It should be recognized that the initiatives which the U.S. chooses for weapons materials disposition will strongly affect Russian decisions on these matters. This impact should be a major factor in the government's nonproliferation and arms control policy. A relatively high confidence level exists about the security of the storage of weapons materials in the United States and the efficacy of the disposition options which might be used in this country to achieve the spent fuel standard. The probability of a subnational group stealing or diverting any of this material appears to be vanishingly small. However, these circumstances are hardly characteristic of the situation in Russia.
Real concerns exist about the security of stored weapons material there.
However, the Ministry of Atomic Energy has not yet declared how much of its fissile weapons material is excess to national security needs, and it is surmised that Russia has produced considerably more fissile weapons grade material than the United States, by perhaps a factor of two or three, and they may still be producing. Certainly, Russia is still in transition to a free, open, democratic society governed by a rule of law. The possibility of theft or diversion of fissile material to nonweapons states or reuse of material in weapons systems cannot be precluded. This then suggests that the security and disposition of Russia's fissile weapons material should be a major element of U.S. nonproliferation policy. Within this context, the impact on Russia of the U.S. disposition strategy should be given a prominence well beyond being only a criterion in assessing our own options.