A New ARMZ Race: the Road to Russian Uranium Monopoly Leads Through Mongolia ARMZの新しい競争−−ロシアのウラニウム独占への道、モンゴルへ

A New ARMZ Race: The Road to Russian Uranium Monopoly Leads Through Mongolia ARMZの新しい競争−−ロシアのウラニウム独占への道、モンゴルへ

Peter Lee

A New ARMZ Race: The Road to in uranium ore and spent fuel in the process. Russian Uranium Monopoly Leads The United States—which counts the Russian Through Mongolia nuclear weapons reset as one of its few unambiguous geopolitical wins—thus far is Peter Lee apparently happy to turn a blind eye to Russia’s The people who brought about Chernobyl are uranium ambitions, even when Russia’s quest pressing to become the world’s leading source for the strategic ore leads it into some strategic for nuclear power equipment, materials, and hotspots, and when the implications for nuclear services. accidents grows.

In places like Kazakhstan, Canada, Niger, Australia, the United States, and Mongolia, Rosatom’s (AtomRedMetZoloto) Uranium Holding Co. or ARMZ is seeking to dominate worldwide uranium production.

Over the last two decades, Russia has aggressively leveraged the nuclear legacy of the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the nuclear arms race with the United States, the USSR always opted for quantity and size rather than quality. As the US poured R&D into smaller, more efficient warheads, the Soviets made sure they had a lot of bombs.

Uranium metal (source) When the USSR collapsed, Russia inherited over a thousand tons of weapons-grade fissile material and a sizable nuclear refining and Russia’s quasi-state nuclear power authority, fabricating infrastructure. As Russia lurched Rosatom, has ambitions of becoming the through its post-Soviet adjustment, its control world’s one stop shop for nuclear plants, over most of the USSR’s nuclear assets became uranium fuel, and spent fuel services. one of the few effective bargaining chips in its Currently accounting for 20% of the world’s dealings with the United States, and not only nuclear power stations and 17% of global for negotiation of the START treaty. nuclear fuel fabrication, Rosatom wants to double in size, and become the dominant player Russia’s holdings of weapons-grade highly-

1 9 | 50 | 2 APJ | JF enriched uranium (HEU) became a key currency in US-Russian diplomacy. Under the “Megatons for Megawatts” program, it was agreed that 500 tons of Russian HEU would be downblended and shipped to the United States for use in commercial nuclear reactors. Today, approximately half of the fuel in U.S. nuclear power plants comes from ex-Soviet warheads (link).

Russia also uses its various uranium stockpiles to help meet its commercial export obligations—which reportedly exceed its domestic production capabilities by 6000 tons per year. Since the end of the Cold War, releases of material from Russian and US stocks have accounted for almost 60% of uranium demand, exerting significant downward pressure on uranium prices and mining activities.

Russia treats its nuclear industry as a national resource and it is aware that the uranium Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3, March 2011 (source) cupboard—at least as it pertains to HEU and other legacy stocks—will be bare in ten to fifteen years. As a matter of prudence, Energy-poor South Korea, despite post- economics, and national security, it is making Fukushima jitters, still maintains its plans for the future (link). commitment to increase nuclear’s share of its power generation portfolio to 60% and to The future includes an expected spike in export nuclear reactors. uranium ore prices from $55 to $70-$80 a pound as the price of commercially-mined ore After suspending approvals of new plants, is no longer depressed by a steady stream of China has apparently decided that its nuclear government-owned HEU downblends into the power plant program will proceed, albeit with marketplace. some safety-related modifications. According to the Wall Street Journal, some older reactors It also includes a spike in demand, even though lacking passive safety features will be phased much of Europe and Japan have bailed out on out more quickly than originally planned, and nuclear power (even in nuke-friendly France, focus will be placed on the construction of denuclearization has muscled its way onto the more modern reactors based on a political agenda). This spike assumes that Westinghouse design licensed in 2007 (link). South Korea, India, and China among others decide that a $64 billion nightmare like the India would like to triple the nuclear share of Fukushima cleanup will never happen to them, its power generation industry, and the central and they continue with their programs to build government seems firm in its post-Fukushima nuclear power plants…with the encouragement resolve despite heightened popular opposition of the senior nuclear states. to its nuclear program. India, in addition to

