Will Moscow Be Allowed To Recreate In Cuba The Nuclear Nightmare It Has Bequeathed To Bulgaria?

(Hong Kong): On the evening of 19 June
1997, the CBS Evening News broadcast a
chilling report about an incipient
nuclear catastrophe on the continent of
Europe: Five years after the U.S. and
other nations began a multimillion-dollar
repair effort aimed at correcting some of
the worst design and day-to-day operating
procedures associated with four
Soviet-designed VVER-440 reactors located
in Kozloduy, Bulgaria, this complex
remains a “ticking nuclear time
bomb.”

In fact, according to CBS, the plant
is “just as dangerous as it was five
years ago. No amount of Western expertise
or aid can change that.” During this
period, there have been over twenty
“incidents” — a euphemism for
serious nuclear problems — involving the
Bulgarian reactor complex.

Although a meltdown at Kozloduy would
have catastrophic consequences, the
Bulgarian government continues to operate
this facility on the grounds that its
economy requires the electricity
generated by the four reactors — nearly
half of Bulgaria’s total requirement. In
the absence of an alternative source of
supply, Bulgaria seems determined to keep
the Kozloduy complex on-line even though,
in CBS’ words “… the basic design
of the Russian-built reactors is
flawed.”

Unfortunately, Sofia seems tempted to
use its “ticking nuclear
time-bomb” as a means of playing
what CBS called “nuclear
blackmail”: By operating these
reactors without regard for the danger
that would arise should Kozloduy
experience a Chernobyl-style catastrophe
— disseminating lethal levels of
radiation over populations downwind,
Bulgaria evidently hopes to euchre
Western nations into paying
“millions in aid for maintenance and
repairs” at a plant that is, as CBS
notes, “unrepairable.”

The Next Nuclear
Blackmailer — Castro’s Cuba

As it happens, the folks who brought
the world Bulgaria’s dangerous VVER-440
reactors — Russia’s Ministry of Atomic
Energy (Minatom) — remain determined to
create a similar nuclear nightmare and
the potential for nuclear blackmail
180 miles from the United States. Agence
France Presse reported on 6 June 1997
that Russian and Cuban officials had
reached agreement to “relaunch”
construction of two VVER-440 reactors at
Juragua, Cuba.

Just last January, Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro declared that he was
“indefinitely halting” work at
the Juragua complex, despite the roughly
$1.2 billion investment (nearly the
equivalent of Cuba’s annual hard currency
income) made to-date in trying to bring
his VVER-440 reactors on-line.

The proclamation by Russian Minister
for Nuclear Energy Yevgeny Reshtnilov
came on the heels of the signing by Cuba
and Russia of the final document of the
Intergovernmental Commission for
Economic, Scientific, and Technical
Cooperation, which calls for the two
nations to promote cooperation for mutual
benefit in the scientific, technical and
trade spheres. It also follows blithe
assurances by both nations that
installations at the Juragua plant
“are in excellent condition and meet
all contemporary safety
requirements” and that “[the
plant] poses no danger to [Cubans], much
less to others.”

The reality, of course, is very
different. As the Center has repeatedly
documented, ⁽¹⁾
the partially completed Cuban VVER-440s
have, if anything, more serious
problems than their Bulgarian
counterparts. According to defectors from
Cuba’s nuclear industry, the General
Accounting Office and other experts, the
following are among the reasons why the
Juragua complex is every bit as serious a
time-bomb as its sister plant in
Bulgaria:

• As many as fifteen
  percent of the 5,000 welds
  joining pipes used in the
  reactors’ auxiliary cooling
  system, containment dome and
  spent fuel-cooling system are
  believed to be defective. In the
  United States, a flaw in a single
  weld would cause the Nuclear
  Regulatory Commission to suspend
  operations.
• Sixty percent of the
  materials supplied by
  the former Soviet Union are of
  uncertain — if not deficient —
  quality. Moscow’s representatives
  reportedly told Cuban officials
  they could not guarantee that
  valves installed in the first
  reactor’s emergency cooling
  system would function under
  certain conditions.
• Much of the reactor’s equipment
  — including the reactor vessel,
  six steam generators, five
  primary cooling pumps, twelve
  isolation valves and other
  sensitive gear — was left exposed
  to the elements and the
  sea air for as long as three to
  four years. In tropical areas,
  such machinery must be stored in
  climate-controlled facilities to
  avoid serious corrosion and other
  damage. In addition, equipment
  designed for one specific
  function has been used for other
  purposes when the appropriate
  components were unavailable, a
  formula for failure.
• Construction supporting
  components of the primary reactor
  contain numerous
  structural defects.
• The first reactor’s dome would not
  be able to contain overpressures
  associated with meltdown
  conditions. The upper portion of
  the containment dome has been
  designed to withstand pressures
  of just seven pounds-per-square
  inch — versus some fifty
  pounds-per-square-inch required
  of U.S. reactors.

