Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities (2005) / Chapter Skim
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3 Nuclear-Explosive Materials
3 Nuclear-Explosive Materials
Pages 109-182
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From page 109... ...
The importance of NEM stocks resides not just in their role in determining the breakout potential from agreed or unilaterally undertaken limits on the nuclear arsenals of the existing global and regional nuclear weapon states, but also in their role as a reservoir of proliferation potential to both other state and nonstate actors. Stocks of NEM held by non-nuclear weapon states confer the potential for these states to acquire nuclear weapons of the simplest types quite quickly once a decision to do so has been made.
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From page 110... ...
; Steve Fetter, Verifying Nuclear Disarmament, Occasional Paper 29, Henry L Stimson Center, Washington, DC, 1996; and Independent Bilateral Scientific Commission on Plutonium Disposition, Final Report, Washington, DC: President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, The White House, and Russian Academy of Sciences, June 1997.
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From page 111... ...
.4 · Any mixture of U-233 with U-238 when the U-233 concentration is 12 percent or more is considered NEM.5 3 See IAEA, IAEA Safeguards Glossary, 2001 Edition (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2002)
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From page 112... ...
in the separation of the contained NEM (a mix of plutonium isotopes amounting altogether to 1-2 percent of the mass of the spent fuel) from the accompanying fission products and low enriched uranium.
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From page 113... ...
These have been less important than plutonium, U-235, and U-233 because they have existed until now in much smaller amounts and because producing them in quantity is even more difficult.7 The fuels that generate energy from fusion in boosted and thermonuclear weapons -- notably tritium, deuterium, and lithium -- might also be argued to be nuclear explosives. But no means is yet known for releasing explosive nuclear energy from these fusion fuels alone, so their possession without the material required for an explosive fission chain reaction does not enable the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
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From page 114... ...
Significant quantities take into account unavoidable losses due to conversion and manufacturing processes and should not be confused with critical masses." See International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA Safeguards Glossary: 2001 Edition (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2002)
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From page 115... ...
In principle, commercial enrichment plants could be operated in a manner to do the remaining work needed to bring this low enriched reactor fuel up to weapon-usable levels. Separated Plutonium Plutonium-239 is produced when U-238 absorbs neutrons produced in a reactor or by an accelerator.
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From page 116... ...
This can be accomplished by chemical means, since Pu-239 and other isotopes of plutonium form distinct chemical compounds. The term "separated plutonium," is used when the concentrations of accompanying fission products and uranium are reduced to levels such that the material, if present in sufficient quantity, would support a nuclear explosion.
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From page 117... ...
) HEU Pu Blending High-Level Waste LEU Vitrification LEU Fuel Fabrication Geologic Disposal Power MOX Fuel Natural or De Reactor Fabrication pleted Uranium FIGURE 3-1 Production, utilization, and disposition flows for HEU and plutonium.
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From page 118... ...
11The most extensive unclassified compendium of such information is David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities, and Policies (New York: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Oxford University Press, 1997)
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From page 119... ...
The few tens of tons of HEU of civil origin, which are mainly in research reactors and the fresh or spent fuel for these, are not much compared with the major power military stockpiles, but at circa 2,000 SQ they represent a serious risk in terms of possible use in weapons by proliferant states or terrorist groups. TABLE 3-2 ISIS Estimates of Global Inventories of Plutonium and HEU (Metric tons, end of 2003, rounded)
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From page 120... ...
Even more have enough HEU for a bomb if irradiate fuel that is not radioactive enough to deter suicidal terrorists from taking it and using it in a bomb is taken into account.15 Flows of NEM All of the five de jure nuclear weapon states have indicated they are not reprocessing plutonium or producing HEU for weapons. India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea continue production that is small on the scale of global stockpiles, but significant in the context of their modest existing stocks.
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From page 121... ...
Stocks of both separated and unseparated plutonium, by contrast, are increasing every year, and international flows are substantial. The operation of the world's civilian power reactors leads to the discharge of about 80 tons per year of plutonium embedded in 8,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.17 In recent years, roughly 20 tons of this material has been separated by reprocessing each year, and the rate of fabrication of separated plutonium into mixed oxide fuel for actual loading into power reactors has been about one half that amount, leading to a growing stockpile of civilian separated plutonium that will soon surpass the amount of separated plutonium in all the world's military stockpiles combined.18 (In addition, roughly 1.2 tons of separated plutonium is reprocessed from the spent fuel of Russia's three remaining military plutonium production reactors each year, which continue to operate because they provide essential heat and power to nearby communities, and whose fuel was not designed for long-term storage.19)
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From page 122... ...