2 9 | 50 | 2 APJ | JF serving as the poster child for selectiverefining capability. enforcement of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by virtue of its perceived utility as an anti-China One of the more utopian schemes to reassure bulwark, is also the symbol of reckless nuclear nervous operators of nuclear power plants that diplomacy/commercial huckstering by the they can have continued access to nuclear fuel Western powers, as typified by Australia’s even if they can’t refine it in country is the recent decision to cope with the post-proposed “Nuclear Fuel Bank”. It is not Fukushima slowdown in its uranium business surprising that Russia promptly agreed to host by overturning a ban on selling uranium ore to the fuel bank because, in the words of the one NPT non-signatory, i.e. India. International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), “Russia has already produced the low- Much of the developed world may have enriched uranium” needed to stock it (link). rejected nuclear power for its own use. One thing Russia doesn’t have, however, is However, in a recent Newsweek article, non- plenty of domestic uranium ore. Access to proliferation wonk Henry Sokolski pointed out imported low-cost uranium ore is key to that nuclear diplomacy—specifically making keeping the Russian refineries humming—and nuclear technology available to potential allies profitable. Therefore, ARMZ—which accounted in the developing world, safety and for only 7% of the world’s uranium production environmental anxieties be damned—is an when its sourcing was limited to Russia—has overriding preoccupation both of Russia (Iran, gone abroad to tie up sources of supply in the Bangladesh, Vietnam, Turkey, India) and the grand tradition of transnational energy United States and its nuclear friends (Jordan, companies. Vietnam, India, Saudi Arabia). This even remains true post-Fukushima link( ).

If the nuclear power industry continues to grow as anticipated, there will be a shortfall of supply as existing uranium reserves worldwide experience accelerated depletion after the legacy feedstock kitty is gonelink ( ).

And the future will also probably see Russia and ARMZ at the heart of the global nuclear fuel industry. Indeed, Russia is exceptionally well positioned to become the prime player in the 21st century commercial nuclear industry, in large part because of its dominant role in refining uranium ore into usable fuel. Russia Open pit uranium mine, Kakadu National Park, has the world’s largest uranium refining Australia (source) capacity, inherited from the USSR’s oversized weapons program. Its estimated refining Journalist and Kazakhstan hand Hal Foster capacity is four to five times that of the United described ARMZ’s strategy and ambition in States, and almost half of the world’s total. It 2010 (link): is an advantage that Russia is likely to keep, thanks in part to American anxieties over proliferation and its policy of discouraging any [AMRZ hopes to] produce between new entrant—not just Iran—from developing 25 and 30 percent of the world’s

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supply [of uranium ore] by 2030. hydrochemical environment of uranium deposits of South Kazakhstan has a unique ARMZ is already in the process of capability for self-restoration” (link). becoming a powerhouse, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s enriched uranium.

Chief Executive Sergei Kiriyenko has made no secret of ARMZ’s desire to become one of the driving forces on the international uranium market. …

