, and I 

will offer a brief oral statement. 

The gravest threat facing the Nation today is the potential for a 

terrorist organization to use a nuclear device in the heart of an 

American city, not a dirty bomb but a nuclear yield producing device bomb similar to Hiroshima. It is this threat, the threat of a 

38

nuclear blast not a radiological weapon, that I will focus on, because I believe that an attack using a nuclear bomb is the most serious and the consequences the most dire for our Nation, the globe 

and our way of life. Let me say, I am not an alarmist by nature, 

but in this testimony today, I hope to ring an alarm bell. 

Terrorists have several pathways to a nuclear bomb. They can 

acquire through theft or illicit purchase a fully intact warhead from 

an existing nuclear weapons state. Or, more likely, they will fabricate a crude nuclear device from a stolen or illicitly purchased nuclear material, either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Getting plutonium or highly enriched uranium, HEU, the essential ingredients of a nuclear bomb, is the hardest step in making a weapon. These materials are difficult to make, and current plutonium 

and HEU production technologies require large, expensive and 

technically sophisticated facilities that are today within the exclusive domain of nation states. 

Acquiring these materials through theft or illicit purchase is the 

most difficult step for terrorists to take and the easiest for us to 

stop. Unfortunately, the essential ingredients of nuclear bombs are 

spread around the world, much of it in purely secured facilities. 

HEU is of particular concern because the simplest design for a nuclear device, a so-called gun-type design, is based on HEU. There 

are over 40 countries that possess more than 100 research facilities 

that use this material. Effectively reducing nuclear danger will require global action and unprecedented global cooperation. 

Governments around the globe, including the U.S. Government, 

are not yet acting with the urgency or priority of purpose required 

to address the threat. For example, incredibly, given what is at 

stake, there is no comprehensive baseline inventory of warheads 

and nuclear materials that must be secured worldwide. There is no 

scorecard to keep score against. And let me clarify: This was a 

question that came up in the Q-and-A session. There was a question of Mr. Longsworth about whether there is a comprehensive 

baseline inventory. He suggested that there is no single integrated 

document. I am not talking about creating a single integrated document, and most certainly, it should be classified whenever this inventory is created. I am talking about gaps in our knowledge. We 

don’t yet know where all of the weapons-usable material is, and 

therefore, we can’t keep score against it. 

The Department of Energy’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative 

is helping to reduce, secure and eliminate HEU, plutonium and 

dangerous radioactive sources on a global basis. But is GTRI doing 

enough, fast enough, to prevent the ultimate catastrophe of nuclear 

terrorism from occurring? Has it been given the tools it needs to 

perform this most critical of missions effectively and rapidly? I believe it has not. The program is not yet delivering the protection 

we need with the urgency that we need it. 

What will it take to create the kind of program that can deliver 

the results we need on the timetable we need it? My written testimony provides detailed suggestions for making the program more 

effective, but I will sum up the main idea in one sentence: We need 

to build a bold aggressive Apollo-like program to prevent nuclear 

terrorism. We should be challenging ourselves to think in terms of 

creating a model program. The Apollo and Manhattan projects are 

39

two examples of what we can do when we have a national goal and 

provide the leadership, resources and authorities needed to achieve 

the goal. 

Incredibly, even though our way of life is at stake here, we are 

pursuing a business-as-usual approach to preventing nuclear terrorism. We are talking about timelines. Just—if you look at the 

budget documents submitted to the Congress, the I would say very 

ambitious and frankly unrealistic timelines that are described in 

those budget documents that go out 10 and in some cases 14 years 

from now, are unrealistic because they are not taking into account 

the entire universe of materials out there. And if we go about reclaiming materials, securing materials, locking them down at the 

pace that we have been with existing programs, it is going to take 

the better part of a quarter of a century. So we are nowhere near 

where we need to be in terms of the pace of getting this job done. 

The price of slow action could easily be loss of life, property and 

freedom on an unprecedented and catastrophic scale. We must recognize that we don’t have the luxury of time to pursue a businessas-usual approach, and we must act accordingly. 

