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Abstract
The authors propose five principles for addressing the major deficiencies of the current treaty-based approach to nonproliferation. These involve: effectively closing the door to withdrawals from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); defining which nuclear technologies fall within the NPT's “inalienable right” provision, so as to maintain a reasonable safety margin against possible military application; expansion of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections to include greater readiness to use its “special” inspection authority; creation of an NPT enforcement regime, to include a secretariat; and universalizing the NPT so as to apply to all states, while creating a path for current non-parties to come into compliance. There is no illusion here about the prospects for the adoption of this approach. At a minimum, the world needs to be frank about the gap between nuclear programs and current nonproliferation protection. Encouragement of greater use of nuclear power should be predicated on closing that gap.
Notes
1. The American Presidency Project, “John F. Kennedy—The President's News Conference, March 21, 1963,” <www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid = 9124>.
2. For an example from the nuclear industry, see Steve Kidd, “Nuclear Proliferation Risk—Is It Vastly Overrated?” Nuclear Engineering International, July 23, 2010, <www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode = 2056931>. Kidd, who works for the World Nuclear Association, argues that “It is likely that more countries will foolishly choose to acquire nuclear weapons. If they are really determined to do so, there is little really that the world can do to prevent them—the main effort has to be in dissuading them from this course of action. How many countries will have nuclear weapons by 2030 is hard to say, but there could well be a total of 15 by then.” Kidd then cites the work of Ohio State University Professor John Muller. Mueller argues that this increase, in itself, will neither prevent nor cause wars, but will impose “substantial costs on the countries concerned.”
3. For more on these points, see the thinking of François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “How Bad Would the Further Spread of Nuclear Weapons Be?” in Henry Sokolski, ed., Nuclear Nonproliferation: Moving Beyond Pretense (Arlington, VA: The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, 2012), pp. 11–23, <www.npolicy.org/userfiles/image/oving%20Beyond%20Pretense%20Chapter%201.pdf>.
4. See Henry Kissinger, Foreword, in Trilateral Commission, Nuclear Proliferation: Risk and Responsibility, 2006, p. v, <www.scribd.com/doc/30082942/60-Nuclear-Proliferation-Risk-and-Responsibility-2006>.
5. See, Kidd, “Nuclear Proliferation Risk,” and chapter seven, “Assessing the Proliferation Risks of Civilian Nuclear Programs,” in International Institute for Strategic Studies Nuclear Programmes in the Middle East: In the shadow of Iran (London, UK: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2008), pp. 141–50, <www.iiss.org/en/publications/strategic%20dossiers/issues/nuclear-programmes-in-the-middle-east--in-the-shadow-of-iran-5993/me-09-chapter-07-proliferation-8294>.
6. Kissinger, Foreword, Nuclear Proliferation: Risk and Responsibility, p. vi.
7. See “Text of the Address Delivered by the President of the United States before the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City, “ December 8, 1953, <www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/atoms_for_peace/Binder13.pdf>.
8. Economics and safety are tied together. The “regulatory costs” that critics of the regulatory systems complain about are mainly the costs of providing adequate safety. There is no getting around the fact that nuclear power is intrinsically dangerous and that it takes great care in design, construction, and operation to keep it within safe bounds, all of which is expensive. The safety of light water reactors (LWRs) is difficult to assess, as the technology is especially complex. The oxide fuel melts in hours if cooling stops. In the end, it may not prove to be the best power reactor choice. A struggle is now underway in Japan, with the newly empowered safety regulators imposing conditions that the industry claims will make it too expensive to restart Japan's reactors. As to alternatives to current designs, the US Department of Energy and industry are touting small modular reactors (SMRs), basically ordinary reactors in smaller sizes. If they are small enough, their nuclear systems could be assembled in a factory—hence modular. Being smaller, SMRs would cost less to build than their larger cousins but are unlikely to produce electricity that would cost less per kilowatt. One has to wonder, if smaller reactors are such a good idea, why they weren't proposed earlier. Gaining economies of scale through factory construction would only work if very large numbers were sold, for which there is little prospect. There are efforts to breathe life into other formerly rejected designs such as the Integrated Fast Reactor, but they are unlikely to get off the ground. What is needed for safety is a reactor whose fuel won't melt in an accident. To assure significant proliferation resistance and economic competitiveness, meeting other additional, yet-to-be-achieved cost and technical attributes would also be desirable.
9. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama at Hankuk University,” March 26, 2012, <www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/26/remarks-president-obama-hankuk-university>. Meanwhile, President Obama's former energy secretary, Steven Chu, consistently championed this argument in support of loan guarantees for nuclear power plant construction. Chu wrote on his personal Facebook page: “If we want to make a serious dent in carbon dioxide emissions—not to mention having cleaner air and cleaner water—then nuclear power has to be on the table.” See Steven Chu, “Why We Need More Nuclear Power,” Facebook, February 22, 2010, <www.facebook.com/notes/steven-chu/why-we-need-more-nuclear-power/336162546856>.
10. In his 2009 Prague speech, President Obama said: “We must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change, and to advance peace opportunity for all people.” Meanwhile, his remarks at Hankuk University emphasized “a renewed commitment to harnessing the power of the atom not for war, but for peaceful purposes.” President Obama also praised the Koreans for showing “the progress and prosperity that can be achieved when nations embrace peaceful nuclear energy,” thus glorifying the role of nuclear power in promoting economic development. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama,” Prague, April 5, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered>.
11. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, “Introductory Statement to Board of Governors,” September 10, 2012, Vienna, <www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2012/amsp2012n012.html>. At this gathering, Director General Amano noted that “it remains clear from the Agency's latest projections that nuclear power will remain an important option for many countries, despite the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Our new low projection is for nuclear power capacity to grow by nearly 25 percent from current levels to 456 gigawatts by 2030. Our high projection is 740 gigawatts, which is twice current levels.” (Emphasis in original.)
12. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address,” January 27, 2010, <www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-state-union-address>.
13. John Deutch and Ernest J. Moniz, co-chairs, et al, The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT 2003), <http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-full.pdf>. The study analyzes a future of 1,000 gigawatts of nuclear power in 2050 on grounds that “such a deployment would avoid … about 25% of the increment in carbon emissions otherwise expected in a business-as-usual scenario.” (p. xi) For additional analysis, see Sharon Squassoni, “The Realities of Nuclear Expansion,” prepared statement for the House of Representatives Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, 109th Cong, 1st. sess., March 12, 2008, <http://carnegieendowment.org/files/squassoni_testimony_20080312.pdf>.
14. Duke Energy's announced closing of its Crystal River, Florida, nuclear power plant in view of cheaper gas power is a straw in the wind, not only for future US plants but also for existing ones. Modern “fracking” extraction methods for natural gas also pose environmental problems that have to be balanced against the advantages of using this fuel, but the point is that we have a choice and are not locked into depending on nuclear power. On these points, see Reuters, “Exelon Cuts Nuclear Expansion Projects Amid Low Natgas Prices”, February 7, 2013, <http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N0B76ZW20130207?irpc = 932>; Associated Press, “Duke Energy to Close Troubled Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant,” February 5, 2013, <www.wtsp.com/news/topstories/article/296225/250/Crystal-River-nuke-plant-to-close>; and Rebecca Smith, “Can Gas Undo Nuclear Power?” Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2013, <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323644904578272111885235812.html>.
15. For an excellent review of the main points of contention within the NPT regime and the issues that have made reform so difficult, see Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Collisions: Discord, Reform & the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2012), <www.amacad.org/pdfs/nonproliferation.pdf>.