That’s because it gives ARMZ a much larger share of world reserves at a time when the price of uranium is expected to soar due to the increasing demand for reactors. “We’re looking at a Uranium mine, Kazakhstan (source) shortage-driven market, with an inflexible supply.” This has not, however, slowed Russian advances into Kazakhstan. Russia has displayed Depending on how one keeps score, ARMZ is an integrated commercial and governmental already perhaps the third or fourth largest strategy toward Kazakhstan and its uranium producer of uranium ore, thanks to a recent industry. On the commercial side, beyond its overseas acquisition binge. But that doesn’t direct investments in Kazakhstan, ARMZ take into account ARMZ’s aggressive efforts to purchased a controlling interest in Canada’s lock up supply from outside sources and the Uranium One, thereby gaining control of the extra clout the Russian government brings to company’s sizable interests inside Kazakhstan. the table on its behalf. ARMZ thereby became the owner of almost half of America’s uranium output (US capacity ARMZ’s business approach can be seen in its constitutes just 3% of global output). Link. most important move into the near-beyond of Kazakhstan, which has quickly become the On the governmental side, the two nations have world’s leading supplier of uranium ore, with signed agreements for construction of nuclear one-third of the global market. Although reactors and uranium refining capacity. Kazakhstan controls only an estimated 12% of world reserves, it is most aggressive inAnd there is this, as reported by Martin Sieff exploiting them. In 2009, it increased output (link): by 69% over the previous year, and has promised to double production by 2015. Russia’s Rosatom nuclear agency The primary production technique involves and Kazatomprom, the national drenching the underground ore body with nuclear development corporation sulfuric acid to leach out the uranium. of Kazakhstan have reached Environmentalists may not be reassured by agreement about setting up a joint Kazatomprom’s declaration that “the natural venture to market uranium around

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the world. Russian campaign in Mongolia, another sector of Russia’s near-beyond with significant Kazakhstan has … joined Russia in uranium reserves. Thanks to the travails of a a new customs union that became small Canadian company, Khan Resources—and operative on July 1. Coordinating its court filings--we have a privileged view of uranium exports and uranium how Russian nuclear sausage is made. production policy is the first concrete achievement of Mongolia has a major uranium play at Dornod, cooperation between the two a reserve discovered during the socialist era nations under the CU umbrella. and exploited for a time by the USSR. It has reserves of at least 25,000 tons, and can support an extraction rate of 2000 tons per The government-to-government angle may have year—an estimated cash flow of $300,000,000 also involved some combination of traditional per year, much of it probably profit. Soviet heavy-handedness and new-style nomenklatura skullduggery against Mukhtar Dzakishev, the young technocrat credited with leading Kazatomprom’s charge to the top of the uranium league table.

In March 2010, Dzakishev was sentenced to 14 years for various crimes, including alleged collusion with a self-exiled opponent of Kazakhstan’s president to illegally and profitably transfer control over uranium reserves or production rights to overseas companies. There are widespread allegations that Dzakishev’s conviction is a political hatchet job—or an effort to remove a potential stumbling block from Russia’s uranium cooperation with Kazakhstan, as Joanne Lillis reported at Eurasianet (link): Abandoned township for Soviet specialists, Dornod (source)

…suspicions have been aired that Dzhakishev's case was linked to a After the Communist regime was replaced by a redistribution of lucrative uranium multi-party democracy in 1989, the Dornod assets. Misgivings were deposit was opened up to investment by compounded after interrogations international commercial mining interests. of Dzhakishev, in which he Through a series of transactions, by 2009 the suggested that Russian nuclear rights to exploit the deposit were held by Khan interests had benefited from his Resources of Canada (58%), a Russian company arrest, were leaked in a video that (21%), and the Mongolian government (21%). was posted on the YouTube video sharing site.

With this background, we can turn to the

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On the government to government level, in January 2009, the Russian and Mongolian governments announced a joint venture in the field of uranium extraction. According to Khan Resources’ court filings, this signaled the beginning of a campaign to squeeze it out of the Dornod project. Toward the end of the year, ARMZ made a hostile takeover bid against Khan in Canada; the Khan board rejected it.

