The Nuclear Information Project

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Romania Special Weapons

Romania ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970, but then-Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu pursued a covert nuclear weapons development program. Little information is publicly available on the weapons program, but it is known that hot cells were used for experimental plutonium extraction from irradiated research reactor fuel.

After Ceausescu's overthrow in 1989, the weapons program was terminated. Supply of highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a 14 MW Triga research reactor was terminated by the United States in the late 1980s because of the possibility of diversion of HEU for weapons production; the reactor was shut down from 1989-91 and it was converted to enable use of low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. A nuclear power program has been in the planning stages for some years in Romania, with five power reactors under construction as of 1995.

On March 30, 1998 Romania and the United States signed an agreement to promote military relations between the two countries and to work together to curb trafficking in deadly chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.On June 30, 2009, the final HEU shipment of Russian origin was repatriated. This was undertaken under the auspices of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative spearheaded by the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and in cohesion with the Russian Federation.

Romania signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) on September 24, 1996 and later ratified the CTBT on October 5, 1999.

A story in the Bucharest newspaper Ziua (April 5, 2005) stated:

Romania did not, does not, and will not have the capacity to produce nuclear bombs, declared Lucian Biro, adviser to the president of the National Commission for Control of Nuclear Activities (CNCAN) and former chief of that institution. He said that Romania had carried out research activities in the field of nuclear fuel before 1990, and that the only result of those activities was "a few milligrams of plutonium" .... Biro said that the fact that the production of that quantity of plutonium was not reported at the time to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna had been an "error," although protocols noted that reports were only to be submitted for quantities that exceeded one gram of plutonium. Anton Coroianu, CNCAN director, said that in Nicolae Ceausescu's time a series of "bluff statements" had been made about the production of nuclear bombs.... Biro noted that IAEA had made a series of verifications in 1993 regarding Romania's use of plutonium for possible production of such a bomb. "The IAEA found that no nuclear bomb had been produced in Romania. ... He also said that the substance that contained the few milligrams of plutonium was preserved at the Pitesti (Nuclear Research) Institute.

Sources and Resources

• Annotated bibiography for Romania from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Disarmament and Nonproliferation," last accessed May 31, 2012

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