In conclusion, a nuclear terrorism event has the potential to alter 

life as we know it today, severely damaging the global economy, seriously eroding the public’s confidence in governments, constraining 

the civil liberties we enjoy in the United States, and devastating 

our sense of personal and collective security. We have an enormous 

stake in ensuring that this does not happen. At NTI, the organization where I work, we frequently ask ourselves and our elected representatives and our fellow citizens of the world: The day after a 

catastrophic instance of nuclear terrorism, what will we wish we 

had done to prevent it, and why aren’t we doing that now? Thank 

you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Joan B. Rohlfing follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOAN B. ROHLFING, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR

PROGRAMS AND OPERATIONS, NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I thank you for the invitation to 

testify before you on this urgent national security issue. I appear before you as the 

Senior Vice President for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a charitable organization 

working to reduce the risk of use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. I 

should make clear, however, that the testimony I offer before you today is my own, 

and has not been cleared by NTI’s Board of Directors. 

NUCLEAR TERRORISM—THE NEW NUCLEAR THREAT

The gravest threat facing the nation today is the potential for a terrorist organization to use a nuclear device in the heart of an American city—not a ‘‘dirty bomb’’, 

but a nuclear yield producing bomb similar in effect to the one used in Hiroshima. 

It is this threat, the threat of a nuclear blast, not a radiological weapon, that I will 

focus my remarks on today because I believe that an attack using a nuclear bomb 

is the most serious, and the consequences the most dire for our nation, the globe, 

and our way of life. 

The subject of this hearing—the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Global Threat 

Reduction Initiative (GTRI) is a critical program in our fight to prevent nuclear terrorism, by working to prevent nuclear weapons materials, and dirty bomb materials 

from falling into the hands of terrorists. As such, GTRI is one of the most important 

national security programs that the US Government is currently undertaking. 

Terrorists have several pathways to a nuclear bomb: they can acquire, through 

theft or illicit purchase, a fully intact warhead from an existing nuclear weapon 

state, or, more likely, they will fabricate a crude nuclear device from stolen or illicitly purchased nuclear material—either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. 

40

Getting plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU), the essential ingredients 

of a nuclear bomb, is the hardest step in making the weapon. These materials are 

difficult to make, and current plutonium and HEU production technologies require 

large, expensive and technically sophisticated industrial facilities that are today 

within the exclusive domain of nation states. The most likely way a terrorist will 

get plutonium and HEU, therefore, is through illicit purchase or theft. Acquiring 

these materials is the most difficult step for terrorists to take and the easiest step 

for us to stop. 

Unfortunately, the essential ingredients of nuclear bombs are spread around the 

world, much of it in poorly secured facilities. HEU is of particular concern, because 

the simplest design for a nuclear device—a so-called gun type design—is one that 

is based on using HEU as the fissile material to produce a chain reaction. There 

are over 40 countries that possess more than 100 research facilities that use HEU. 

The DOE’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative is focused on minimizing, and eventually eliminating, the use of HEU in civilian applications around the world by helping to convert these facilities (or close them entirely) to ones that use low enriched 

uranium, a material that is not suitable for a nuclear weapon. The GTRI is also 

working to remove HEU from sites around the world, with an initial emphasis on 

HEU that came from the US and Russia. 

Effectively reducing nuclear danger will require global action, through unprecedented cooperation in over 40 nations around the world—including nuclear weapons 

states. No state acting alone has sufficient authority, resources or influence to assuredly prevent a nuclear attack, especially from nuclear terrorism. Because our 

international security is only as good as the security of these materials at the least 

defended site, all nations must move quickly to either eliminate these dangerous 

materials, or improve the physical security of these materials wherever they exist. 

THE GAP

Governments around the globe, including the United States Government, are not 

yet acting with the urgency or priority of purpose required to address the nuclear 

threat—the greatest threat to our security. 

For example:

• Incredibly, given the threat, there is no comprehensive baseline inventory of warheads and nuclear materials that must be secured worldwide. 

• Without this baseline inventory, it is not possible to develop a coordinated and 

prioritized plan for securing or removing those weapons/materials. 