Then, in January 2010, the Mongolian parliament or Great Khural passed a law giving the Mongolian government an uncompensated 51% share in any project—like Dornod—in Canadian/Mongolian/Russian cooperation in happier which it had previously invested money. Khan days at Dornod (source) acquiesced, but its efforts to determine its new diminished share in the project were frustrated According to court documents, Khan claimed by a boycott of proceedings by its Russian that it had expended $20 million dollars on partner. surveys and construction at the mine site by this time. However, in 2009 the Russian The situation was further complicated when government and ARMZ turned their interest Khan entered into ultimately fruitless toward Mongolian uranium and proceeded in negotiations to be acquired by a Chinese government/business tag team fashion similar company, Overseas Uranium Corporation of the China National Nuclear Corp. According to to what they had employed in Kazakhstan. Pravda, bringing the Chinese into the picture Russia feels a strong sense of entitlement over did not endear Khan Resources to Sinophobic Dornod. A 2010 Pravda news report on Dornod Mongolians (link). was titled Russia to retrieve control over uranium. The Soviets and Russians operated Yet, Ulan Bator with whom the the mine from 1988 to 1995, had 10,000 Canadians have not coordinated Russian workers on site, and claimed to have their actions did not want the invested US$600 million overall on Mongolian Chinese. On these grounds, TSAUK uranium exploration and development. Ore [CAUC, the acronym of Khan’s from Dornod was moved by rail 400 km to operating combine in Mongolia] ARMZ’s Priargunsky operation in the Trans- had its license revoked, and the Baikal region of Russia, which still mines Mongols will be developing the domestic uranium and processes it into uranium deposit with Russian yellowcake. companies.

Russia’s nuclear establishment covets Dornod as a component of a “single infrastructure” of ARMZ then publicly announced that Khan’s uranium extraction and refining that signals mining licenses for Dornod had been Priargunsky’s return to economies of scale invalidated. Khan’s Mongolia interests have (Dornod material would double the current currently descended into legal limbo, where the output of the Priargunsky refinery). Link. Russian and Mongolian governments expect

6 9 | 50 | 2 APJ | JF them to remain until Khan runs out of cash and harvest (and its full enjoyment of the Nadam must abandon the hunt. Festival) was a message to President Elbegdorj to toe the line on the uranium issue that There is no question that the driving force for preoccupies Russia. restructuring the Dornod project to exclude Khan comes from the Russian side. The focus While Mongolia deepened its uranium ties with of Vladimir Putin’s July 2009 visit to Mongolia Russia, Mongolia’s nuclear negotiations with was reportedly Mongolian uranium. President the United States came undone. In September Medvedev came to Ulaanbaatar a month later, 2011, President Elbegdorj pulled the plug on with ARMZ’s president in tow, also to discuss secret negotiations with the United States and uranium. To sweeten the deal, Russia wrote off Japan to establish Mongolia as a nuclear waste over 98% of Mongolia’s debt and promised to storage facility, and fired the negotiating “give Mongolia 375 million rubles for the team—including the Ambassador-at-Large, A. vaccination of livestock to increase the import Undraa, who had gone to the US earlier in the of meat and milk to the Russian market” (link). year to discuss the US proposal—after a bizarre cavalcade of denials and misinformation (link).

In May 2011, the Mongolian embassy in Vienna had posted a vociferous denial of the rumor, which read in part (link):

Mongolia’s mass media clarified the issue with relevant officials in accordance with information distributed by the world’s bigger news agencies such as Reuters, CNN and Japan’s Mainichi newspaper and distributed the position of Mongolia’s officials. Authorities of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Nuclear Energy Agency President Medvedev of Russia and President (NEA) and Mon-Atom state-run Elbegdorj of Mongolia, 2009 (source) company all denied this information and affirmed that It is also rumored that Russia’s precondition for Mongolia’s government has not participating in the Tavan Tolgoi coal mining held any talks on burying nuclear project (and building an expensive and spent fuel with any one nor is there economically suspect railroad line from the legal basis for any such activity. mine to Russia) is a cooperative Mongolian attitude on Dornod. The US government, despite the fact that it had President Elbegdorj’s relations with theoriginally floated the proposal, obligingly Russian leadership are rumored to be icy, and papered over the situation with a supporting it was further rumored that the mysterious statement that Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control summer 2011 interruption of Russian diesel Wonk characterized regretfully in May 2011 as fuel deliveries that threatened Mongolia’s “a lie” (link):

