A Russian nuclear city and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory began forging some economic development ties this past week.

Leaders from Zheleznogorsk visited PNNL to discuss how the city can diversify after Cold War plutonium production ended.

PNNL is trying to build economic development ties with three of Russia's 10 "closed" cities, where scientists researched, created and built nuclear materials and weapons.

Zheleznogorsk's delegation was the last of the three to meet with PNNL's experts.

The three cities are Sarov, formerly Arzamas-16; Snezhinsk, formerly Chelyabinsk-70; and Zheleznogorsk, formerly Krasnoyarsk-26.

Russia's closed cities used to be referred to by special post office codes to disguise their locations. In 1994, Russia dropped that practice and gave the cities new names.

The Department of Energy plans to spend $15 million in 1999 on its Nuclear Cities Initiative. This is a 3-month-old pact for the United States to help Russia revive the slumping economies of its nuclear cities.

One reason for this program is to prevent highly skilled, but jobless Russian nuclear scientists and technicians from seeking work in nations such as North Korea or Iraq.

PNNL wants to position itself to take a lead role in developing business enterprise centers in the three cities, said Jim Fuller, PNNL's manager for arms controls and nonproliferation.

A business enterprise center might differ from city to city, but it would include some kind of incubator for new small businesses and a clearinghouse for business-related information.

Other DOE national laboratories are also exploring how to participate in the Nuclear Cities Initiative.

Zheleznogorsk, with a population of 100,000, is in south central Siberia. The city and the production site are somewhat meshed together in a secure site - similar to Richland and Hanford prior to Richland becoming independent in 1958.

About 9,500 people work at the government site, which used to operate three plutonium production reactors. Only one reactor is still functions to provide electricity to the area.

The site wants to replace the reactor and finish constructing a stalled spent fuel storage facility, said Valery Lebedev, director general of the Ministry of Atomic Energy's Mining and Chemical Combine at the site - the equivalent of DOE's Hanford manager. However, Russia's economic woes makes those job-producing plans shaky, Lebedev said through an interpreter.

Meanwhile, Russia's troubled economy also makes the city leery of chasing big projects, and it is looking at nurturing new small and medium-sized businesses, said Andrey Katargin, the city's administrative head - the equivalent of a mayor.

Through an interpreter, Katargin said the city needs to create 2,000 to 3,000 new jobs in the next two to three years. The city has several new small and medium-sized businesses, but it also expects 50 percent of them to fail.

Katargin said the region is grappling with a lack of experienced managers and a lack of know-how on marketing.

"We were trained to produce and not trained to sell, and this is where we expect to get help," Katargin said.

The Zheleznogorsk delegation discussed several business ideas that it hopes will interest PNNL or some other company or agency. PNNL asked for more details on the ideas, which range from small to large.

PNNL is more likely to participate in smaller projects. It would likely defer bigger projects to commercial firms, although it might act as a mediator, said PNNL spokeswoman Staci West.

Zheleznogorsk's ideas ranged from building an aluminum can production facility, to producing radioactive isotopes used in medical treatments, to developing its natural resource of rare earths such as niobium and scandium.

Niobium has superconductive properties that can be used in the electrical power industry. Scandium has been used in making metal baseball bats.