, and from France and the United Kingdom to customers in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. Limited shipment of military plutonium from weapon dismantlement sites to storage sites presumably takes place, but all plutonium components from dismantled weapons in the United States, and most in Russia, are believed to be stored at the weapon dismantlement sites.
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From page 123... ...
Such differences are related, among other issues, to accounting uncertainties, secrecy issues, physical evidence of production, and the existing system of monitoring of civilian NEM in nonnuclear weapon states by the IAEA. Accounting Uncertainties In the case of intact nuclear weapons and their nuclearexplosive components, the numbers are at least precisely known by the countries that possess them.
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From page 124... ...
Another useful treatment of this and related points is Steve Fetter, Verifying Nuclear Disarmament, Occasional Paper 29, Henry L Stimson Center, Washington, DC, 1996.
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From page 125... ...
For a case in a non-nuclear weapon state subject to IAEA safeguards, it is instructive to consider the case of Japan's Tokai reprocessing plant, where IAEA estimates and Japanese estimates of material began to diverge as soon as the facility began operating in the 1970s, and it was not until decades later, after the difference had increased to some 200 kilograms of plutonium, that improved approaches to measuring the plutonium being sent to waste, which were then retroactively applied to estimate the amount of plutonium sent to waste over the facility's lifetime, were finally agreed and implemented, bringing Japanese and IAEA estimates into line. See, for example, International Atomic Energy Agency, "New Measurement Techniques Correct Pu Inventory in Japanese Reprocessing Plant," PR/2003/02, January 28, 2003.
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From page 126... ...
The stockpiles in Britain, France, and China each amount to a few percent of the U.S. or Russian stockpiles and the stockpiles in India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea each amount to far 25For a discussion of the history of HEU production and use in the United States, Russia, and other nuclear weapon states, based on the limited unclassified information available, see David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities, and Policies (New York: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Oxford University Press, 1997)
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From page 127... ...
. International standards have been developed for the expected accuracy of material measurement in different processes, and are regularly updated.26 Currently, the standard deviation of safeguards measurements at a large reprocessing plant are expected to be in the range of 1 percent of throughput and the uncertainties at a centrifuge enrichment plant only in the range of 0.2 percent of throughput (no large gaseous diffusion enrichment plants are under IAEA safeguards at present)
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From page 128... ...
But Russia and other states with military NEM stockpiles continue to regard both the size of their current inventories and the production histories of these inventories as secret information. Similarly, while the United States now regards most of the general characteristics of weapons plutonium as unclassified, Russia still counts both the isotopic and chemical composition of weapons plutonium as secrets,29 and it is likely that other nuclear weapon states currently have similar policies.
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From page 129... ...
In the case of plutonium, the moderator or structural materials in plutonium production reactors absorb neutrons as irradiation of nuclear material to produce plutonium proceeds. In a process known as "nuclear archaeology," these structural materials can be examined to estimate how much plutonium was produced in that reactor, and this evidence can be compared with declarations and other information.
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From page 130... ...
31Some of the civilian material in nuclear-weapon states or in non-parties to the NPT is under IAEA safeguards, under voluntary agreements between the weapon states and the Agency, or at the insistence of countries that supplied particular facilities or materials. A Chinese enrichment plant supplied by Russia, for example, is under Agency safeguards, and an Indian reprocessing plant has safeguards during those periods when it is processing nuclear material provided by the United States or other suppliers that insist on such safeguards.
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From page 131... ...
U.S.-Russian Transparency and Monitoring Efforts for Military NEM The treatment in Chapter 2 of the linked transparency initiatives for nuclear weapons and military NEM is augmented in this section under six subheadings: transparency for NEM from dismantled weapons; exchange and confirmation of declarations on total stocks of NEM; transparency at Nunn-Lugar sites; monitoring issues in plutonium production and disposition; unilateral openness initiatives and informal cooperation; and lab-to-lab cooperation on transparency technologies, followed by a concluding discussion of considerations and options looking ahead.33 Transparency for NEM from Dismantled Weapons Even prior to the September 1994 Clinton-Yeltsin summit agreement mentioned in Chapter 2, U.S. Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary and Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Victor Mikhailov agreed to establish a regime of mutual inspections to confirm the inventories of plutonium and HEU removed from dismantled nuclear weapons.
