OBNINSK, Central Russia -- To keep Russia's nuclear material from disappearing abroad, Russian, European and American partners opened a center Wednesday that better tracks the government's stockpiles of uranium and plutonium.


By introducing the center, Russian leaders hope to create "a radical break in technology, a change to modern means" that will close those borders to illegal and dangerous trade, Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov said.


The facility trains specialists to accurately measure, to a 0.1 percent margin of error, the weight, chemical content and isotope levels of a hunk of plutonium or uranium.