The Nuclear Cities Initiative is an initiative which purports to support the now struggling community and structures of post-USSR nuclear research, aimed at preventing nuclear proliferation.
History
After the fall of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in 1991, concerns about the fate of the Soviet "nuclear cities" fell into the hands of Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
. It was in these secret, highly restricted cities that the Soviet Union designed and produced its nuclear weapons. Due to the great importance of these cities, they were generously funded by the Soviet Union. After the fall of the USSR, the 600,000 residents and workers of these cities were left enormous funding problems over the past decade of political, social, and economic difficulties in Russia.
Despite attempts by Moscow to create self-sustainable infrastructure, the attempts ultimately failed. The Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council (RANSAC), now the Partnership for Global Security, responded by launching the Nuclear Cities Initiative. The initiative was brought about after a 1997 report by the RANSAC recommended action to prevent the "nuclear know-how" of the workers in the cities falling into undesirable hands. United States
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president
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Bill Clinton
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and Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n leader Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...
made the deal in September 1998, confirming their approval of the overall concept. In 1999 $15 million were procured from American assistance programs, but a Russian financial crisis and Congress' decision to halve funding to $7.5 million reduced funding to the project.
The project at first worked only on a few of the cities; Russia disallowed development elsewhere until success could be proven in a handful of cities first.
In 2001, the U.S. General Accounting Office
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal govern ...
criticised the progress made so far, and recommended merging NCI and the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention into a single programme to improve efficiency. By the end of the Clinton administration, over $30 million had been secured for the project, but this was heavily cut by the following Bush administration who reduced expenditure to $6.6 million. However, the 2002 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, which merged IPP and NCI, resulted in a substantial increase in funding to $42 million as it brought funding from the Russian Transition Initiatives budget, which was further increased by $15 million after the September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
.
Russia's ten nuclear cities
References
External links
Nuclear Cities Initiative, Nuclear Threat Initiative, at www.nti.org
Nuclear Cities Initiative, at www.y12.doe.gov
{{Portal, Atomic, Soviet Union, Russia, United States, Politics
Nuclear proliferation
Cold War
Arms control
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
Military disbanding and disarmament
Nuclear history of Russia
Soviet Union–United States relations
Russia–United States relations
Nuclear weapons programme of Russia