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From page 132... ...
The May 1995 summit statement also called for an agreement on "other cooperative measures, as necessary to enhance confidence in the reciprocal declarations of fissile material stockpiles." And the March 1997 Clinton-Yeltsin summit statement mentioned yet again the desirability of exploring transparency measures for nuclear materials. The bilateral measures to increase transparency contemplated in these statements did not materialize by the end of the Clinton Administration, in part because there was no cooperative agreement to lift the secrecy restraints on the relevant information.35 The Bush Administration has not pursued either warhead dismantlement transparency or comprehensive data exchanges relating to stockpiles of nuclear warheads and NEM, but in the context of the Moscow Treaty, has established a joint U.S.-Russian working group on transparency in offensive nuclear forces.
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From page 133... ...
side offered no parallel monitoring of similar steps in the United States. Monitoring Issues in Plutonium Production and Disposition The 1997 U.S.-Russian agreement on ending production of weapons plutonium includes a requirement for monitoring meas 36Nuclear Threat Initiative, "Mayak Storage Facility Transparency," Monitoring Stockpiles.
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From page 134... ...
and to confirm that plutonium produced in Russia's three remaining plutonium production reactors after 1994 would not be used in weapons.37 To confirm that the plutonium offered for monitoring was in fact the plutonium produced in these reactors, the agreement specified that U.S. monitors would be able to take measurements to confirm that the ratio of Pu-240 to total plutonium and the ratio of Am-241 to Pu-241 were below certain thresholds (the former to confirm that the material submitted for monitoring was weapon-grade plutonium, and the latter to confirm that it had been recently separated)
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From page 135... ...
As indicated earlier, however, the information the United States has declassified so far about its military stocks of NEM has been less than complete, and what has been made public up until now by Russia about its military NEM stocks is even less complete. While Russia has not yet matched all of the U.S.
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From page 136... ...
Since the September 11th attacks, the focus of this lab-to-lab work has shifted to include detection of explosives and of nuclear materials for counterterrorism purposes.41 40Robert L Martinez, Dennis Croessmann, Vladimir Sukhoruchkin, Alexander Grigoriev, and Mark Sazhnev, "American-Russian Remote Monitoring Transparency Program: Accomplishments During the Past Year," in Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (Northbrook, IL: Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, 1997)
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From page 137... ...
Holdren, Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan (Washington, DC: Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, March 2003) and John Holdren and Nikolai Laverov, Letter Report from the Co-Chairs of the Joint Committee on U.S.-Russian Cooperation on Nuclear Non-Proliferation.
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From page 138... ...
Indeed, it will be necessary to think carefully about what kinds of information would be shared only between the United States and Russia, what kinds shared only with the NPT-authorized nuclear weapon states as a group, what kinds shared with all governments in good standing under the NPT, and which kinds made public.43 International Monitoring of Excess Military NEM Some progress toward placing excess U.S., Russian, and possibly other NEM under international monitoring to verify for the world that it is never again returned to weapons -- a step recommended reports from both The National Academies and Independent Bilateral Scientific Commission44 -- was made in the years after those reports were published, but that progress has now essentially ground to a halt. Declarations of Excess Material In 1995 President Clinton declared that some 225 tons of U.S.
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From page 139... ...
excess military NEM was under IAEA safeguards (10 tons of HEU and 2 tons of plutonium) , and the IAEA had verified the down blending of more than 20 additional tons of U.S.
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From page 140... ...
The United Kingdom has made its excess nuclear material eligible for international safeguards; while the IAEA has not had the resources to apply safeguards to this material, it is under EURATOM safeguards. The Trilateral Initiative There is consensus among the IAEA, the United States, and Russia that putting excess military NEM under IAEA oversight represents a fundamentally new mission for that international agency: namely verifying nuclear disarmament in nuclear weapon states possessing many weapons, rather than verifying nonproliferation in non-nuclear weapon states.
