Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Chapter 2: International Context
Chapter 2: International Context
Pages 39-60
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From page 39... ...
PLANNED NUCLEAR ARMS REDUCTIONS: HOW MUCH PLUTONIUM AND WHEN? Recent nuclear arms reduction agreements and pledges, if successfully implemented, coupled with national decisions concerning how much plutonium is to be declared "excess" to military needs, will largely set the parameters of how much excess plutonium will require disposition and when it will become available.
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From page 40... ...
Department of Energy, "Excess Fissile Materials," presented at die Annual Meeting of the American Power Conference, Chicago, Illinois, April 13-15, 1993. The uncertainty implied by the parenthetical "(or may)
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From page 41... ...
, reportedly indicated that the Russian stockpile would decline to 40-50 percent of its mid-1992 level as a result of arms control initiatives through early 1992. Given previous Mikhailov statements concerning the size of that stockpile, this suggests a reduction of 17,000-21,000 warheads, to which must be added several thousand warheads resulting from START II, signed subsequent to Mikhailov's remarks.
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From page 42... ...
Russia has also apparently succeeded in withdrawing the former Soviet tactical warheads to its territory on schedule: On May 6, 1992, the Russian government officially announced that all tactical nuclear weapons had been removed to Russia from Ukraine, the last non-Russian state in which Hey were deployed, and on February 3, 1993, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that all former Soviet tactical nuclear weapons from ships and submarines had been withdrawn to Russia. Despite many rumors of "loose nukes," there appears to be no serious basis for questioning these Russian announcements.
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From page 43... ...
This uneven pace of reductions could be smoothed out if each side continued to carry out reductions sooner than it is legally required to do so. THE CRISIS IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION The demise of the Soviet Union and the ongoing political and economic crises in the former Soviet states raise substantial risks for arms reduction and nonproliferation.
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From page 44... ...
The current crisis in the former Soviet Union creates a variety of risks with respect to the management and disposition of nuclear weapons and fissile materials. This report categorizes these as dangers of: · "breakup," meaning the emergence of multiple nuclear-armed states where previously there was only one; · "breakdown," meaning erosion of government control over nuclear weapons and materials within a particular state; and · "breakout," meaning repudiation of arms reduction agreements and pledges, and reconstruction of a larger nuclear arsenal.
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From page 45... ...
The Risks of Breakdown The risks of theft of nuclear weapons or fissile materials in the former Soviet Union are serious. The Soviet Union maintained an elaborate system of security and command and control to ensure against any unauthorized seizure or use of nuclear weapons, and the Russian government is trying to maintain this system.
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From page 46... ...
Mikhailov and other responsible Russian officials have acknowledged the increasing risks of materials theft created by the current economic and social turmoil in Russia, and have suggested a variety of means to strengthen procedures to cope with the issue.~4 Guards at ~4 There are many hundreds of reports of various types of theft of nuclear materials, most of them speculative or inaccurate. (For a partial chronology, see William C
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From page 47... ...
THE ARMS REDUCTION REGIME The committee's previous study described its view of the future of nuclear weapons and nuclear arms reductions in details The existing nuclear arms reduction regime is the product of more than 30 years of effort, signifying a recognition by both the United States and the Soviet Union-continued by Russia-that cooperation in limiting military threats serves their security interests better than unbridled competition. Continuing to build on these elements of a cooperative regime will be an important part of U.S.
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From page 48... ...
A substantial factor limiting the likely scope of reductions is the perceived risk of breakout. Unless the warheads to be retired and other excess warhead stocks are dismantled, and the fissile materials they contain controlled, each party to reductions might fear that another party could rapidly abandon the reductions regime and reconstitute its arsenal.
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From page 49... ...
As noted in Chapter 1, the primary technical barrier to nuclear weapons capability remaining today is access to fissile materials. Policies for the management and disposition of existing plutonium must be designed to strengthen this technical barrier, and to help strengthen the agreements and institutions involved in implementing the nonproliferation regime.
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From page 50... ...