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I really hate to use the word “lie” Mongolia would receive spent to describe the DOE statement. nuclear fuel from countries that However, Dick Stratford [Director buy uranium nuclear fuel from of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Mongolia. Safety, and Security in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the U.S. If Mongolia—with US support—was able to Department of State] confirmed at establish itself as an accredited nuclear waste the Carnegie International Nuclear depository, and leverage that capability to Policy Conference that US and become a preferred supplier of nuclear fuel for Mongolian officials had held users with spent fuel disposal problems, “discussions about whether or not Mongolia would have become an Mongolia would harbor – or take a important—and independent—player in the spent-fuel storage depot for third- uranium fuel business. country fuel.” Conveniently, I If this was actually the plan, Mongolia’s asked Stratford directly and on- President Elbegdorj backpedaled with the-record about US-origin spent breathtaking speed. In a September 15, 2010 nuclear fuel. He said “Yes, I would interview, he stated (link): support allowing [South Korea and Taiwan] to transfer U.S.-obligated spent fuel.” [T]he nuclear waste of other countries is a 'snake grown up in another body', he said. “Receiving There is, of course, understandable resistance back the nuclear waste after within Mongolia to using its pristine steppes exploiting and exporting uranium and/or deserts as a dump for nuclear waste. must not be, as I think, this is a But the Mongolian denial also included this pressure from foreign interesting passage: superpowers, and we must throw out this delusion.” Mongolians are not stupid to store other countries nuclear wasteif For whatever reason—thanks to a law banning they do not buy nuclear fuel the importation, transit, and storage of nuclear from Mongolia. [emphasis added] waste—Mongolia is now down to one partner for its uranium program, Russia, and one In reporting the collapse of the deal, Mainichi apparent role, provider of feedstock to ARMZ’s stated: Priargunsky plant inside Russia.

The contretemps over the Mongolian storage The Mongolian government was facility, and the barely disguised eagerness of considering processing uranium the United States and Japan to pursue it, into nuclear fuel and exporting it in highlights the Achilles’ heel of the developed an attempt to make good use of the world’s push to sell nuclear power to potential uranium resources. For this allies, proxies, and clients in the developing purpose, Mongolia was exploring world. Despite perennial optimistic mutterings the idea of introducing "nuclear about “closing the nuclear fuel cycle” i.e. fuel lease contracts" in which recycling nuclear leftovers into useful

8 9 | 50 | 2 APJ | JF byproducts instead of nasty waste, the spent the Pacific Grebe. The report noted that eight fuel problem is still wide open. more shipments of waste will be returned to Japan before 2020 and will have to find a home France and Britain have spearheaded attempts somewhere (link). to turn spent fuel recycling into a viable business at their commercial scale facilities at That home apparently will not be the United THORN, Sellafield, and Le Hague. Spent rods States. The United States simply gave up on are dissolved in nitric acid; the nuclearprocessing spent fuel, deciding that when the material is shipped back to the grateful Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada was built, customer together with the unrecoverable it would store the unprocessed spent rods and direct waste, which is presumably less popular. whatever other nuclear nasties are shipped there. Then, the Obama administration gave up on Yucca Mountain completely, cancelling the project apparently without a Plan B.

“Swimming pool” at La Hague reprocessing facility, with Cerenkov radiation (source)

Yucca Mountain test tunnel (source) However, the facilities produce a significant amount of new nuclear waste in the form of radioactive process water and other materials, Presumably, any new nuclear customer will and the expense, dangers, and headaches of adopt the same ugly ad hoc methods that the reprocessing the fuel—into MOX, a nuclear fuel US employs: cooling the rods for five years in nobody particularly wants—have stalled the on-site tanks, then shipping them “somewhere” nuclear recovery business. if and when “somewhere” exists at that time.

Japan’s attempts to set up its own spent fuel If Vladimir Putin has anything to say about it, processing facility at Rokkasho have been an “somewhere” will be Russia. Russia has openly expensive and embarrassing failure (link). thirsted for the spent fuel market. A decade ago, Russia was offering to close the fuel cycle, Currently, Japan has its spent fuel processed in at least commercially, by promising to handle France and England, but it still has to take spent rods from the nuclear stations it residual waste back. Japanese media reported supplied. The Duma passed a bill permitting the first post-Fukushima return of Japanese imports of spent fuel in 2002. Minatom (the nuclear waste from Europe in September 2011: Russian state-run nuclear corporation) 76 stainless steel canisters on a special vessel, optimistically predicted that spent fuel imports

9 9 | 50 | 2 APJ | JF could add up to 20,000 tons and $20 billion in profits over the next 20 years.