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From page 141... ...
The 2000 U.S.-Russian Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement includes a provision requiring each party to begin consultations with the IAEA "at an early date," and to conclude agreements with the IAEA to allow it to conduct verification beginning "not later in the disposition process" than when the plutonium has been processed to an unclassified form and is placed in storage at a conversion or conversion/blending facility, or when it is received at a fuel fabrication or immobilization facility (whichever is sooner)
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From page 142... ...
If nuclear arms reductions proceeded to the point that nuclear weapon states other than the United States and Russia see fit to declare some of their military NEM as surplus to military needs, having an established international monitoring operation for such materials already in place would be very advantageous. We believe that both for monitoring the current U.S.
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From page 143... ...
IAEA inspectors measure and estimate amounts of nuclear material, count discrete items such as fuel rods, affix tags and seals to track whether items have been moved or tampered with, and install and monitor video cameras and radiation detectors to track activity around and movement of the relevant items and materials. 50 See IAEA, IAEA Safeguards Glossary, 2001 Edition (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2002)
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From page 144... ...
The frequency of inspections depends on the quantity and weapon relevance of the nuclear material. The traditional approach to IAEA safeguards was negotiated in the early 1970s, when most states believed that nuclear energy would be fundamental to their energy economies, and the nonnuclear weapon states were quite concerned that the requirement to accept IAEA safeguards should not put them at a commercial disadvantage in this key technology, in competition with the weapon states, who faced no such inspection requirement.
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From page 145... ...
For each state that agrees to the Additional Protocol, these new measures include:53 · An expanded declaration covering a detailed descrip tion of the state's entire nuclear program (not just the activities involving nuclear materials, which already must be declared under existing IAEA agreements set forth in INFCIRC/153) ; declarations, including blue prints, of new facilities before construction begins; in formation on the import-export of certain equipment and material; and an outline of nuclear fuel cycle plans for the coming 10 years; · broader physical access to declared locations and facili ties, not restricted to agreed "strategic points" as in INFCIRC/153, and improved explicit access to suspi cious undeclared locations, including environmental monitoring for detection of proscribed activities; · improved procedures for getting inspectors in and in formation out, including restrictions on a state's ability to reject particular inspectors, a requirement that states issue multi-entry visas to inspectors, reductions in the advance notice of inspections that must be provided to the host state, and allowance for direct communication by inspectors to IAEA headquarters or regional offices and for direct transmission of information from surveil lance and measurement devices.
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From page 146... ...
and from member states, including their intelligence agencies. The 54See, for example, IAEA, "IAEA Board of Governors Recommends Landmark Budget Increase," PR/2003/12 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, July 18, 2003)
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From page 147... ...
Although the United States has offered to place all of its civilian nuclear energy facilities under IAEA safeguards, the IAEA has understandably chosen not to spend its limited resources safeguarding these U.S. facilities on the grounds that it was highly unlikely a country with so many nuclear weapons and no prohibition on producing additional military NEM would divert civil NEM to make more weapons.
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From page 148... ...
57See IAEA, "Strengthened Safeguards System: Status of Additional Protocols" (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, June 16, 2004)
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From page 149... ...
Regardless of the outcome of such reviews, confidence in monitoring and providing "timely detection" could be increased by expanded application of near-real-time accountancy in the most sensitive facilities, notably enrichment and fuelreprocessing plants, which could be achieved by using the Internet or satellite uplinks to relay information from sensors inside the plants directly to IAEA headquarters.58 REDUCING NEM STOCKS, FLOWS, AND SITES The preceding sections have treated the approaches, obstacles, and possibilities for NEM transparency and monitoring in a largely qualitative way, that is, without specific reference to the quantitative measures (total stocks of materials, rates of production and 58See Steve Fetter, Verifying Nuclear Disarmament, Occasional Paper 29, Henry L Stimson Center, Washington, DC, 1996 and for a more extensive and recent treatment, Thomas E
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From page 150... ...
The remainder of this section focuses on the principal processes for reducing NEM stocks, flows, and sites, namely, the conversion of research reactors to run on LEU rather than HEU; choice and management of civil nuclear energy technologies to minimize NEM stocks, flows, and sites; actions to consolidate NEM at fewer sites; cutoff of production of NEM for weapons; and final disposition of HEU and plutonium. In each case, issues relating to transparency and monitoring are identified, the current status discussed, and consideration is given to options looking forward.
