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Monitoring Stockpiles
Highly Enriched Uranium Transparency
Status
![[ click here for larger photo ]](../../../images/cnwmphoto_heutrans1_sm.jpg) U.S. equipment monitors HEU blending in Russia. |
Today, the only formal fissile material transparency measures actually being implemented on a substantial scale are the only ones where there was a large financial incentive to reach agreement– namely, the transparency measures for the U.S.-Russian HEU Purchase Agreement.[1] HEU transparency measures are designed to provide confidence to the United States that the LEU it is purchasing comes from HEU which in turn comes from weapons, and confidence to Russia that the LEU it is selling is used only for peaceful purposes.[2] |
Under the HEU transparency arrangements as they are now agreed, the United States has the right to continuous monitoring at the point in the three Russian facilities where the HEU is actually blended to produce LEU, coupled with up to 24 weeklong "special monitoring visits" per year to the four Russian facilities that process the HEU.[3] In addition, a Transparency Monitoring Office (TMO) is maintained at one of the blending facilities, in Novouralsk, and can be staffed for up to 12 months per year.[4] U.S. monitors observe measurements and examine Russian records for the entire process of conversion of HEU from metal weapon components to LEU hexafluoride. This process occurs in several steps:[5]
- Delivery of HEU weapons components in sealed containers to processing facilities. Here, U.S. monitors observe measurements taken from outside the container that confirm that it contains HEU enriched to 90% or more, as agreed. The Russian facility declares that the objects in these containers are weapons components, but to protect weapons design secrets, U.S. monitors are not allowed to see them.
- Shredding of HEU component into metal shavings. Here, U.S. monitors are again able to observe measurements that confirm that the material is 90% or more enriched.
- Oxidation of the HEU metal. The metal shavings are burned in ovens to produce an HEU oxide powder; U.S. monitors are able to observe the shavings being loaded into the ovens, seal the ovens, and then observe the powder being removed. Measurements are taken to confirm the amount and enrichment of the HEU powder.
- Purification of the HEU oxide. U.S. monitors are able to observe the HEU oxide entering the process of chemical purification and dissolution, and observe the purified oxide being removed from this process and packed into shipping containers (This process is necessary to remove impurities in the Russian HEU so as to meet American Society of Testing and Manufacturing (ASTM) specifications for nuclear fuel.)
- Conversion of the purified HEU to uranium hexafluoride gas. Here, U.S. monitors are permitted to observe the purified oxide entering the fluorinators, and then inventory the resulting 6-liter cylinders containing HEU hexafluoride, and take measurements to confirm their contents.
- Blending of HEU and blendstock to produce LEU. In essence, a pipe carrying HEU hexafluoride and a pipe carrying 1.5% blendstock hexafluoride come together in a "Y" joint, and produce 4-5% enriched LEU for shipment to the United States. Here, the United States has the right to the use of an automated monitoring system called the Blend-Down Monitoring System (BDMS) that monitors the flows. The resulting HEU is then loaded into cylinders for shipment to the United States.
Most of these transparency measures are implemented only during the one-week monitoring visits; the exception is the continuous monitoring of the actual blend point. U.S. monitors, however, also collect copies of all documentation about the processing and shipments that take place in their absence, for analysis in the United States. When analysis of these records is combined with the results of the monitoring, there can be good confidence that the LEU coming to the United States is in fact coming from the HEU that arrives as metal objects in containers, declared to be HEU weapons components. While the United States at one time sought Russian agreement to transparency at the warhead dismantlement plants to confirm that these containers came from those plants, Russia rejected that approach, arguing that while such warhead dismantlement transparency might be an appropriate part of an arms control agreement, it was not appropriate for a commercial purchase contract such as the HEU Purchase Agreement. Russian monitors also have the right to check that the LEU provided is being used only for peaceful purposes. That monitoring takes place at the facilities of USEC (formerly the U.S. Enrichment Corporation) and at some U.S. fuel fabricators.
