Press Briefing
Y-12 National Security Complex
Oak Ridge, TN
Remarks By United States Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
March 15, 2004
Thank you all for coming today. You have just had the opportunity to examine in person some of the dangerous nuclear materials and equipment recently removed from Libya.
What you have witnessed represents a big, big victory in the Administration’s efforts to combat weapons of mass destruction.
On December 19, just three months ago, the Government of Libya announced several courageous decisions regarding its holdings of weapons of mass destruction.
The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Government of Libya began a period of intense cooperation to assist Libya in carrying out its decision to get rid of such weaponry.
For the nuclear program, the IAEA also played a central role – and Libya and the IAEA will continue their close coordination in the future.
So on January 27, a joint American and British team that included personnel from the Departments of Energy, State, and Defense, removed from Libya 55,000 pounds of uranium hexafluoride, centrifuge equipment, and other materials.
They brought all of this material – along with Libya’s detailed nuclear weapons designs – back to the U.S. for evaluation, testing, and destruction.
This 55,000 pounds of nuclear materials and equipment constitutes the largest recovery, by weight, ever conducted under U.S. nonproliferation efforts.
But it is only the tip of the iceberg.
What we retrieved in January represents less than 5 percent, by weight, of the total amount of equipment and materials that we are recovering from Libya.
The first shipment contained designs, materials, and equipment determined by U.S. and British experts to be some of the most sensitive items in the Libyan nuclear weapons program.
Now under secure storage here at Oak Ridge, those are the central ingredients that could have provided Libya with nuclear weapons capabilities.
Let me explain how this came about.
In October of last year, a shipment of centrifuge parts bound for Libya was intercepted by Italy and Germany, two of our partners in the multinational Proliferation Security Initiative created by President Bush last May.
That shipment revealed to the world what many had long suspected – that Libya was trafficking in the equipment needed to construct a nuclear weapons program.
Faced with this revelation – coming less than a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime – Colonel Qadhafi voluntarily pledged in December to disclose and dismantle all of Libya’s weapons of mass destruction programs, including a uranium enrichment project that could produce nuclear materials for several nuclear bombs each year.
As the President said in his State of the Union address, “Colonel Qadhafi correctly judged that his country would be better off, and far more secure, without weapons of mass murder.”
We applaud this wise and courageous decision by Libya.
By any objective measure, the United States and the nations of the civilized world are safer as a result of these efforts to secure and remove Libya’s nuclear materials. Libya itself is safer, too, and has moved toward improved relations with the United States and the United Kingdom.
The President’s nonproliferation policy gives regimes a choice. They can choose to pursue WMD at their peril and at great cost, or they can choose to disarm, renounce terrorism, and get on a path to better relations with the U.S. and the international community. It is the President’s hope that other nations will find an example in Libya’s decision to disarm.
The success of our mission in Libya underscores the success of our Administration’s broader nonproliferation efforts around the world, and I for one am proud of the role the Department of Energy is playing.
Working closely with the Russian Federation, we have accelerated material protection programs inside Russia:
- By the end of FY 2005, our materials and protection program will have secured 41 of 64 identified nuclear warhead sites and will have secured 41 percent of the approximately 600 metric tons of weapons usable nuclear material in the former Soviet Union.
- To date we have secured 97 percent of the Russian Navy’s nuclear weapons and fuel sites.
- We have dramatically expanded our cooperation with Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces by initiating warhead security work at three new sites.
- We have downblended more than 200 metric tons of Highly Enriched Uranium from Russia’s dismantled nuclear weapons for use in U.S. nuclear power plants – enough material for approximately 8,000 nuclear weapons.
- We have worked to line up non-military, commercial employment for more than 13,000 former weapons scientists at 180 institutes across the former Soviet Union.
- And we are working with the Russian government on shutting down the last remaining plutonium production plants and replacing their electricity production with coal burning power plants. This will end the annual production of 1.2 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium.
Meanwhile, we continue to expand our nonproliferation cooperation efforts in other parts of the world as well.
In January I traveled to China where I signed a Statement of Intent between the Department of Energy and China’s Atomic Energy Authority concerning peaceful uses of nuclear energy and nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism.
This Statement will facilitate and accelerate future cooperation between our two countries in the areas of export controls, nonproliferation, safeguards and security, and radioactive source security.
We have also begun a MegaPorts program to detect the trafficking of nuclear or radioactive materials in the world’s busiest seaports. Eventually we hope to have detection equipment in key locations all over the planet.
These are aggressive, pro-active measures aimed at thwarting terrorists by limiting their opportunities.
They are measures that help demonstrate the degree to which nonproliferation is a priority for President Bush and this Administration.
They are measures that spell out our commitment to winning the War against Terrorism.
And they are measures that I am sure will yield more successes like our recent success with Libya.
Media Contact(s):
Jeanne Lopatto, 202-586-4940
Joe Davis, 202-586-4940
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