Something atomic

Nuclear transit in Russian

Russia will need about 20 years to equip all its customs offices with equipment for detecting radioisotope materials if the pace of equipping border customs inspection points with such devices remains the same. This was stated at a meeting of the coordination council dedicated to the fight against illegal “nuclear transit” that opened yesterday in St. Petersburg. This meeting is held by the State Customs Committee of Russia, customs services of the CIS and Baltic countries together with the IAEA.

“In 2000, customs registered more than 500 cases of illegal transit of nuclear and radiation materials across the Russian border, 80 percent of which involved their import into Russia,” said Nikolai Kravchenko, head of the isotope substances control service of the State Customs Committee.

Mr. Kravchenko noted that practically no money is allocated from the budget to equip customs offices with equipment that allows them to register increased background radiation on imported or exported goods. Therefore, only one third of customs offices are equipped with radiation monitoring equipment. To complete the remaining checkpoints, about $50 million is needed, Mr. Kravchenko said. Representatives of the State Customs Committee cannot give a time frame for completing this work. If we take into account that customs can annually scrape together 5-6 percent of this amount through their own efforts, it turns out that border guards can guarantee the “nuclear security” of foreign trade no earlier than in 2020.

Therefore, Russian customs officers rely mainly on foreign assistance. In this they are not original. Addressing representatives of Europe and America, customs officers from other CIS countries spoke about the same thing. The United States has already allocated $3 million to Russia for “customs nuclear security.” “We hope that funding will continue, because the new US administration has announced its priority attention to nuclear safety issues,” Mr. Kravchenko said.

In the meantime, according to representatives of the State Customs Committee, Russian and international organized crime is very well aware of which customs points in Russia must be used to transport “fouling” substances and materials - where there is no control equipment. As Mr. Kravchenko noted, sometimes it reaches the point of absurdity: a car is safely released abroad through customs that does not have dosimetric equipment, and when it returns through a more technically equipped point, traces of radioactive contamination are found on it. From which the customs officers conclude that “there was something in the car.” But they don’t know what.

Victor MATVEEV, St. Petersburg