16. At the 2012 Preparatory Committee for the 2015 NPT Review Conference, US Ambassador Susan F. Burk, the Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation, stated: “It is imperative, therefore, that all NPT Parties recommit themselves to ensuring the health and vitality of this essential international agreement by advancing each of the Treaty's three pillars together. The Treaty and the regime cannot thrive unless each pillar thrives. All Parties must accept responsibility for taking appropriate steps to contribute to the achievement of each of the Treaty's fundamental objectives, whether collectively or individually.” (Emphasis added.) Statement by Ambassador Susan F. Burk, Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation, First Session of the Preparatory Committee, As Prepared, April 30, 2012, <http://vienna.usmission.gov/43014.html>. The problem here is one of emphasis. The NPT, of course, includes these other elements, which were added as conditions for the acceptance of the first, but the treaty is fundamentally about nonproliferation. The IAEA goes even further in promoting the notion that nonproliferation is not the key goal of the NPT. Vilmos Cserveny, assistant director general for external relations and policy coordination, stated in 2009, “The NPT consists of three equally important pillars—nuclear non-proliferation; peaceful nuclear cooperation; and nuclear disarmament—and the premise that progress in any one pillar strengthens the integrity of the whole.” (Emphasis added.) He went on to say the IAEA's work is based on these three pillars. See IAEA, “Road to Disarmament: IAEA safeguards: A fundamental pillar of the NPT regime,” excerpt from Vilmos Cserveny's statement at the General Debate of the NPT Preparatory Committee, May 4, 2009, <www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull511/51103570609.html>.
17. Barack Obama, “Statement by President Obama on the 40th Anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” March 5, 2010, <www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-obama-40th-anniversary-nuclear-nonproliferation-treaty>.
18. An arguable exception is President Gerald Ford's 1976 nuclear policy statement in which he proposed reliance on a “once-through” fuel cycle, thus eliminating reliance on plutonium until there was adequate international control to cope with proliferation risks. At that time, misuse of plutonium was seen as the main proliferation worry. HEU was not yet a principal concern. Unfortunately the international nuclear community, with considerable assistance from our own nuclear bureaucracy, rejected this once-through standard because it seemed to bar the way to the Holy Grail of nuclear power—the plutonium-fueled fast breeder. In practice, commercial reprocessing required enormous subsidies. Although the United States has the right to control the reprocessing of nuclear fuel covered by agreements for cooperation (except with Euratom), it has since given blanket approval to Japan and, more recently, India. On the occasion of signing the 2006 US-India nuclear agreement, President George W. Bush said, “I don't see how you can advocate nuclear power, in order to take the pressure off of our own economy, for example, without advocating technological development of reprocessing, because reprocessing will not only—reprocessing is going to help with the environmental concerns with nuclear power. It will make there—to put it bluntly, there will be less material to dispose.” George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh, “Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India,” New Delhi, India, March 2, 2006, <http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/sca/rls/rm/2006/62426.htm>. The issue of reprocessing approvals is now coming to a head in the renegotiation of the nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea. The Koreans, of course, want to be treated on par with the Japanese and it will be difficult to refuse them. This is the natural consequence of a compartmentalized approach to proliferation policy as a sequence of special cases, and not looking ahead at the obvious consequences. We can only climb back up this slippery slope by applying rules in a consistent and fair manner.
19. IAEA, “The Structure And Content Of Agreements Between The Agency And States Required In Connection With The Treaty On The Non-Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons,” INFCIRC/153 (Corrected), June 1972, para. 26, <www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc153.pdf>: “The Agreement should provide for it to remain in force as long as the State is party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”
20. Department of State, Office of the Spokesperson, “Third P-5 conference: Implementing the NPT, a joint statement issued by China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States,” June 27-29, 2012, Washington, DC, <www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/06/194292.htm>. This statement included the following: “As a further follow-up to the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the P5 shared their views on how to discourage abuse of the NPT withdrawal provision (Article X), and how to respond to notifications made consistent with the provisions of that article. The discussion included modalities under which NPT States Party could respond collectively and individually to a notification of withdrawal, including through arrangements regarding the disposition of equipment and materials acquired or derived under safeguards during NPT membership. The P5 agreed that states remain responsible under international law for violations of the Treaty committed prior to withdrawal.” It would have been more supportive of the NPT if the statement said such withdrawal while in violation was invalid.
21. Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on North Korean Announcement of Nuclear Test,” February 12, 2013, <www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/statement-president-north-korean-announcement-nuclear-test>.
22. Steve Herman, “Rising Voices in S. Korea, Japan Advocate Nuclear Weapons,” Voice of America, February 15, 2013, <www.voanews.com/content/rising-voices-in-south-korea-japan-advocate-nuclear-weapons/1604309.html>, and Howard LaFranchi, “N. Korea Nuclear Test: Will It Spoil Obama's Disarmament Plans?” Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2013, <www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0215/N.-Korea-nuclear-test-Will-it-spoil-Obama-s-disarmament-plans>.
23. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were still a good many power reactors using natural uranium fuel. Enrichment was an essential part of the fuel cycle for programs based on US-type light water reactors (LWRs), both pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs), which were gaining in popularity. The United States withheld enrichment data to protect the effective enrichment monopoly it had in the West because of the huge capacity it had built up to supply HEU for weapons. At the same time, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) permitted the export of research reactors fueled with HEU and large quantities of HEU to fuel them. Until the late 1960s, the AEC did not even bother to verify the amounts shipped abroad by private firms. By 1996, the United States had exported more than 25 tons of HEU. On this point, see Nuclear Threat Initiative, “Civilian HEU: United States,” November 15, 2012, <www.nti.org/analysis/articles/civilian-heu-united-states/>.
24. Aside from military explosive and naval propulsion applications, highly enriched uranium fuel is used principally in research reactors. These can be fueled with lower enrichment fuels albeit with some diminution in performance at higher power reactors. On the whole, the operators of these reactors, including those at universities, have dragged their feet about converting to lower enrichment fuel. Two prominent examples are the research reactors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Munich Technical University, which, despite US and German government policy to convert such reactors, have managed to secure delay after delay. About fifty research reactors around the world have converted to lower enrichment fuel as a result of three decades of international efforts (launched by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to reduce HEU use, but this has resulted in only about a one-quarter reduction in annual HEU use by research reactors, which previously was about a ton per year. See Ole Reistad and Styrkaar Hustveit ”HEU Fuel Cycle Inventories and Progress On Global Minimization,” Nonproliferation Review 15 (July 2008), pp. 265-87, <www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10736700802117312>. Reducing civilian HEU use to zero must be an important component of any nonproliferation policy.
25. IAEA, “The Structure And Content Of Agreements Between The Agency And States Required In Connection With The Treaty On The Non-Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons,” INFCIRC/153, para. 28: “…the objective of safeguards is the timely detection of diversion of significant quantities of nuclear material from peaceful nuclear activities to the manufacture of nuclear weapons or of other nuclear explosive devices or for purposes unknown, and deterrence of such diversion by the risk of early detection.”
26. Department of Energy, Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Strategic Plan, January 2007, p. 3-10, <www.fas.org/programs/ssp/_docs/GNEPStratPlanJan07.pdf>. It is often forgotten, even by the Department of Energy (DOE), that the sophisticated reprocessing schemes proposed under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership —schemes that, in principle, always kept plutonium mixed with other materials—were intended as anti-terrorism rather than nonproliferation measures. The program's strategic plan, however, acknowledged that there was no way to make reprocessing proliferation-proof.
27. Even the reprocessing vendors don't make a resource case for plutonium. Mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for LWRs costs several times what uranium fuel costs. In fact, recycling in LWRs never made any economic sense. It has been forgotten that the whole notion of thermal recycle was invented in the 1970s because the US Atomic Energy Commission's fast breeder reactor project was falling behind and the agency needed a rationale for keeping its reprocessing efforts going “until the breeder caught up.” It was never expected to be economical. By the time the breeder project collapsed, MOX acquired its own support group and took on a life of its own, leaping from one rationale to another.