There have been some substantial U.S.-Russian controversies over these transparency arrangements over the years, as they involve extensive access to quite sensitive nuclear facilities in Russia. Getting Russian agreement to allow the BDMS to be installed at the Urals Electrochemical Integrated Enterprise (UEIE) at Novouralsk required a prolonged negotiation, and even after the equipment was installed in 1999, Russian negotiators argued that it was not producing accurate data, and would not let U.S. monitors actually get the data and bring it to the United States for analysis. That obstacle was finally overcome in August, 2001, when Russia agreed not only to allow the U.S. monitors to begin receiving the data, but also to have access to all of the data recorded going back to 1999.[6] A ministerial-level agreement was reached in July 2001 to install BDMS at the two remaining blending sites at Seversk and Zelenogorsk.[7] BDMS was installed at the Electrochemical Plant (ECP) in Zelenogorsk in February 2003 and at the Siberian Chemical Enterprise (SChE) in Seversk in October 2004.[8]
Budget
See
budget table
The annual budget for HEU Transparency Program is usually in the range of $17 million per year. The program budget was approximately $20 million in 2005 and 2006, but for Fiscal Year 2007, the Bush administration requested $17.531 million.[9]
Key Issues and Recommendations
Synergy with other U.S. programs. There is a substantial potential for synergy between the HEU Transparency Program and other U.S. programs. Already, there has been some cooperation between the HEU Transparency Program and the MPC&A program, designed to ensure that the knowledge and understanding of HEU stocks and flows at these facilities that already existed helped inform decisions on what upgrades were most needed, and to ensure that redundant U.S. visits for different programs were minimized. As other transparency arrangements are agreed and implemented, efforts should be made to link up with these, as well, building bridges among the various "islands of transparency." (See Monitoring Stockpiles and Reductions.) For example, if HEU is stored in the Mayak storage facility prior to being shipped to processing facilities for conversion to metal shavings, it would be desirable to work out a continuous "chain of custody," in which a container under monitoring at Mayak was tagged and sealed before shipment, and then the same tag and seal checked when it arrived at the HEU processing facility. Similarly, the Americans working at the TMO surely get a very good feel for life in that closed city, and what is going on there, which would be of considerable use to the Nuclear Cities Initiative and related programs; even the frequent week-long monitoring visits at other facilities can serve a similar purpose.
- Recommendation: Put in place a continuous effort to identify and pursue potential synergies with other U.S. programs, in particular to link up with other transparency regimes as they develop.
Links
| Key Resources | |
 |
HEU Transparency Program Page |
| This site,
hosted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, provides
a variety of information, including a summary of the
transparency program, publications and briefings, summaries
of recent HEU transparency monitoring visits from the
heads of delegation, and news. |
|
|
Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, "Highly Enriched Uranium
Transparency Program," April 2006. Download 8.4M PDF |
| This briefing provides a useful brief history and overview of the HEU Purchase Agreement Transparency program. | |
|
U.S. General
Accounting Office, Status of Transparency Measures for U.S. Purchase
of Russian Highly Enriched Uranium, GAO/RCED-99-194,
(Washington, D.C.: GAO, September 1999). Download 147K PDF |
| This report reviewed the transparency measures then in place and argued that, for the HEU blended at the facilities where the full suite of agreed transparency measures was operational, the United States could have good confidence that the LEU being purchased came from HEU–but pointed out that such transparency measures were not yet in place at all the Russian blending facilities, and that the transparency measures being implemented were not in themselves enough to confirm that the HEU came from dismantled nuclear weapons. | |
|
Los Alamos Applied Monitoring Technology Laboratory, Electronic Library |
| The Applied Monitoring Technology Laboratory has a substantial number of publications on HEU transparency posted in their electronic library, mainly focusing on technical aspects of implementation. | |
|
Department
of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
"HEU-TP Factsheet," April 2006. Download 769K PDF |
| Official brochure on the HEU Transparency Program, from 2006. | |
|
Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, “Portable NDA Equipment for Enrichment