• In Russia alone, less than half of the known nuclear weapons usable materials 

in the country have been given some form of strengthened security through USRussian cooperative threat reduction efforts. While the US and other states 

have been working with the Russian Federation to improve security over the 

last decade, bureaucratic disagreements over site access and liability continue 

to slow progress. 

• While we recognize the threat that poorly secured HEU poses to our security, we 

are still continuing international civil commerce in this material. Despite pleas 

from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, there is no international agreement and not much leadership 

on the subject of curtailing the widespread use of highly enriched uranium 

around the globe. 

• Beginning in 2002, the G8 pledged at Kananaskis to match U.S. threat reduction 

funding for addressing weapons of mass destruction threats, but this G8 effort 

is making glacial progress and needs focused leadership. 

GTRI A KEY PROGRAM, BUT STRENGTHENING NEEDED

The Department of Energy’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative programs help to 

reduce, secure and eliminate highly enriched uranium, plutonium and dangerous radioactive sources on a global basis. But is GTRI doing enough, fast enough to prevent the ultimate catastrophe of nuclear terrorism from occurring? Has it been 

given the tools it needs to perform this most critical of missions effectively and rapidly? I believe it has not. 

Below I offer some reflections on what we must achieve to prevent terrorists from 

being able acquire nuclear materials, and some measures of how GTRI is doing 

against these benchmarks. 

Former Secretary Abraham deserves credit for creating this program one year 

ago. It is testament to his appreciation of the nuclear terrorist threat that he consolidated into a single program a number of important proliferation prevention programs within the Department of Energy in order to ensure that they were better 

41

integrated, and more effectively executed. But the program is not yet delivering the 

protection we need with the urgency that we need it. 

OBJECTIVES & MEASURES OF SUCCESS

Denying terrorists’ access to dangerous nuclear material boils down to three essential objectives:

1. Establish a comprehensive global inventory of weapons and materials and a related threat assessment; 

2. Secure and/or eliminate vulnerable weapons and weapons materials against this 

inventory on an accelerated basis; 

3. Stop the spread of additional HEU around the globe by ending its use in civil commerce. How is the GTRI doing against these three objectives? 

On the first point, creating a global inventory and threat assessment, DOE’s Global Threat Reduction Office is working to create one. But as far as I and my colleagues at NTI have been able to discover, a risk-based global inventory does not 

yet exist. We recognize that creating a comprehensive, global inventory is not an 

easy task. It will require the integration of multiple existing databases, the creation 

of new data, and the cultivation of intelligence sources to fill gaps. We do not propose that this baseline inventory, once created, should be made publicly available. 

But its creation will be essential for understanding how much progress the program 

is making, and, more importantly, for understanding whether we are securing, converting and/or eliminating the highest priority threats. 

On the second point, securing and/or eliminating vulnerable weapons usable materials, the Department of Energy is clearly making progress. The Department’s 

2006 budget indicates a goal of converting five research reactors (out of an estimated 66 remaining) this year from HEU to non weapons-usable low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. It estimates that it will take until 2014 to convert all 66 remaining reactors. But the metrics DOE is using may be incomplete. 

We are not confident that the estimate of 66 remaining reactors includes all facilities that may have civil HEU. The DOE program to convert research reactors was 

not designed to address other civilian applications and facilities that use HEU, such 

as critical and subcritical assemblies (a type of research facility), or Russian nuclear 

icebreakers. There is also evidence, for example, that a significant additional number of HEU research facilities may exist within Russia, and we know that other 

HEU facilities of Chinese or other origin exist that have not been included in this 

tally. A July 2004 GAO report on DOE’s reactor conversion program cites a figure 

of 128 facilities around the world that contain 20 kilograms or more of HEU. Moreover, can we say that we are working with the urgency needed to stem this threat 

if we aren’t planning—even with the more modest inventory assumptions in the 

DOE budget—to finish the job until 2014? 