The East Ural Radioactive Trace (source)

Nuclear fuel reprocessing, Mayak (source) Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia all stopped shipping their spent fuel to Mayak, depriving it of a significant source of An interesting item of fallout, as it were, from revenue. Finland stopped shipping spent fuel, the Fukushima disaster was the revelation that partially in response to an unfavorable report Russia had offered to receive Fukushima’s by the Bellona Foundation, a nuclear and spent fuel—now dangerously overheating in the environmental watchdog based in Norway cooling ponds of the stricken facility—back in (link). 2002. Mayak earned another black eye in November This was despite the fact that Russia’s attempts 2011, when the Swiss nuclear energy authority to set up a modern facility at Krasnoyarsk had Axpo suspended plans to send its spent fuel to failed for budgetary and technical reasons, and Mayak until greater “transparency”, i.e. the primary location inside Russia for responsiveness to reports of environmental processing spent fuel from nuclear reactors is problems around the facility, was achieved the terrifying Mayak Production Association (link). facility, near the town of Kyshtym in the Ural Mountains. In 1957, Mayak experienced one of the worst catastrophes in the history of the nuclear industry, a chemical explosion that blew apart a storage tank and sent a plume of radioactive material that contaminated over 800 square kilometers of adjacent real estate now immortalized as the East Ural Radioactive Trace.

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Techa River near Mayak, with radiation … warning (source) But the US side is reportedly opposed to the spread of However, the Russian government did not lose reprocessing even to South Korea its enthusiasm for exacerbating its colossal for fear that such a move might nuclear waste problems (including the undermine global nonproliferation headache of decommissioning the reactors in efforts and provoke North Korea its fleet of nuclear submarines) by importing and Japan. more spent fuel that it had no facilities for handling. The bilateral pact, signed in 1974 and due to expire in 2014, bans If the ex-Soviet bloc and squeamish European South Korea from reprocessing operators are eliminated, Russia’s hopes for its spent fuel for fear of proliferation spent fuel business reside entirely with the because it could yield plutonium, a United States. Because of proliferation key ingredient in building atomic concerns, the United States has the final say on bombs. piles of spent fuel rods for reactors it supplied to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Remarkably, 80% of the world’s spent fuel rods America’s inability to solve the spent fuel are effectively in the custody of the United problem at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere is, States. therefore, a matter of significant heartache to current and future customers of nuclear plants The US, while eager to let friends and allies as well. into the nuclear power club, is somewhat loath to let them get into the spent fuel reprocessing Russia could not involve itself in US-related game. The fear is that reprocessing may lead nuclear matters and materials either as a to a proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium, processor or mere recipient of spent fuel rods… thereby turning friends and allies into peers until January of 2011, when the so-called “123” and regional powers. agreement—named after the relevant clause of the US Atomic Energy Act and permitting South Korea is pushing for the right to cooperation between Russian and the United reprocessing its large collection of spent fuel States on peaceful uses of nuclear rods. The United States, mindful that the ROK energy—entered into effect after a decade of is seriously thinking about the nuclear weapons study, discussion, and, at the hands of the option as denuclearization talks with North United States, delay. Korea stagger on in an inconclusive fashion, is not enthusiastic: With Yucca Mountain off the table, the United States appears ready to hold its nose, look the Per AFP, December 6, 2011 (link): other way, wash its hands of, ignore—take your pick of the most suitable metaphor—Russia’s dismal environmental and reprocessing record South Korea is reportedly pushing and let it handle the spent fuel problem that for US permission to recycle spent America simply cannot solve for itself or its nuclear fuel for power generation allies. as the two countries resumed talks to revise a 1974 pact on the use Not surprisingly, the suspicion exists that, of atomic energy. instead of carefully processing the spent fuel in

11 9 | 50 | 2 APJ | JF shiny, modern, carefully managed, andbetrayal of what the Russians, at least, regard expensive facilities, Rosatom will simply dump as a key element of the re-set with the United cans of waste in a hole somewhere. States: a profitable future as the final destination for US-controlled spent nuclear fuel.

