Overview
	Technical Background
	The Threat
	Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
	Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
	Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
	Monitoring Stockpiles
Ending Further Production   Plutonium Production Reactor Shutdown   Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty
	Reducing Stockpiles

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

Introduction: Ending Further Production of Nuclear Materials

At the same time, ending production would limit the quantity of weapons-usable nuclear material that had to be secured from theft. In addition, the bulk processing involved in large-scale production of nuclear material represents a point in the nuclear material life-cycle where the material is particularly vulnerable to covert insider theft, as it is difficult to account for every kilogram of material when tons of it are being processed and a ban on production of fissile material for weapons could shut down this bulk processing or at least ensure that whatever continued was under stringent international verification.

With the Cold War over, both the United States and Russia have far more nuclear material than they need for military purposes, and have declared hundreds of tons of material excess to their military needs. Nevertheless, Russia continues to produce over a ton of weapons plutonium every year, not because the plutonium is needed, but because the reactors that produce it provide heat and power for tens of thousands of people in the Siberian towns of Seversk (formerly Tomsk-7) and Zheleznogorsk (formerly Krasnoyarsk-26). The joint U.S.-Russian effort to end this production by providing fossil fuel replacement sources of heat and power is proceeding slowly. At the same time, some other states continue to produce plutonium and HEU for weapons, and virtually no progress is being made toward a verifiable multilateral treaty to end such production. Moreover, nearly 20 tons of reactor-grade but weapons-usable plutonium are separated from spent fuel every year as part of the civilian fuel cycle.

There are other key stockpiles whose production is important, but for which there are no substantial production-limiting initiatives underway, and hence are not discussed in separate web pages in this web section:

Nuclear warheads. Since the end of the Cold War, both the United States and Russia have been dismantling far more warheads than they have been assembling. But neither can stop assembling warheads entirely, because when components wear out, warheads have to be disassembled, the faulty parts replaced, and the warheads reassembled again. The most that could be hoped for at present would be a political commitment that each year the number dismantled would be larger than the number assembled, so that the trend was always down.

Civil plutonium. Currently, commercial reprocessing plants in Britain, France, and Russia separate some 20 tons of civilian plutonium from spent fuel each year.[3] Only a fraction of this amount is used as civilian reactor fuel each year (because of both limitations on available capacity to fabricate plutonium into fuel and political limitations on the number of reactors able to burn plutonium fuel). Hence, there is now well over 200 tons of separated plutonium in civilian stockpiles around the world, and this figure has been increasing at some 15 tons of plutonium each year.[4] The total will soon exceed the total amount of weapons plutonium in all the world's nuclear arsenals. Despite the planned opening of a large new reprocessing plant in Japan in 2005, the annual increase in world stockpiles of civilian separated plutonium is expected to slow significantly in the future, as some existing reprocessing contracts are completed, and reactors continue to burn plutonium fuel.

Although this civil plutonium is largely "reactor-grade," it is all weapons-usable: any state or subnational group that is able to make a nuclear bomb from weapons-grade plutonium is also likely to be able to make one from reactor-grade plutonium.[5] In Britain, France, and non-nuclear-weapon states such as Japan and Germany, this material is under international safeguards, and is therefore accounted for to international standards but these safeguards are designed only to detect whether the host state might be diverting civilian material for military purposes, not to prevent theft. Most of this material is well secured, but standards vary widely from one country to the next. In Japan, for example, armed guards were not required for plutonium facilities until after the attacks of September 11.

This reprocessing continues not because there is any economic rationale for it, or because any of the utilities whose fuel is being reprocessed actually has any need for separated plutonium, but because of the inertia of plants, contracts, and fuel cycle plans made long ago. In addition, in Japan and France particularly, plutonium recycling is seen as an important part of energy security though Japan's recent experience with having its entire plutonium program called into question by the public reaction to accidents and falsification of safety data in Japan's nuclear program, and falsification of data in the fabrication of plutonium fuel in Britain, suggests that plutonium fuel may not be a route to security from events outside the control of the national government. While some in the nuclear industry have interpreted the Bush administration's energy policy as indicating a reversal of the Clinton administration's policy of not encouraging reprocessing, both that document and subsequent policy statements make clear that the Bush administration only supports development of new, more proliferation-resistant approaches to nuclear fuel recycling, and continues to oppose "accumulation of separated plutonium" the inevitable result of current commercial reprocessing technologies.[6]

In the aftermath of September 11, the risk-benefit balance for reprocessing has tilted further against the practice: whatever safeguards and security measures are in place, a world in which tens of tons of plutonium are being separated, processed, fabricated, and shipped to dozens of locations around the world every year is a world that poses significant risks above and beyond those of a world in which that is not occurring. Hence, we believe that there should be a phased-in moratorium on current approaches to reprocessing and recycling plutonium. Nuclear powers future will be best assured by making it as cheap, as safe, as secure, as proliferation-resistant, as simple, and as uncontroversial as possible and current reprocessing and recycling technologies point in the wrong direction on every count.[7] We are under no illusions, however, that such a moratorium is likely, given the very large commercial investments and interests in continuing on the present course.

Whatever approach is taken to reprocessing, it would make sense for all the relevant states to cooperate to ensure that all stocks of separated plutonium are secured and accounted for to stringent standards. This should be a central component of the G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, initiated in June 2002. Nevertheless, this effort, too, will be politically sensitive and challenging, even though nearly all of the relevant players are close allies of the United States, because many of these states see U.S. concerns over security and accounting for separated plutonium as a thinly veiled attack on their reprocessing policies.

U.S. and Russian HEU. In the case of HEU, no verification is in place to confirm the statements that have been made by the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China that they are not producing HEU for nuclear weapons. It would be desirable to put at least interim transparency measures in place to confirm that more HEU is not being produced particularly in the case of the United States and Russia, whose production capacities are much larger, and who are engaged in large-scale efforts to reduce excess HEU stockpiles whose credibility could be seriously undermined by any suggestions that more HEU was being produced just to be blended down. Putting such transparency measures in place would be a difficult challenge, given the secrecy that has surrounded Russia's enrichment program (now largely focused on efforts to protect proprietary commercial information on production, as well as centrifuge design information). Nevertheless, technology is available that could make it possible to implement such monitoring with a minimum of intrusiveness[8] (such as machines capable of continuously monitoring enrichment levels in pipes, already used for transparency for the HEU Purchase agreement), and the cost of such monitoring would be modest. To give Russia an incentive to agree to such measures, this could be presented as part of a larger deal that included, for example, a U.S. or international purchase of additional HEU.

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Written by Matthew Bunn.
Last updated by Anthony Wier on August 1, 2006.

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The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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