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From page 151... ...
60See Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier, "Converting Research Reactors," on the Controlling Nuclear Weapons and Materials section of the Nuclear Threat Initiative Web site. Available as of January 2005, at: http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/securing/convert.asp.
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From page 152... ...
62See Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier, "Converting Research Reactors," Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials. Available as of January 2005, at: http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/securing/convert.asp.
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From page 153... ...
Considerations and Options Looking Ahead We judge that the problems posed by HEU-fueled research reactors for monitoring related to nuclear arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, and protection against nuclear terrorism would be most effectively addressed by completing as expeditiously as possible the conversion to LEU of all such reactors that are convertible and still worth operating and shutting down the rest. A number of specific steps could be taken in this direction.
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From page 154... ...
There is little monitoring difficulty and no security trade-off because the facilities involved are not sensitive from a military standpoint. In addition to research and medical isotope production reactors, HEU-fueled reactors in submarines, surface warships, and icebreakers could be looked at more closely with respect to the problems their fueling systems and their spent fuel could pose for a more comprehensive regime of controls and monitoring for NEM.65 The case of naval reactors is clearly far more sensitive and difficult than that of research reactors from the standpoint of both performance trade-offs and protection of classified information during monitoring but appears to be manageable on a cooperative basis.
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From page 155... ...
The 20-30 percent enriched uranium fuel required by some breeder reactor designs is a considerably smaller proliferation risk than the 90 percent or 80 percent enriched material often used in research reactors, because of the large amount of HEU needed to constitute a critical mass at these lower enrichments.66 Future fast-neutron reactors, if they are built and deployed, will likely use plutonium or U-233 recovered from spent fuel as their primary fuel, possibly mixed with other actinides and some of the fission products from spent fuel. (Such recycling is discussed in more detail below.)
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From page 156... ...
The use of NEM is a major issue at the "back end" of the nuclear fuel cycle. With currently available reprocessing and recycling approaches, plutonium or U-233 is completely separated from accompanying fission products before being incorporated into fresh fuel.
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From page 157... ...
attempting to develop advanced breeder-reactor fuel cycles in which the recycled plutonium or U-233 would never be completely separated from fission products (meaning that these materials would only become weapon usable if they underwent an additional reprocessing step)
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From page 158... ...
Bush Administration called for the United States to continue to "discourage the accumulation of separated plutonium" in civil nuclear fuel cycles, while proposing pursuit of "fuel conditioning" technologies such as pyroprocessing that could reduce waste streams and increase proliferation resistance;71 the 70Spurgeon M Keeny Jr.
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From page 159... ...
New research and development initiatives such as the U.S.-led "Generation IV" effort have focused renewed attention on advanced breeder designs, but most of these focus on systems where the recycled plutonium or U-233 always remains mixed with other actinides and/or some fission products, to increase proliferation resistance. Still, no international consensus has emerged on whether avoiding or minimizing commercial traffic in separated plutonium would be an essential element of any suitably compre National Research Council Electrometallurgical Techniques for DOE Spent Fuel Treatment: Final Report (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2000)
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From page 160... ...
Indeed, the challenges posed by unrestrained use of NEM in civil nuclear energy to adequate defenses against nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism and to adequate verification of a more stringent and comprehensive arms control regime, were one desired, have been asserted by some to be virtually insurmountable.74 We believe that it is therefore important to revisit the question of whether and how the use of NEM in civil nuclear energy should be restrained, both for immediate purposes of nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear terrorism prevention and for the longer-term possibility of a more comprehensive nuclear arms limitation regime. Since the Ford and Carter administrations' announcements in the mid-1970s that the United States would refrain from commercial reprocessing of spent fuel, plutonium recycle, and deployment of breeder reactors, the proliferation and terrorism dangers from reprocessing and recycle of NEM have become even clearer than they were then.
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From page 161... ...
For a useful discussion of how such fuel cycle guarantees might be implemented, from some one with experience both at the IAEA and in leading major commercial fuel cycle activities, see Pierre Goldschmidt, "The Proliferation Challenge of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle in Non-Nuclear Weapon States," remarks to the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, April 26, 2004, available as of January 2005, at: http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/DDGs/2004/goldschmidt26042004.html.