A similar line of reasoning can be applied to the GTRI program element that is 

responsible for returning US-origin spent fuel to the US. Under the current budget 

plan, the US program will take spent HEU fuel back from foreign research reactors 

until 2019. But the material that has been declared eligible for ‘‘take-back’’ under 

the DOE program has been narrowly defined. The General Accounting Office, in a 

November 2004 report on the US foreign fuel return program, found that another 

12,300 kilograms of HEU (enough for 200-250 nuclear weapons) that had been exported by the US was not eligible for return because the DOE, when establishing 

the fuel return program, limited the types of fuel that would be covered by the program. We need to broaden our definition of what the US considers eligible to bring 

back to the US, or send to Russia, including considering additional, third party disposition paths for some of this material. 

This brings me to the third point. Surprisingly, the US continues to export HEU 

for use in research facilities abroad. The US is not alone in this practice, other HEU 

producers also continue to produce HEU for use in civil facilities. Even as we try 

to get our arms around the global inventory, and rightly spend money to convert 

facilities and eliminate HEU around the globe, the HEU ‘‘spigot’’ remains on. As of 

yet, no global norm against the use of HEU for civilian applications exists. 

We must work to establish a global norm against use of HEU for civil purposes 

on an urgent basis. We must create the policy, legal and regulatory frameworks to 

support this long-term vision. Within the US, we have implicitly been promoting 

this norm through the very nonproliferation programs that now comprise the DOE’s 

Global Threat Reduction Initiative. But we need to move beyond an ‘‘implicit’’ policy 

of minimizing use of HEU, to an explicit one. Specifically, the US must:

1) Actively lead the global community in establishing a global norm that HEU in 

civil commerce be minimized, and eventually eliminated; and 

42

2) Engage its HEU recipients in a serious dialogue about conversion on a defined 

timetable. 

While US policy on minimizing HEU in civil commerce has been codified in law 

through the ‘‘Schumer Amendment’’ to the Energy Bill, (which states that the US 

may not transfer HEU to another state for use in research reactors unless it has 

provided assurances that it will convert to alternative materials for operation when 

technically feasible) this policy was recently dealt a serious blow by changes proposed to it in H.R. 6, the House passed Energy Policy Act of 2005. The amendment 

to the Schumer language in H.R. 6 would create an exemption from the conversion 

requirement for nuclear facilities if the costs of such conversion exceed 10 percent. 

The new language completely undercuts longstanding US policy to minimize HEU 

in civil commerce, and is moving us in the opposite direction of where we need to 

be globally. The US will have no standing to press the rest of the world to undertake nuclear terrorism prevention measures if it continues to hold itself, and the 

recipients of its HEU, to another standard. 

PROGRAMMATIC TOOLS FOR SUCCESS

My testimony would be incomplete without some mention of the programmatic 

tools that federal program mangers will need to effectively execute the essential elements of the GTRI on a time urgent basis. 

The rules and organizational structures of large government bureaucracies and 

their oversight committees unfortunately do not facilitate nimble program execution. 

This is not so important for handling routine matters, where the price of slow action 

is often only inconvenience. But where the program objective is to prevent nuclear 

terrorism, the price of slow action could easily be loss of life, property and freedom 

on an unprecedented and catastrophic scale. A nuclear terrorism event has the potential to alter life as we know it today—severely damaging the global economy, seriously eroding the publics’ confidence in governments, constraining the civil liberties we enjoy in the US, and devastating our sense of personal and collective security. We all have an enormous stake in ensuring that this does not happen. Accordingly, it is in our self-interest to explore innovative ways in which nuclear terrorism 

prevention programs, such as GTRI, can be accorded special tools to expedite action—even if this means granting unique or unprecedented authorities and execution mechanisms. 

Several ideas come to mind:

• Provide critical funding flexibility by allowing GTRI program managers to move 

funds between program accounts as needed to act on time urgent opportunities 

for action. This could specifically take the form of allowing managers to move 

funds that exceed the reprogramming threshold allowed for other DOE programs. Another component of budget flexibility lies in the use of ‘‘uncosted balances’’. Program managers should be allowed to determine the best use of these 

funds within the program, and not have these balances reclaimed by Congress 

or the Administration to offset future budget requirements. 