In the event one or more of these
problems translated into a catastrophic
accident should the Juragua reactors come
on-line, the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration has estimated
that the prevailing winds could expose
much of the U.S. eastern seaboard or
southern United States to dangerous
levels of radiation. By some official
estimates the number of Americans that
could be affected by a Cuban-originated
radioactive plume may be as high as 50 to
80 million.

These realities are now being
acknowledged, at least implicitly, by the
Russians. According to the French wire
service, Minister Reshtnilov said on 6
June that a consortium involving Russia,
Cuba and German, Brazilian and British
companies were “reviewing documents
to finance construction of a nuclear
power plant [in Cuba] as early as
1998″ but that it might “choose
to build a different facility…” In
that event, “some of [the existing]
facilities would be used in construction
of the new plant, which could also mean
cannibalizing Juragua’s most valuable
elements.”

In point of fact, it seems
improbable that a genuinely new
facility will emerge given the immense
investment already made in the Juragua
complex. With both Russia and
Cuba strapped for cash and notoriously
willing to cut corners on safety and
environmental concerns, prudence dictates
that the United States should expect the
“new” quality of the revived
Cuban reactor program to be more cosmetic
than real.

Why Is the Cuban Nuclear
Menace Still Abuilding?

The Center for Security Policy has
long believed that the very viability of
Castro’s despotic regime is contingent
upon finding a way to address Cuba’s
severe economic problems associated with
its reliance on imported oil supplies.
The Agence France Presse report confirms
this view, noting that “With 11
million people, Cuba’s energy shortfall
remains among its key obstacles to
continued economic growth. Blackouts
plunge most of the country into darkness
on a weekly basis.” Arguably, to an
extent even greater than Bulgaria, the
Cubans must satisfy not only domestic
energy requirements but also those of
Canadian, Spanish and other investors who
might otherwise decline to underwrite
development of Fidel’s infrastructure and
tourism sector.

Regrettably, there is probably
another, even more worrisome dimension to
Castro’s determination to proceed with
the Juragua project: The Cuban despot is
second to none, certainly not the
Bulgarians, when it comes to blackmail.
In fact, an article by Martin Arostegui
in the 30 June 1997 edition of National
Review entitled “Return of the
Godfather, Part II,” documents any
number of shakedown operations Castro has
mounted. For example, Mr. Arostegui
describes how Fidel has utilized the
influence he enjoys with terrorist cells
in Latin America — thanks to the
financial, logistical and training
support he offers them — to run a
protection racket against the Japanese,
Argentine and other governments.

It is entirely possible that,
like the Bulgarians, Castro sees an
opportunity to exploit Western concerns
about nuclear safety as a desperately
needed tool for leveraging concessions
from the United States. Not
since the abortive Cuban missile crisis
of 1962 has Fidel had the means for
engaging in nuclear blackmail against
this country. It seems possible that at
no time has he felt a greater need for
such a capability than now as his regime
totters toward collapse.