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From page 162... ...
If the principle could be established that there would be no new facilities capable of producing NEM in any state, including the nuclear weapon states, except under international control, this would 77See John Deutch, Ernie Moniz, et al., The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003)
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From page 163... ...
If agreement cannot be reached on implementing these constraints, MPC&A procedures could be introduced to ameliorate the threat -- at significantly increased costs and uncertainty as to effectiveness. Other Actions to Consolidate NEM at Fewer Sites Reducing the number of, or eliminating entirely, research reactors that use HEU and postponing, minimizing, or avoiding nuclear energy technologies that entail the use of HEU and/or separated plutonium at dispersed sites are two ways to reduce the number of locations where these materials must be monitored and guarded, as well as to reduce the amount of transportation of the materials among sites.
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From page 164... ...
In Russia, for example, scores of former nuclear weapon storage sites have been closed down, two of the four weapon assembly and disassembly facilities have been closed, one of the two facilities for processing NEM into weapon components has been closed, most of the facilities that once stored fresh HEU naval fuel have been closed (and the others equipped with effective security and accounting systems) , the enrichment plants no longer produce HEU, and 10 of the 13 plutonium production reactors (all of which also used 90 percent enriched HEU "spike" fuel)
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From page 165... ...
As just one example, a research center at Kharkov, in Ukraine, holds a substantial quantity of 90 percent enriched HEU in the form of oxide powder, though it has no research reactor.80 Considerations and Options Looking Ahead We believe that substantial further consolidation of NEM in the nuclear weapon states would be desirable, particularly in Russia. Many Russian facilities still have NEM in many different buildings on-site, though in the context of U.S.-Russian MPC&A cooperation, work is underway to consolidate the materials at these sites into central storage facilities.
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From page 166... ...
The five de jure nuclear weapon states party to the NPT (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China) are not covered by this ban, but they are no longer producing NEM for weapons.
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From page 167... ...
Without inspections, moreover, determination of whether the output of an operating enrichment plant was LEU or HEU would also be difficult if not impossible, as would be the determination of whether any HEU produced was destined for weapons, tritium production reactors, naval reactors, research reactors, or civil power reactors of types that use HEU. U.S.-funded efforts to end the production of separated plutonium from the three remaining Russian plutonium producing reactors in Siberia began with attempts to arrange alternate sources of heat and power for their regions so that the reactors could be shut down, then shifted to a focus on modifying the fuel for the reactors so that it would produce little plutonium and would not need to be reprocessed for technical reasons as is currently the case, and now have shifted back to replacing the reactors with other sources of heat and electricity.
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From page 168... ...
program, available as of January 2005, at: http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/na-20/ewgpp.shtml. 83United Nations General Assembly, Prohibition of the Production of Fissile Materials for Weapons or Other Nuclear Explosive Devices, UNGA 48/75L, December 16, 1993.
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From page 169... ...
position further: "Effective verification of an FMCT would require an inspection regime so extensive that it could compromise key signatories' core national security interests and so costly that many countries will be hesitant to accept it. Moreover, we have concluded that, even with extensive verification measures, we will not have high confidence in our ability to monitor compliance with an FMCT."86 Given the fact that there is now a de jure cutoff of NEM production for weapons for all non-nuclear weapons states party to the NPT and a de facto moratorium on such production by the five nuclear weapon states party to that treaty, the immediate impact of a comprehensive FMCT would be on the four nonmembers of the NPT (India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea)
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From page 170... ...
The verification measures for a FMCT would clearly need to include declarations for all reprocessing and enrichment facilities, whether currently operational or not, and for all other facilities that store or process NEM subject to the treaty. There would presumably also be a need for declarations of all facilities that store or handle preexisting NEM not addressed by the cutoff, in order to deal with the problem of discriminating preexisting material from new production.87 It would seem simplest for the monitoring procedures under an FMCT to be coincident, in the case of non-nuclear weapon states, with those currently applied by the IAEA under the Additional Protocol, and for new or amended agreements with nuclear weapon states to adhere as closely as possible to the same approaches, with only such modifications as required to address special circumstances of those states such as dual-purpose facilities and facilities not designed to accommodate standard IAEA procedures.88 87 See, e.g., Victor Bragin, John Carlson, and John Hill, "Verifying a Fissile-Material Production Cut-Off Treaty," The Nonproliferation Review, Fall 1998, pp.