28. When nuclear power programs got underway, it was generally believed that as uranium was scarce and that LWRs would be a transitional technology that produced enough plutonium to fuel the ultimate in nuclear power plants, the fast breeders (so-called because they used fast neutrons and produced more plutonium in a surrounding uranium “blanket” than they consumed in the core). In practice, prototype fast breeders turned out to have problems and be too expensive to pursue. The George W. Bush administration tried to revive the concept in the form of fast “burners,” plutonium-fueled reactors without the surrounding blanket, but this proved impractical as well.
29. In 2000, the DOE signed an agreement with Russia committing each state to dispose of 34 metric tons of “surplus” weapons plutonium by recycling it into reactor fuel. More than a decade later, the program has become a boondoggle. DOE's contractor, Shaw Areva MOX Services, is constructing a Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, in principle to use weapon-grade plutonium to produce power reactor fuel that, once heavily irradiated in a commercial power reactor, would contain plutonium that was less useful for weapons. But it now appears that DOE's real purpose is to use the rubric of arms control to get plutonium recycling underway. The plant is one of the largest construction projects in the southeastern United States. Its costs have reportedly soared to $7 billion. Furthermore, the facility has no customers lined up for the MOX fuel it is supposed to produce. This has attracted the attention of federal budget cutters but doesn't seem to have diminished the project's appeal for the DOE. See Sammy Fretwell, “Critics fear $7 billion SRS boondoggle,” State, January 27, 2013, <www.thestate.com/2013/01/27/2606562/critics-fear-7-billion-srs-boondoggle.html>. See also Pam Radtke Russell, “Budget Cutters Eye Nuclear Reprocessing Plant,” Roll Call, February 5, 2013, <www.taxpayer.net/media-center/article/budget-cutters-eye-nuclear-reprocessing-plant>: “It isn't expected to be completed by its 2016 target date, and the Energy Department has found little interest from commercial power plant operators in buying the fuel, which would require costly reactor modifications. … [Former Rep. David L.] Hobson, [Republican of Ohio] described the project as a jobs program for South Carolina. In addition to the 2,600 employees now working on it, the completed facility will require permanent workers to operate it for up to two decades.”
30. “I have concluded that the reprocessing and recycling of plutonium should not proceed unless there is sound reason to conclude that the world community can effectively overcome the associated risks of proliferation.” President Gerald Ford, “Statement on Nuclear Policy,” October 28, 1976, <www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid = 6561>. There is also a precedent for banning an entire technology in the context of the NPT—so-called “peaceful nuclear explosives” were read out of the NPT even though there is an entire NPT article (Article V) devoted to them. On this point, see Robert Zarate, “The NPT, IAEA Safeguards and Peaceful Nuclear Energy: An ‘Inalienable Right’ but Precisely to What?” in Henry Sokolski, ed., Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2008), pp. 252-55, available at <www.npolicy.org/userfiles/image/Peaceful%20Nuclear%20Energy,%20an%20Inalienable%20Right%20to%20What_pdf.pdf>.
31. For a discussion on the program's technical flaws, see Committee on Review of DOE's Nuclear Energy Research and Development Program, “A Minority Opinion: Dissenting Statement of Gilinsky and Macfarlane,” in Review of DOE's Nuclear Energy Research and Development Program (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008), pp. 73-76, <www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id = 11998&page = 73>.
32. See Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama at Hankuk University.” DOE undoubtedly inserted the seemingly innocuous words into the speech. To the nuclear bureaucracies around the world, they spell plutonium recycle.
33. See Elaine M. Grossman, “U.S. May Land Key Asian Nuclear Trade Deals in 2013,” Global Security Newswire, January 11, 2013, <www.nti.org/gsn/article/us-could-secure-key-asian-nuclear-trade-deals-2013/>; Elaine M. Grossman, “Obama Team Reveals Nuclear Trade, Nonproliferation Decision on Capitol Hill,” Global Security Newswire, January 11, 2012, <www.nti.org/gsn/article/obama-team-reveals-nuclear-trade-nonproliferation-decision-capitol-hill/>, and Elaine M. Grossman, “U.S. Envoy Takes Issue with Nonproliferation Lingo for Nuclear Trade Pacts,” Global Security Newswire, August 10, 2012, <www.nti.org/gsn/article/us-envoy-takes-issue-nonproliferation-lingo-nuclear-trade-pacts/>.
34. Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, and the United States are in the first category and South Africa and Australia (and probably Israel) are in the second. See Arjun Makhijani, Lois Chalmers, and Brice Smith, “Uranium Enrichment: Just Plain Facts to Fuel an Informed Debate on Nuclear Proliferation and Nuclear Power,” prepared by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research for the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, October 15, 2004, <http://ieer.org/resource/nuclear-power/uranium-enrichment/>.
35. It is useful to keep in mind the verdict of the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal Report: “A system of inspection superimposed on an otherwise uncontrolled exploitation of atomic energy by national governments will not be an adequate safeguard. … If nations or their citizens carry on intrinsically dangerous [nuclear] activities it seems to us that the chances for safeguarding the future are hopeless.” In other words, the allowed activities must be restricted to those that can be safeguarded, in the dictionary sense, by inspection. See Report on International Control of Atomic Energy (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, March 16, 1946), pp. 21-22, <www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.Acheson-Lilienthal.html>.
36. See IAEA, “Model Protocol Additional to The Agreement(s) Between State(s) And The International Atomic Energy Agency For The Application Of Safeguards,” INFCIRC/540 (Corrected), September 1997, <www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/1997/infcirc540c.pdf>.
37. Clandestine facilities are an obvious concern in North Korea and Iran. Iran failed to notify the IAEA of a planned enrichment facility, as it had promised to do in 2003. It later retreated from this promise. Whether this amounts to a violation of Iran's obligations or a deficiency in the IAEA system depends on legal issues that remain unclear. The IAEA has not released relevant documents and correspondence. See IAEA, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of United Nations Security Council Resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Resolution adopted by the Board of Governors on September 13, 2012, <www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2012/gov2012-50.pdf>.
38. For a detailed analysis of this proposition, see Victor Gilinsky, Marvin Miller, and Harmon Hubbard, “A Fresh Examination of the Proliferation Dangers of Light Water Reactors,” Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, October 22, 2004, <www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid = 172&rt = &key= fresh examination of the proliferation dangers &sec = article&author = >. It's worth keeping in mind that many states’ view of the fuel cycle is still tied to the use of LWRs with oxide fuel. It isn't at all clear—for both safety and proliferation reasons and perhaps economic reasons, as well—that this is best way to extract nuclear energy. Other new types of reactors with different fuels, especially fuels that don't melt as easily, may moot many of the issues that concern us today, possibly including reprocessing.
39. See D.L. Ferguson to F.L Culler, “Simple Quick Reprocessing Plant,” Inter-Laboratory correspondence, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, August 30, 1977, <www.npolicy.org/article_file/Simple_Quick_Processing_Plant_Culler.pdf>.
40. North Korea refused to allow the special inspection. In 1992, Romania invited a special inspection. See John Carlson and Russell Leslie, “Special Inspections Revisited,” paper at Institute for Nuclear Materials Management 2005 symposium, Phoenix, Arizona, July 2005, <www.dfat.gov.au/asno/publications/inmm2005_special_inspections.pdf>. Carlson and Leslie write, “While it is obvious that special inspections cannot become regular occurrences, and cannot substitute for complementary access, it can be questioned whether the very high threshold assumed in the 1992 Board deliberations is consistent with contemporary expectations for the safeguards system and for the level of cooperation that states extend to the Agency.” (Emphasis in original.)
41. Pierre Goldschmidt, “Looking Beyond Iran and North Korea for Safeguarding the Foundations of Nuclear Nonproliferation,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 3, 2011, <http://carnegieendowment.org/2011/11/03/looking-beyond-iran-and-north-korea-for-safeguarding-foundations-of-nuclear-nonproliferation/8ktn>.
42. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama.”