For the Russians, the imperatives for
bringing the Juragua complex on-line are
more complex — probably involving both
business and strategic interests:

• The Russian Ministry for Atomic
  Energy (Minatom) is in the midst
  of a world-wide marketing
  campaign aimed at defraying the
  costs of — and otherwise shoring
  up — Moscow’s decaying nuclear
  infrastructure by selling
  reactors to nations like Iran,
  China and India. Obviously, it
  would not be good for business if
  one of Russia’s premier overseas
  initiatives remained an
  inoperable white elephant.
• The sales campaign is already
  reeling from the track record of
  other VVER-440 reactors. One of
  West Germany’s first orders of
  business after reunification was
  to shut down four East German
  reactors of this basic type.
  Bulgaria’s reactors are, as noted
  above,
  disasters-waiting-to-happen.
  Clearly, neither Russian national
  pride nor marketing efforts can
  tolerate the sort of public
  relations setback that an aborted
  Cuban program would represent —
  despite Moscow’s bids to
  repackage its VVER technology
  with new model numbers and
  promises of technical upgrades.
• The promise of help with the
  Juragua project has also proven
  helpful to the Kremlin in
  finessing Castro’s periodic
  demands for increased payments —
  some reports suggest a five-fold
  increase from the $200 million
  annual charge — to permit
  continued operation of the Russian
  signals intelligence facility at
  Lourdes, Cuba. The truth
  is that Moscow is in a tough
  spot: Its cash flow remains
  inadequate to accommodate major
  new outlays, yet the declining
  condition of its space-based
  “national technical
  means” makes Russia
  unusually dependent upon the
  Lourdes facility to collect
  intelligence against the United
  States. ⁽²⁾
  Keeping Castro happy by arranging
  for U.S. embargo-busting foreign
  funding to underwrite completion
  of the reactor complex is
  probably seen by the Kremlin as
  the least negative alternative.
• What is more, it may
  serve Russia’s perceived
  interests to have the United
  States subjected to nuclear
  blackmail by its client, Fidel’s
  Cuba. Such blackmail
  could come in handy in euchring
  the U.S. into (a) participating
  in multilateral efforts
  ostensibly aimed at
  “fixing” Cuba’s fatally
  flawed reactors and/or (b)
  getting America to agree to help
  ease Castro’s economic plight in
  other ways.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that every effort must
be made promptly to shut down the
dangerous Bulgarian VVER reactors and to
prevent those still in prospect in Cuba
from ever coming on-line. Until
these results are achieved, the United
States should:

• impose sanctions on Bulgaria,
  e.g., by cutting off any taxpayer
  money for the Bulgarian regime;
  barring Bulgaria’s entry into
  international organizations; and,
  if necessary, adopting
  legislation to block U.S. support
  for disbursements to multilateral
  institutions like the World Bank
  and International Monetary Fund.
• Russia — and any other
  prospective foreign suppliers
  (e.g., German, British, French,
  Italian and Brazilian firms)
  reportedly now poised to supply
  equipment and services to help
  complete Fidel’s dangerous
  nuclear reactor program — should
  be put on notice that they will
  face a choice: Supply the Cuban
  market or participate in the
  American market. Specifically, Congress
  should serve notice that foreign
  suppliers will be subjected, in
  the event that sales to Cuba are
  consummated, to immediate U.S.
  import controls, thereby denying
  those firms access to the
  American marketplace.

The Congress should also work to
devise a strategy aimed at shutting down
Russia’s Lourdes facility — a step that
would simultaneously eliminate this
source of Castro’s leverage on Russia and
sharply curtail its malevolent
exploitation of signals intelligence
collected there for both strategic and
commercial purposes.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
Cuban nuclear reactors, see the following
Center products: How To
Respond To The Cuban K.A.L. 007: Shut
Down The Cuban Chernobyl ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_19″>No. 96-D 19,
26 February 1996 ); Center’s
Robinson Urges Congress To Thwart The
Coming Cuban Chernobyl Nuclear Crisis
(No. 95-P
51, 2 August 1995); Castro’s
Potemik Nuclear Shutdown: Chernobyl At
Cienfuegos Still In Prospect
(No. 92-D
108, 10 September 1992); A
‘Ticking’ Anniversary Present: Will
Russia Give Us A Chernobyl Ninety Miles
Off The U.S. Shore? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_41″>No. 92-D 41,
23 April 1992); and Cienfuegos
— ‘A Hundred Fires’: Muchas Gracias
Moscow, But No American Chernobyls
(No. 91-P
44, 31 May 1991).

2. For more on the
Lourdes facility, see the Casey
Institute’s Perspective
entitled Guess Who Else Was
Listening To Newt Gingrich’s Phone Call
— And To Those Of Millions Of Other
Americans Every Day? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_09″>No. 97-C 9, 16
January 1996).