MOSCOW. Dec 8 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Federal Nuclear Energy Agency (Rosatom) and the U.S. Energy Department discussed cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation and physical protection.
This subject was brought up at a meeting between Rosatom chief Alexander Rumyantsev, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow, and Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) Paul Longsworth in Moscow on Tuesday, a Rosatom source told Interfax.
"The negotiators, in particular, discussed efforts to improve the physical protection of nuclear materials and nuclear facilities in Russia," the Rosatom source said.
"Such work has been pursued for quite a long time, for instance at the Mayak Production Association in Chelyabinsk, the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrate Plant, and the Siberian Chemical Combine in Seversk in the Tomsk region and at a number of other Russian enterprises in the nuclear sector," the source said.
"These projects are partially financed by the U.S.," he said.
The parties are pursuing joint projects on reducing the number of storage facilities for nuclear materials, the source said.
He recalled that Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei announced at the 48th session of this organization in Vienna in September that an international network of distributors of nuclear materials had recently been uncovered.