43. Statement by Ambassador Susan F. Burk, First Session of the Preparatory Committee.
44. See Elliott Abrams, “Bombing the Syrian Reactor: the Untold Story,” Commentary, February 2013, <www.commentarymagazine.com/article/bombing-the-syrian-reactor-the-untold-story/>. In Abrams's account, President Bush was initially inclined to bring the case before the IAEA but was persuaded to let the Israelis bomb the reactor.
45. David E. Sanger, “Obama Order Sped up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,” New York Times, June 1, 2012, <www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html>, and Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, “Stuxnet was work of U.S. and Israeli experts, officials say,” Washington Post, June 1, 2012, <www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/stuxnet-was-work-of-us-and-israeli-experts-officials-say/2012/06/01/gJQAlnEy6U_story.html>.
46. Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on North Korean Announcement of Nuclear Test.”
47. There is no possibility under the NPT to expand the number of weapon states “For the purposes of this Treaty, a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January, 1967.” Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, March 5, 1970, Article IX, para. 3.
48. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry, in response to North Korea's most recent nuclear test, emphasized the necessity of the “internationalization” of the NPT. See “Egypt Stresses Necessity of NPT Internationalization,” Egypt State Information Service, February 15, 2013, <http://allafrica.com/stories/201302170072.html>. Egypt obviously has Israel in mind here, but that doesn't detract from the idea.
49. This outlook is captured in 2008 report of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board: “We concluded that the current international climate is quite unpropitious for gaining support from non-nuclear weapon states to accept stricter measures against proliferation. … [Yet] we believe that incremental measures, rather than revolutionary or comprehensive changes, will be far more likely to succeed in the near term.” The report is from an earlier administration but it captures the sense of current approaches as well. See State Department International Security Advisory Board, “Report on Proliferation Implications of the Global Expansion of Civil Nuclear Power,” April 7, 2008, <http://2001-2009.state.gov/documents/organization/105587.pdf>.
50. See, for example, the recent report by Fred McGoldrick, Nuclear Trade Controls: Minding the Gaps (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies), January 22, 2013, <http://csis.org/publication/nuclear-trade-controls>: “Finally, the U.S. has to avoid overreach in instituting new nuclear export controls. Recent well-intentioned efforts by some in Congress and the Executive Branch to pressure other states to forswear enrichment and reprocessing capabilities could seriously damage the prospects for U.S. nuclear exports and deprive the United States of the nonproliferation influence that comes with nuclear cooperation. Some have suggested other steps that would cause similar, if not more severe, damage to U.S. influence in international nuclear affairs. Suppliers are not going to require such extreme export conditions, and most consumer states are likely to reject U.S. demands they believe deny them their rights or legitimate peaceful commercial opportunities.” McGoldrick basically proposes tidying up the nonproliferation controls, but doing nothing to upset any other states, especially developing ones. He accepts that we have to offer positive incentives if we ask them to forego “sensitive” technologies. There is no larger sense here, or in the many similar reports, that the United States could, or should try to, persuade other states of the common security advantage in agreeing to a higher level of protection against bomb making.
51. In his March 2012 South Korea speech, President Obama said, “…we're creating new fuel banks, to help countries realize the energy they seek without increasing the nuclear dangers that we fear.” See Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama at Hankuk University.”
52. See Alan S. Hanson, “Nuclear Fuel Banks: Are They a Reality?,” presentation made at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California, December 12, 2011, <www.youtube.com/watch?v = EYmT6ftCPhg>.
53. This includes a strained effort to include “dirty bombs” in the category of serious threats. Consider IAEA Director General Amano's October 2012 speech at Chatham House in which he said: “One of the key risks we face is that terrorists could detonate a so-called dirty bomb, using conventional explosives and a quantity of nuclear or other radioactive material, to contaminate a major city.” On proliferation, Amano discussed Iran and North Korea, but said nothing about tightening nonproliferation protections overall. See Yukiya Amano, “Future Prospects for Nuclear Energy,” Chatham House, October 17, 2012, <www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Meetings/Meeting%20Transcripts/171012Amano.pdf>.
54. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Horizon, April 1946, reproduced at <http://georgeorwellnovels.com/essays/politics-and-the-english-language/>.