Measurements for the HEU Transparency Program,” July
1999. Download 899K PDF |
| Technical paper detailing the non-destructive assay (NDA) equipment developed to measure the uranium enrichment of material in Russia. | |
|
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, “Blend
Down Monitoring System Fissile Mass Flow Monitor Implementation
at the Siberian Chemical Enterprise, Seversk, Russia,” May
2005. Download 233K PDF |
|
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, “Blend
Down Monitoring System Fissile Mass Flow Monitor Implementation
at the ElectroChemical Plant, Zelenogorsk, Russia,” November
2005. Download 380K PDF |
| Both papers detail technical aspects of the Blend Down Monitoring System used at the Russian blending facilities and installation approaches at two of the Russian blending facilities. | |
|
Office of Scientific & Technical
Information, Instrumentation and Controls Division, “The
Blend Down Monitoring System Demonstration at the Paducah
Gaseous Diffusion Plant,” July 1999. Download 217K PDF |
| Technical paper describing the development of the Blend Down Monitoring System and demonstration of that system in the U.S. | |
| Agreements and Documents | |
|
Joint Statement by the Russian Federation Ministry of Atomic Energy and the United States Department of Energy on HEU Purchase Agreement Transparency Measures, June 30, 1995 |
| This statement called for monitoring at or near the blend point where the HEU was actually blended to LEU, along with sample-taking at or near that blend point, and provision by Russia of "copies of all accounting, processing and operational control records related to all steps in the highly enriched uranium conversion process for all material sold to the United States under the Agreement." | |
|
Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Russian Federation Concerning the Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium, February 18, 1993 |
| This is the original government-to-government agreement on the 500-ton U.S. purchase of HEU from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons. This copy, taken from NuclearFuel, shows the additions and deletions that were made to the tentative agreement released in 1992 before it was finalized. | |
| FOOTNOTES | |
| [1] | Indeed, it is worth noting that Russian agreement to the more intrusive aspects of these transparency measures was gained by using the leverage provided by Russia’s need for large cash pre-payments to provide the funding needed to carry out the operations to provide the LEU under the deal. For whatever reason, the United States government has never attempted to apply the basic lesson that transparency success requires there to be some incentive for the Russian side to reach agreement to its broader transparency objectives. |
| [2] | An overview of the HEU transparency program can be found in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "Highly Enriched Uranium Transparency Implementation Program," briefing, March 2001; specific monitoring measures at each step are summarized in Janie Benton, et al., "U.S. Transparency Monitoring Under the U.S./Russian Intergovernmental HEU-LEU Agreement," in Proceedings of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, 40th Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, July 25-29, 1999 (Northbrook, IL: INMM, 1999); see also U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), Nuclear Proliferation: Status of Transparency Measures for U.S. Purchase of Russian Highly Enriched Uranium, GAO/RCED-99-194 (Washington, D.C.: GAO, September 1999). |
| [3] | While the Mayak Production Association has a role in preparing HEU metal components for blending, actual blending is not done at that site. When significant upgrades or maintenance is necessary, two special monitoring visits are scheduled back-to-back to create a two-week special monitoring visit. |
| [4] | U.S. Department of Energy, “Highly Enriched Uranium Transparency Program” (Washington, D.C.: DOE, April 2006), p. 15. |
| [5] | A good description of the measures taken at each step can be found in Benton, et al. "U.S. Transparency Monitoring," op. cit. |
| [6] | Interview with DOE official, November 2002; see also U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Detailed Budget Justifications: Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (Washington, D.C.: DOE, February 2002), p. 140. |
| [7] | DOE, Detailed Budget Justifications: Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, op. cit., p. 140 |
| [8] | DOE, "Highly Enriched Uranium Transparency Program," p. 14 |
| [9] | For more information, see our Legislative Update page. |
Written by Matthew Bunn. Last updated by James E. Platte
on September 22, 2006.
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.