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From page 171... ...
And The International Atomic Energy Agency For The Application Of Safeguards (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, October 1993) ; all available as of January 2005, at: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/.
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From page 172... ...
Disposition of HEU In the case of HEU, achieving these goals is technically straightforward. Highly enriched uranium can be blended with natural uranium -- or with the depleted-in-U-235 "tails" from previous uranium enrichment or very low enriched uranium for technical reasons -- to produce proliferation-resistant LEU, which is a valuable commercial fuel.
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From page 173... ...
fabrication of the plutonium into mixed oxide fuel (a mix ture of plutonium dioxide and uranium dioxide, termed 90See, for example, Matthew Bunn, "Highly Enriched Uranium Transparency," Monitoring Stockpiles. Available as of January 2005, at: http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/monitoring/uranium.asp and references cited therein.
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From page 174... ...
; or 2. vitrification in combination with high-level radioactive waste, achieved by mixing the plutonium with fission products from previous military or civilian nuclear energy activities into molten glass to produce glass logs with mass, bulk, radioactivity, and resistance to chemical separation of the plutonium comparable with these properties for spent fuel bundles from civilian power reactors.
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From page 175... ...
Both the United States and Russia have some but not all of the facilities they would need to undertake plutonium disposition. For the reactor option, new plutonium fuel fabrication facilities and plants for converting plutonium pits to oxide would be needed, and this would be the limiting requirement in both time and cost for 92See, e.g., Thomas L
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From page 176... ...
,96 Russia is supposed to 94For a summary of a range of potential approaches to accelerating the rate of plutonium disposition, see Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and John P Holdren, Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan (Washington, DC: Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, March 2003)
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From page 177... ...
has always considered all separated plutonium to be a valuable energy resource irrespective of cost calculations showing that even using "free" military plutonium in fuel is more expensive than making fuel with the same energy value from freshly mined and enriched uranium. Consequently, the PMDA does not commit any Russian plutonium to disposition by immobilization with wastes.
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From page 178... ...
MOX facility to the start of construction of a Russian MOX facility, the U.S. facility has also been delayed by at least a year.100 Considerations and Options Looking Ahead We judge that achieving appropriate transparency and adequate monitoring for final disposition of surplus military NEM pose entangled political and technical challenges that will require further effort to resolve.
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From page 179... ...
102A more extended treatment of the challenges in transparency and monitoring of final disposition, which also summarizes the approaches that have been envisioned for dealing with them, is provided by Annette Schaper, "Monitoring and Verifying the Storage and Disposition of Fissile Materials and the Closure of Nuclear Facilities," in Nicholas Zarimpas, ed., Transparency in Nuclear Warheads and Materials (New York: Oxford University Press and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2003)
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From page 180... ...
The United States and Russia have acquired substantial experience through their cooperation to improve the security of Russian stocks of NEM, including joint work on technologies and methods for enhanced transparency and monitoring. The work of the IAEA has provided extensive multilateral experience with monitoring and transparency for civilian NEM and some limited experience with military NEM as well.
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From page 181... ...
Immediate efforts related to HEU are especially important given its greater utility for terrorists or states seeking simple nuclear weapons. These measures include: · accelerated disposition of excess HEU inventories through down blending and eventual use in reactor fuel; · replacement of HEU fuels in research reactors with high-density LEU fuels, where feasible, and decommis sioning of nuclear reactors using HEU fuels when re placement is not possible; · disposition of excess separated plutonium either by conversion to MOX fuel for use in civil reactors or by mixing with fission products and immobilization; · a comprehensive cutoff of production of NEM for weapons; · a serious international effort to develop nuclear fuel cy cles for civil reactors that minimize or eliminate the ex posure of NEM; and · possible centralization under multinational control of all facilities capable of enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium.
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From page 182... ...
The lower such limits became, moreover, the greater would be the need for reduction of NEM stockpiles and high confidence in monitoring the stocks that re mained.
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information on Chapter Skim is available.