Clinton era U.S.-Russia program for safeguarding plutonium fizzles

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/15104698.htm

WASHINGTON - Hailed six years ago as a breakthrough in safeguarding Russia's nuclear materials, a U.S.-Russian plan to rid the world of tons of plutonium has foundered and achieved little.

Even though the United States has spent $1.4 billion, none of the plutonium has been removed from the weapons stockpile, nor is any expected to be destroyed anytime soon. In addition, Moscow recently acted on its own to change the program so it better suits Russia's energy goals.

With the Bush administration beginning talks with Russia for broader cooperation on nuclear energy, the troubled plutonium program sheds light on how difficult negotiations between the countries can become.

At the just-concluded summit of world powers, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin promised continued discussions on the program, which calls on each country to eliminate 34 metric tons of plutonium from weapons stockpiles.

The program got under way with great fanfare in 2000 as an ``unprecedented'' initiative to curb nuclear proliferation. The United States and Russia would work on parallel tracks to take the plutonium from warheads, blending it with uranium so it could be used in commercial power-producing reactors.

[justgamma]

1. is this another one of the programs

that the Bush cabal completely ignored, because it was Clinton's idea? They ignored every other Clinton initiative.