• Congress should provide sufficiently broad legal authorities for GTRI managers to 

execute their mission in an expeditious manner. For example: 

• The GTRI Program should be given explicit authority to provide a broad 

range of incentives to reactor facility operators to convert facilities or eliminate weapons usable materials expeditiously. 

• The Program should also be given broad flexibility to accept nuclear materials 

for ultimate disposition in the US that is not US-origin. This will require a 

provision, at a minimum, to expedite the lengthy environmental reviews that 

are required for any materials outside fo the scope of the existing (US-origin) 

fuel return program. 

These kinds of authorities, mechanisms and processes are essential to the US 

Government’s ability to move with the alacrity it needs to perform the terrorism 

prevention mission. Unfortunately, today, we must often engage in multi-year approval and funding processes before some operations can be completed. 

The above represent a few basic ideas of how we might facilitate a more streamlined and expeditious program. We should challenge ourselves to think of additional, 

and more creative management approaches, establishing a kind of ‘‘model-program’’ 

approach to nuclear terrorism prevention programs. We must recognize that we 

don’t have the luxury of time to pursue a ‘‘business as usual’’ approach to problem 

solving, and act accordingly. 

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I want to recognize the many men and women of our government, 

and other, who are working around the world on the critical mission of locking down 

43

nuclear weapons and materials. There is no more important task. The global threat 

of nuclear terrorism has never been higher. 

But we must ask ourselves whether we have given our government servants the 

tools they need to get the job done with the urgency that it requires. We are in a 

race between cooperation and catastrophe. Whether we win that race will depend 

upon how smartly and expeditiously we act. At NTI, we frequently ask ourselves, 

our elected representatives, and our fellow citizens of the world: the day after a catastrophic instance of nuclear terror, what will we wish we had done to prevent it? 

Why aren’t we doing that now?

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Ms. Rohlfing, and Dr. Ferguson. We 

appreciate your testimony very much. 

I know, Ms. Rohlfing, you focused on nuclear devices primarily, 

but I want to ask both of you a question relating to the agreement 

states, the 33 states pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. 

Are any of you aware of additional reports other than this masters 

thesis in which someone has questioned or alleged that these 33 

states are much more effective in dealing with sealed sources than 

the other 17? 

Mr. FERGUSON. No, Mr. Chairman, I am not. And I have been 

working on this issue for the last 3.5 years. I know the Government 

Accountability Office has issued a number of reports, and they 

have looked at the agreement State system. But I don’t believe 

they have done that kind of comparison, comparing the agreement 

States to the nonagreement States. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. What about you, Ms. Rohlfing? 

Ms. ROHLFING. I don’t have anything to add to that since I have 

been primarily focused on the weapons-usable material. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Right. Now, you had a number of suggestions of 

ways to improve this program. Are you advocating that it needs 

more money? Or if you were in charge, what specifically would you 

do that is not being done right now? 

Ms. ROHLFING. I think it needs more money. That is just one 

component. I think, more importantly than money, this needs to 

really be elevated on the national agenda. In terms of the national 

leadership on the issue, I would love to see more Members of Congress holding hearings on this issue, informing themselves, educating themselves, understanding the danger. I would love to see 

the same within the administration in terms of the priority level 

of attention that it accords to this subject both in terms of day-today management and oversight of the issue and execution of the 

programs within the government, but particularly with respect to 

our diplomatic engagement. 

Mr. Longsworth mentioned that diplomacy and diplomatic challenges, access is a huge hurdle in being able to convert day-to-day 

some of the research reactors and have some of the vulnerable nuclear materials returned. But we have not yet made this the No. 

1 security agenda in our diplomatic engagements. 

