Nicole Evans discusses the implications of nuclear and radiological security in the context of the Former Soviet Union, as well as bringing the physical protection of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute up to the International Atomic Energy Agency standards.

Nicole Evans is Acting Senior Program Manager of Global Partnership Program at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.

Global Partnership Program

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Nuclear and Radiological Security Overview	3:12	Windows Media \| QuickTime
Physical protection standards	3:01	Windows Media \| QuickTime
Access to the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute	2:39	Windows Media \| QuickTime

(Video players are available here: QuickTime Windows Media)

Transcript:

An Overview of Nuclear and Radiological Security

My name is Dr. Nicole Evans. I’m originally from Kamloops, British Columbia. I started working for the Global Partnership approximately a year and a half ago.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Russia inherited vast quantities of nuclear and radiological materials which could be used to construct nuclear weapons and also dirty bombs. When the Soviet Union collapsed, along with it collapsed many of the security systems that were in place to protect these dangerous nuclear and radiological materials against theft. This was bad enough, and scary enough, but when 9/11 happened, it demonstrated to us that terrorists were willing to kill on a massive scale. And that made the fact that these nuclear and radiological materials were left vulnerable and exposed to theft, that much more dangerous.

And that is when Canada started the initiative to form the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. The focus for our program, which is nuclear and radiological materials, is Russia, because that is where the vast majority of the vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials are. We run four main areas in the nuclear and radiological security program. The first and most important one, and where we are on our way to now, is our physical protection program. What “physical protection” means is that we are putting physical security in place to make sure that nuclear materials that could be stolen and used by terrorists to make a Hiroshima-type or even more sophisticated nuclear device cannot leave the premises of the nuclear facilities.

So we are on our way out right now to a facility called PNPI, which is the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute. It is a research institute within the Russian Academy of Sciences. They are doing a lot of really important research, but in the course of doing their research they have these nuclear materials that are weapons grade. And what that means is that if these materials are stolen they could be used to make rudimentary or sophisticated nuclear devices, a Hiroshima-style bomb.

The kind of stuff that we are doing with our first contract—our first implementing arrangement, as we call it at this facility—is that we are putting in some access systems, meaning systems that will help control access, who is getting into the site. We are also “hardening” various buildings around the target (the target is where the nuclear materials are located), and hardening means even such basic things as putting bars in the first four windows, so that people can’t climb into the windows to get into the building where the target is located. So that is the kind of physical security work that we are doing at this site. Some of it is sophisticated, some of it is not, but all of it is crucial.

Physical Protection Standards

The actual work we are doing at this facility... I guess I should preface it by saying that with the nuclear security program, we are dealing with highly sensitive sites and so I can’t give too much detail. It would be kind of counterproductive to give terrorists a road map to what is vulnerable at the facility, and necessarily, if I tell you too much about the facility, the road map is going to be given. But for illustrative purposes, the kind of stuff that we are doing with our first contract—our first implementing arrangement, as we call it at this facility—is that we are putting in some access systems, meaning systems that will help control access, who is getting into the site.

We are also “hardening” various buildings around the target (the target is where the nuclear materials are located), and hardening means even such basic things as putting bars in the first four windows, so that people can’t climb into the windows to get into the building where the target is located. So that is the kind of physical security work that we are doing at this site. Some of it is sophisticated, some of it is not, but all of it is crucial.

First of all, we are going to work on continued implementation of our first implementing arrangement, our first contract. And what that means is we are going to be monitoring some of the work they have already done. For example, by now they should have seen the delivery of some major pieces of equipment for this project, so we are going to “eyeball” them, make sure we are happy with it. And also some installation work should be done—installation of, for example, the bars on the windows or some of the systems I was talking about earlier, and we are going to verify the progress that’s been made on that by the facility.

The second objective for the visit is we are going to begin negotiations on the second implementing arrangement. The first implementing arrangement covered what we deemed were the most immediate needs of the site, not stop-gap measures but the most immediate things that needed to be done to increase the security of the facility and the security of the target, the nuclear materials. The second implementing arrangement is a follow-on to that. The objective of our work is to bring the site up to International Atomic Energy Agency standards, which are accepted international standards for the protection of weapons-grade nuclear material.

So that is what we are working towards. We have made a very good step in the first implementing arrangement, but we are going to finish it off and hopefully bring it up to the international standards that we are trying to meet, in the second implementing arrangement. And we are going to start negotiations for that today

Access to the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute

So we have arrived at PNPI, which is the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute. This is one of the nuclear facilities in Russia where we are working to undertake physical protection upgrades, to protect weapons-grade material so that it does not fall into the hands of terrorists. This facility is located in Gatchina, which is just outside St. Petersburg. It is our first physical protection project in Russia, so it has a special place in our heart, this is Canada’s first venture into this field.

So where we are now, we are on the outside of this facility. This building here is the access control point. It is the main territory of the facility, so we are just calling our counterparts at the facility so they can come and get us and let us in. Of course, there is tightly controlled access to the main territory of the facility, so we have to be escorted in. Our passports will be checked. The MBD, who are the interior troops who protect the facility, will check us in and make sure that our credentials check out and that we are who we say we are. Then we’ll be escorted into the main administrative building where we will have our initial discussions and we will get under way for the negotiations.

What is going to happen this morning is that the technical team will break off into a working group. They are going to discuss design documents relating to two systems that we are looking to install, and then the technical team will come back and we will regroup into a bigger group to begin the negotiations this afternoon. You will notice that there are a lot of trees about the facility. There are big palace grounds, a former estate of aristocrats, located in Gatchina. The PNPI site itself is part of an extension of those palace grounds. It is a very historic site, a beautiful site—in some ways it looks more like a writers’ colony than a nuclear facility where cutting-edge research takes place. But it also makes it a nice and unique place to work, and certainly the people here enjoy the surroundings—you can see they take great care of their flowers.