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Proposed Halt to Enrichment, Reprocessing Questioned By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Participants at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conference yesterday resisted calls for discouraging nuclear proliferation through a temporary worldwide halt to uranium enrichment and reprocessing (see GSN, June 22). In a detailed panel discussion on how to limit access to sensitive aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, experts and officials largely endorsed placing new constraints on the transfer of uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technologies while creating international facilities for producing nuclear fuel and managing the fuel when spent. The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency are among those that have expressed support for such measures. Several panelists and attendees balked, however, at the Carnegie Endowment’s suggestion in a new report that countries initiate a multiyear “pause” in production of weapon-usable uranium and plutonium for nuclear energy purposes (see GSN, June 18). “It’s basically the wrong thing for the right reason,” said Senior Vice President Philip Sewell of USEC, the sole U.S. firm selling enriched uranium for nuclear power plants. Carnegie Endowment nonproliferation experts wrote in the report that “nuclear-capable states” should temporarily shut down facilities that can produce highly enriched uranium or weapon-usable plutonium. “There are sufficient stocks of enriched uranium to fuel existing nuclear reactors for several years,” according to the report. The report’s authors said Russian and U.S. stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU) could be blended down to a less proliferation-sensitive low-enriched form to continue supplying uranium-based energy facilities, making a uranium-enrichment moratorium “feasible for at least three to five years, if not more.” Fuel supply to plutonium-based facilities, they said, could continue for “several decades” using existing stocks of separated plutonium. The think-tank said the move would be designed to buy time for the development of “proliferation-resistant” technology, adding “the demand for LEU fuel is established and will require resumed production” ― possibly in international facilities ― “after the recommended pause.” The report also includes a call for broadening the stalled Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty to prohibit production of weapon-usable fissile material for any purpose, instead of just material intended for use in weapons (see GSN, Feb. 26). During yesterday’s discussion, some participants said the proposals raise concerns about the future of nuclear power and that the moratorium could backfire by encouraging proliferation. “No enrichment facility has ever been stopped and then restarted,” said Sewell, predicting “anxiety” about the electricity supply that could ultimately encourage proliferation. Instead, he said, countries should develop international guidelines that commercial suppliers would implement. Former U.S. National Security Council nonproliferation chief Daniel Poneman expressed concern about excessive government interference in nuclear energy, calling the Carnegie proposals at times too “dirigistes.” “In some points, it puts nuclear energy and the nuclear-energy industry and nonproliferation at odds,” said Poneman of the approach. Instead, he said, policy-makers should seek “some consensual win-win formula.” International Atomic Energy Agency verification and security policy coordinator Tariq Rauf endorsed government-business cooperation in nonproliferation reform but also echoed parts of the Carnegie report. Rauf pointed to enriched uranium resulting from disarmament as a potential major source of reactor fuel. He did not comment directly on the production-moratorium proposal. IAEA, Nuclear Suppliers Seek Consensus on ReformsA new IAEA expert group on multinationalizing the fuel cycle and the 40-country Nuclear Suppliers Group are expected to grapple with fuel-cycle reforms in coming discussions. The expert group is to issue a report in March 2005, Rauf said, for eventual submission later that year as a working paper to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference. “What we need in this expert group that the director general has appointed is new thinking for new times … an approach that transcends national sovereignty when it comes to the nuclear fuel cycle,” Rauf said. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has since last year proposed a package of reforms that Rauf said have at times been misunderstood. Rauf said ElBaradei’s proposal for multinational fuel-cycle control would not, as some have feared, provide a vehicle for countries without sensitive nuclear technologies to obtain them. The director general is advocating only guaranteeing countries a supply of nuclear fuel and arranging for them to dispose of spent fuel abroad. The top nuclear-energy official in the U.S. State Department Nonproliferation Bureau, Richard Stratford, said the Nuclear Suppliers Group is moving toward measures such as the denial of nuclear supply to countries without Additional Protocols to their IAEA safeguards agreements, the denial of enrichment and reprocessing technology to all countries that do not yet have such capabilities and guarantees of supply to countries that forgo enrichment and reprocessing. Stratford, who sits on the IAEA expert panel, said the suppliers group is also considering linking supply to good standing with the U.N. agency. A finding by the IAEA Board of Governors that a country is in noncompliance with its nuclear obligations, Stratford said, would automatically trigger a Nuclear Suppliers Group supply cutoff under the proposal. When the Nuclear Suppliers Group next meets in November, it should seek to “operationalize the words of the Sea Island summit statement,” Stratford said, referring to a nonproliferation action plan approved this month by the Group of Eight at a meeting in the U.S. state of Georgia (see GSN, June 10). The countries pledged in the action plan to seek “new measures so that sensitive nuclear items with proliferation potential will not be exported to states that may seek to use them for weapons purposes or allow them to fall into terrorist hands.” Stratford opposed allowing countries’ right to nuclear energy under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to impede fuel-cycle reforms. Since it is not possible to “rewrite the NPT” to restrict fuel-cycle activities to international facilities, he said, what is needed is “a new norm that says, ‘No, you don’t get to do that, regardless of Article IV of the NPT.” Progress toward international spent-fuel management could be slower than in other areas, panelists said. Spent fuel is the “third rail” of reform, said Stratford, since “nobody wants the finger pointed at them as the country that’s going to have to take someone else’s waste.” Poneman advocated Russia as the location for a center for “back-end” fuel-cycle activities involving materials from around the world. “Spent fuel is the great unresolved problem … but if we are to have nuclear energy at all, anywhere, it’s got to be solved,” he said.
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