And, finally, I would say, when I say Apollo-like, Manhattan-type 

program, I think we really do need to create something that is a 

model program in terms of giving the governmental personnel who 

are working on this issue broader authorities, innovative authorities, flexibility to spend money as opportunities do present themselves, and we have done none of that. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Dr. Ferguson, you pointed out in your testimony 

that you believe it is much more probable that a well-organized terVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:42 May 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 F:\DOCS\21641.TXT HCOM1 PsN: JOEP
44

rorist group can obtain a radiological dispersal device or dirty bomb 

before it could assemble a real nuclear weapon, unless they were 

able to steal a nuclear weapon. And you point out that this dispersal device is not a weapon of mass destruction but rather a 

weapon of mass disruption. Please tell us, what do you think would 

be the short- and long-term health and economic consequences of 

a successful dirty bomb in a major metropolitan area? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Mr. Chairman, even the worst dirty bomb that 

I can imagine or other security experts I have talked to can imagine doesn’t come nearly as close to what even a very crude lowyield nuclear weapon can do. It is like a firefly to—I am sorry, a 

lightning bug to lightning in terms of comparison, a dirty bomb to 

a nuclear weapon. 

That being said, we can’t discount the threat of RDDs or dirty 

bombs because they can create, as you point out and I point out 

in my testimony, a weapon of mass disruptive type effect or weapon of mass effect situation, where we have psychological and social 

effects run rampant, we have got people who would be afraid to 

move back into a contaminated area. If the government can’t convince them that we have cleaned the area down to safe levels, real 

estate would plummet. The economy in the local area would be affected. And then we would have to fear that these terrorists who 

struck with a dirty bomb in New York or Washington or some 

American city could do it at some other places within the United 

States or other parts of the world and shut down our economy. 

That would be my greatest fear. It is not that we would have a tremendous loss of life. Maybe in the order of a few hundred dead in 

the near term is sort of the worst case that I can imagine. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Do both of you feel that there is real disagreement within the government on where the priority should be set 

for the policy? 

Ms. ROHLFING. Disagreement. I am not sure I would characterize 

disagreement within the government, and as a nongovernment witness, I am probably not the best person to address that question. 

But I would observe that I think there has been a lack of attention 

at appropriate levels to this issue, and therefore, we have not 

ended up with funds on the right priorities. 

For example, the very important program that we are discussing 

at this hearing, Global Threat Reduction Initiative, with a budget 

of, what, approximately $93 million, is a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts of money we are spending on our overall national security and almost any other budget line that you can think 

of. That would suggest to me, especially given the leverage that we 

get from addressing this aspect of the problem, the front end, we 

call this locking down nuclear weapons and materials the first line 

of defense. If you don’t get this right, then you have got to worry 

about having a good second, third and fourth line of defense in 

place. And while we should absolutely have multiple layers of defense, it is much harder once nuclear material is lost to track it 

down. It is like finding a needle in a haystack, or to find a weapon, 

God forbid, should it get into the hands of a terrorist organization. 

So we need to be doing more faster on this particular aspect. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. I would point out that, of course, that $93 million is one source of funds. But there are additional funds being 

45

spent, obviously, on nonproliferation. Now, both of you talked about 

the Schumer amendment, and I think that was relatively well covered in the first panel. But both of you basically feel like that what 

happened is a serious mistake, I take it. Is that correct? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Yes, sir, that is correct. 

Ms. ROHLFING. And I would just add, since I didn’t include it in 

my oral statement, that I strongly agree that the action taken in 

the House energy bill is a serious blow to the overall policy objective that the United States has been pursuing for several decades, 

to try and reduce and eventually eliminate highly enriched uranium in civil commerce. And we have got to keep our eye on the 

big objective here, which is that we are going to have no credibility 

as a Nation convincing other nations to do the very things we are 

trying to do in this program if we continue to push new material 

out the door even if it is to the Canadians and, in fact, I might say, 

especially if it is to the Canadians. I will stop there, but I would 

be happy to describe why that is so if it is useful. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Well, I have no further questions. 

Dr. Burgess, would you have some? 

Mr. BURGESS. Yes, please describe why that is useful with the 

Canadians. 

