Heads of the G8 industrial powers have agreed to give 拢13 billion, over the next 10 years, to Russia and other former Soviet states to help them decommission and safeguard weapons and materials of mass destruction.
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK have jointly agreed to match 拢7.5 billion from the US. The bulk of the money is expected to go towards decommissioning ageing nuclear power stations, the destruction of chemical weapons, the dismantlement of decommissioned nuclear submarines, and the building of a mixed-oxide plant to convert weapons-grade plutonium into a fuel suitable for civilian reactors.
鈥淐ertainly there is concern in America about Russia鈥檚 good relationship with the Middle East countries and there have been a lot of accusations about dealings in radioactive material,鈥� says Derek Averre, an expert in international security at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham.
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鈥淭his money may help prevent dangerous regimes from poaching Russian scientists to work on their nuclear programmes,鈥� he adds.
Lack of transparency
Russia admits to having 30,000 nuclear weapons and 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, which it is required to destroy under the chemical weapons convention. International specialists believe the figures may be in fact much higher.
鈥淚t is difficult to know exactly how much the Russians have got, because there has been a large amount of dumping and there a worrying lack of transparency both between Russia and the West and also inside Russia itself,鈥� Averre told 快猫短视频.
鈥淎 longstanding culture of secrecy means that Russian ministries do not even know what is going on in their own agencies, so it will be hard to track a lot of the dangerous materials.鈥�
The commitment was made at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Canada. The money may come in the form of debt relief as well as grants.
Poor security around radioactive sources was highlighted as a major concern by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna earlier this week. There are fears that terrorists could use radioactive material to make 鈥渄irty bombs鈥� by combining it with explosives.