It can also be speculated without too much difficulty that the payday of $20 billion dollars over 20 years was of no slight importance to Vladimir Putin’s nomenklatura comrades who still pull the strings in Russia’s state-controlled national security industries and whose financial contentment is crucial to Putin’s political well- being.

It is not too surprising, then, that once news of the US talks with Mongolia leaked (the Mongolian mining establishment is reportedly Radioactive cow manure, meadow of Techa River, rife with pro-Russian elements), the Russians near Mayak (source) made the strongest possible representations both to the Mongolian and US governments, and the plug was rapidly and shame-facedly In the last stages of the debate before the pact pulled on the enterprise. In any case, after the was ratified, a Russian anti-nuclear group smoke clears, Russia can be expected to be dourly, but no doubt accurately, predicted in a firmly entrenched in Mongolia in the uranium news brief that “US Pact Could Turn Russia trade, and in the spent fuel business into World’s Nuclear Waste Dump” link( ). It worldwide. went on to say: The US government’s lack of interest in the "If this agreement comes into effect, it will lift Russian push to dominate the uranium trade the last hurdle to the transfer of spent nuclear “by any means necessary” is interesting. The fuel from countries such as Japan, Taiwan, or United States apparently believes that Russia South Korea to Russia," says Aleksei Yablokov, already possesses so much weapons-grade one of Russia's top experts on nuclear safety material that allowing it to become the world’s who once served as an adviser onrepository for uranium, nuclear fuel, and spent environmental issues to late President Boris fuel reprocessing will not significantly increase Yeltsin. "Formally, this fuel would bethe risk of theft and proliferation. reprocessed, but in practice it would simply be buried." Also, since peaceful nuclear energy has emerged as a Russian economic linchpin (and a With this perspective, it is easy to see why bulwark of Vladimir Putin’s power)—and the secret tripartite discussions between the Russian government has stepped up to solve an United States, Japan, and Mongolia concerning intractable spent fuel problem that the United a spent fuel repository would have caused a States cannot resolve—the US seems willing to Level 7 nuclear meltdown of rage in Vladimir cede leadership in key sectors of this industry Putin’s bosom. to Russia. However, the dismal track record and lack of transparency and accountability The secret effort would have represented a Russia has previously displayed in the

12 9 | 50 | 2 APJ | JF management of the planet’s most dangerous Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 50 No 2, December materials, opens the US decision to serious 12, 2011. question. Articles on related subjects Given the West’s eagerness to use the supply of nuclear technology and equipment as a• Miles Pomper, Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, diplomatic wedge to win favor in developing Stephanie Lieggi, and Lawrence Scheinman, countries, the decision to let Russia handle the Nuclear Power and Spent Fuel in East Asia: spent fuel back end looks a lot like moral Balancing Energy, Politics and Nonproliferation abdication. • Richard Tanter, Arabella Imhoff and David Von Hippel, Nuclear Power, Risk Management and Democratic Accountability in Indonesia: Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian Volcanic, regulatory and financial risk in the affairs and their intersection with US global Muria peninsula nuclear power proposal policy. He is the moving force behind the Asian affairs website China Matters which provides • MK Bhadrakumar, Sino-Russian Alliance continuing critical updates on China and Asia- Comes of Age: Geopolitics and Energy Politics Pacific policies. His work frequently appears at Asia Times. • Geoffrey Gunn, Southeast Asia’s Looming Nuclear Power Industry Recommended citation: Peter Lee, 'A New ARMZ Race: The Road to Russian Uranium • MK Bhadrakumar, Russia, Iran and Eurasian Monopoly Leads Through Mongolia,' The Asia- Energy Politics