Open for Business.(Russia's exports of nuclear technology)

They call it the "Berlin Wall." It's a plain, six-foot-high concrete barrier that bisects an unnamed village outside the Iranian city of Bushehr. On one side, about 1,500 Iranians live under Sharia--they lead quiet, spartan lives of work and prayer at the local mosque, with men and women strictly segregated. A few feet away on the other side of the wall, a rollicking population of 800 or so Russians and Ukrainians swill homemade moonshine and carouse late into the night. Yet every morning, the two sides--Iranians and Russians--meet on a vast construction site, where for the past seven years they've been building what may soon be Iran's first nuclear power plant. "We're at the top of our field," says 44-year-old Andrei Malyshev, formerly deputy minister in Russia's Ministry for Atomic Energy and now head of Russia's nuclear inspectorate. "We have an excellent product and we're proud of it."

To Russia, the Bushehr project is the symbol of its ambition as an exporter of nuclear technology. To Western intelligence officials and diplomats, it's the beginning of a nightmare of proliferating nukes. Although Iran claims it's only building an innocent electrical-power plant, Western officials worry that Russia's nuclear know-how and materials could easily be diverted to weapons. Last week the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency gave them more cause for worry. Inspectors examining equipment at a nearby nuclear facility discovered traces of highly enriched uranium--the stuff of bombs. The evidence, though circumstantial, raises the possibility that Iran may already be well on its way toward joining the nuclear club.

Russia is adamant in its refusal to pull out of Bushehr. Just last week U.S. State Department officials left Moscow after failing to persuade the Russians to abandon the project. They were disappointed, but not surprised; Russia has resisted similar entreaties for years. The Atomic Energy ministry, known as Minatom, is in fact hoping that Bushehr will serve as a harbinger of business to come. Out of the crumbling Russian nuclear industry, Minatom is engaged in an aggressive campaign to market Russian nuclear know-how to developing countries--several of which may be eager to acquire dual-use technology to secretly build nuclear weapons on the cheap.

Russian atomic scientists are already helping China and India build nuclear plants. They're bidding on a reactor in Finland. They're considering building a research reactor in Burma and have already trained 300 Burmese scientists. They're also in talks with Bulgaria, Cuba, Indonesia, Egypt and Syria. Several African countries are interested in a controversial new technology for nuclear plants that float in the ocean--a prospect that keeps proliferation experts awake at night. "Minatom does not seem to worry much about the possibility that someone might break into these reactors and take the fuel," says Cristina Chuen, a researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.

Russia's nuclear ambitions grew out of the collapse of the Soviet economy. Even though Minatom retained responsibility for a large and deteriorating network of nuclear power plants in the early 1990s, its budget shrank to a fraction of its Soviet-era peak. To obtain much- needed currency, the ministry, which employs tens of thousands of nuclear scientists, started exporting nuclear technology to former Soviet ...