At a press-conference today, Gen. Igor Valynkin, the head of the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, mentioned that Russia keeps its nuclear warhead production lines open as a way to ensure safety and reliability of nuclear warheads in the active arsenal - "We send old nuclear warheads for disassembly and disposal and get new ones from the industry."
Valynkin also said that there were two attempts to infiltrate nuclear storage facilities - one in 2002 and one in 2003, but neither was successful - the perpetrators were caught and handed over to the FSB.
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What is your source on the interview? Most Western articles do not attribute particular dates to the infiltration attempts, only a timeframe is given at best (since 1991).
I haven't seen English reports from the press-conference. Russian ones quote Valynkin as saying that the attempts were in 2002 and 2003.
Below is the Q&A from that portion of the news conference transcript. Those incidents are old news, and I believe that Valynkin mis-spoke. Valynkin first reported those incidents in October 2001. At that time, he said that the incidents had occured 8 months prior (February 2001) and about six months prior (approximately April 2001). Since Valynkin's comment on this last week was not from a prepared statement - that is, Valynkin was answering a question - I would bet that he merely got the dates wrong. It's unlikely that these are two new incidents. (However, one might expect that MOD would have issued a correction, especially given Min. Ivanov's personal interest in this issue.)
As a side note, Valynkin also commented that he had no idea what happened to the two "terrorists" who had attempted to recon his sites. His troops apparently turned them over to the FSB, and forgot about them. Surely that can't be true. I know of no general officer who wouldn't demand to be briefed on the status of that investigation. Having spent significant time with Gen. Valynkin himself, I strongly suspect that he knows exactly what happened to the two "terrorists."
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Q: I just wanted to repeat the question asked by my colleague from Kommersant. Igor Nikolayevich, could you speak about the details of those two attacks or as you described them --
Valynkin: Two attempts to enter the facilities. The FSB investigated them. I do not know what they found, what really happened.
Q: When was that?
Valynkin: In 2002 and 2003.
I wouldn't be surprised if all these episodes have been made up. If I remember correctly, in one of the previous statements of this kind, Valynkin (or was it someone else?) said something to the effect that the whole episode was a couple of "suspicious" Chechens (which could mean any Chechens these days) appearing in a city close to one of the storage facilities. No wonder he doesn't know what happened to those people. I would agree - had it been a (half-) serious attempt to get to a facility, Valynkin would have remembered it much better.