Ms. ROHLFING. The Canadians are using HEU to make targets 

which they irradiate in a research reactor to create the medical isotope Molybdenum 99. And there is no question that medical isotope 

is important. It is widely used for beneficial therapeutic purposes, 

and it is important to the U.S. market, and in particular, Canada 

serves, I think it is roughly 60 percent of the global market for this 

particular medical isotope. But it is not the only producer. One of 

the other major producers is the Republic of South Africa. South 

Africa right now maintains quite a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and they are still operating their research reactor 

both on highly enriched uranium fuel; they are also using HEU targets. It is important that we be able to convince South Africa. It 

is important that we be able to convince all other countries that 

are using highly enriched uranium either for fuel or for other civil 

applications to convert these facilities if we are going to have a 

prayer of really eliminating this inventory, taking it out of the sites 

of terror organization. But as long as you allow an exception for 

Canada, you have got to allow an exception for everyone else. And 

so I agree with Mr. Ferguson—Dr. Ferguson. It guts our policy, and 

it really handicaps our ability to achieve this much more important 

national security objective. 

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, I will yield 

back. 

And we are going to go to closed session. Is that correct? 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Yes, that is correct. 

Mr. BURGESS. I yield back. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mrs. Blackburn, do you have any questions? 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have one follow-up question to that. 

And I thank both of you for your testimony. I will tell you, it is 

the type thing that you read and you shiver when you read it because it does cause you to stop and kind of take stock and think. 

46

And Mr. Ferguson or Dr. Ferguson, I guess this really would 

come to you. Let us talk a little bit about the intelligence gathering, the counterproliferation measures, Special Operations that 

should be there to thwart proliferation. 

And, as you said, Ms. Rohlfing, keeping an eye on the ball of 

where these things are going. Do you see DOE meshing its operations adequately with other countries or organizations that have 

the type information in this intelligence gathering that we need? 

Mr. FERGUSON. Well, ma’am, I don’t know exactly how DOE coordinates with the intelligence community because I have never 

worked with either the intelligence community or DOE. But I have 

worked in the State Department, so I do have some familiarity 

looking at other agencies. 

What I was recommending is that there should be this type of 

intelligence sharing that isn’t already taking place. And what I do 

know is that many Department of Energy officials and government 

contractors go to these reactor sites and other sites in Russia and 

other countries that we are concerned about, and when they come 

back, they are required under law and Department requirements 

to file a trip report. There are filing cabinets full of trip reports at 

the Department of Energy, and we could be mining that initially 

for information. So that is one piece of information I know we already have out there, and I don’t know if we are doing proper analysis of that information. 

What I am also recommending is we have our intelligence agents 

trying to develop detailed profiles of every one of these facilities. 

Although it is a relatively large number, as Ms. Rohlfing was saying, but there are only about 100 or so facilities. So I think with 

the intelligence budget we have in this country, we could develop 

the kind of detailed intelligence profiles we need for every one of 

these facilities. 

Ms. BLACKBURN. So, in essence, what you are saying is that they 

may not be meshing it adequately to meet the needs that we have, 

but the information is there. They just do not mine it appropriately. 

Mr. FERGUSON. I think a lot of the information is there. I think 

there might be other gaps in information that we need to find out. 

But we are not going to be able to identify those gaps until we direct these agencies to put in place this kind of smart program. 

Ms. BLACKBURN. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I will stop with that and wait for the next session. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Well, thank you, Ms. Blackburn. 

And since I see there are no other questions for this panel, I 

want to thank you all very much for your testimony. We have read 

it and are looking at it, and your input is quite valuable. So, with 

that, that will conclude the public portion of this hearing. 

And after consultations with the minority, I will now offer a motion that the subcommittee move into executive session. The Chair 

moves that, pursuant to Clause 2G of Rule 11 of the Rules of the 

House, the remainder of this hearing will be conducted in executive 

session to protect information that might endanger national security. 

47

Is there any discussion on the motion? If there is no discussion, 

pursuant to the rule a recorded vote is ordered. Those in favor, say 

aye. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes have it, and the motion 

is agreed to. We will reconvene in just a few short minutes in room 

2218, and that portion of our hearing will be closed to the public 

and open only to our witnesses, the members and staff, to such 

members and witnesses who have a Department of Energy Q clearance. And the subcommittee will recess. And thank you all very 

much. 

[Whereupon, at 3:57 p.m., the subcommittee proceeded in closed 

session.]

Æ