, established in 1974 and 1975, respectively, provide their membership industrial countries who strongly support the NPT-with forums to discuss policy problems and to coordinate export guidelines for technologies potentially related to nuclear weapons. In recent years, a number of steps have been taken to strengthen the re gime, partly in response to revelations concerning Iraq's extensive clandestine nuclear weapons program, which highlighted some serious weaknesses: · Export controls in a number of important countries have been strengthened and the Nuclear Suppliers Group has tightened its export guidelines.
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From page 51... ...
Sustained diplomatic effort to build support for these new missions will be required. Equally important, to maintain a strengthened safeguards effort, or to participate in monitoring fissile materials released from nuclear weapons programs, the IAEA will need greater resources.
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From page 52... ...
CIVILIAN PLUTONIUM PROGRAMS Management and disposition of excess weapons plutonium will take place in a context in which large quantities of separated plutonium are being produced, stored, and used for civilian nuclear fuel as well.~5 Currently, excess stocks of separated civilian plutonium are building up in parallel with the excess stocks of weapons plutonium resulting from weapons dismantlement. The basic elements of the civilian plutonium cycle are reprocessing, to separate plutonium from spent reactor fuel; fuel fabrication, to turn that pluto nium into fresh reactor fuel; and recycling, the use of plutonium in reactors.
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From page 53... ...
Today's civilian plutonium programs in the advanced industrial countries result from decisions made in the 1970s, when it was believed that energy demand would increase much more rapidly than it has, that nuclear power would supply a larger fraction of that energy than it has, and that resources of uranium were far more limited than they have since proved to be.28 Thus, it was believed that for a secure energy future, it would be essential to move quite rapidly to a plutonium fuel cycle, in which reactors would turn uranium-238 (U-238, which accounts for more than 99 percent of natural uranium) into plutonium, which could be used as a fuel, thereby extending uranium reserves by as much as a factor of 1,000.29 The means to do this was the "breeder" reactor so-called because by turning U-238 into plutonium it would produce more fuel than it consumed-combined with reprocessing and reuse of the resulting plutonium.
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From page 54... ...
are going forward in several countnes. At the same time, proliferation concerns and the currently unfavorable economics of plutonium use have led some nations, notably the United States, to promote postponing or abandoning reprocessing and the plutonium fuel cycle in favor of direct disposal of spent fuel.30 On September 27, 1993, the Clinton administration announced a nonproliferation initiative which makes clear that while the United States will not interfere with reprocessing in Japan and Europe, "the United States does not encourage the civil use of plutonium and, accordingly, does not itself engage in plutonium reprocessing for either nuclear power or nuclear explosive purposes." The initiative called for an exploration of "means to limit the stockpiling of plutonium from civil nuclear programs."3i Nevertheless, the vision of a plutonium fuel cycle remains deeply held by many in Europe, Russia, and Japan.
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From page 55... ...
.33 Therefore containment and surveillance-efforts to ensure that fissile materials do not leave certain areas, or the facility as a whole, undetected are also an important factor in both national and international safeguards. International safeguards have somewhat different purposes and objectives.
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From page 56... ...
facilities, since there is little risk that a nation that already possesses thousands of nuclear weapons would divert additional nuclear material from its civilian nuclear fuel cycle. Russia, by contrast, has opened only a handful of facilities to IAEA safeguards, even in principle.
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From page 57... ...
; and ~FCIRC 254, "Communications Received from Certain Member States Regarding Guidelines for Be Export of Nuclear Material, Equipment, or Technology," February 1978 (export guidelines including physical protection)
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From page 58... ...
Since states with significant nuclear programs generally have spent fuel on their territories, only states without significant nuclear programs or subnational groups would pose plausible threats to steal spent fuel. Neither the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials nor IAEA recommendations require much more for such materials than placing them within a fenced area to which access is controlled.
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From page 59... ...
In summary, current standards for safeguards and physical protection for civilian plutonium vary widely, and are considerably less stringent than those applied to nuclear weapons and plutonium in military stocks. Varying and lower standards may be justified in the case of spent fuel for the first decades outside the reactor, when its high radioactivity makes it difficult to steal or divert, but they are not justified in the case of separated civilian plutonium or HEU.
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