Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament

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United States. In July 2009, the U.S. Department of States declared that, “as of May 2009,the United States had cut its number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheadsto 2126, which meets the limits set by the [2002 Moscow] Treaty for 2012.” 2 Inaddition, the United States currently has an estimated 500 non-strategic weapons andmore than 6500 inactive weapons in reserve or awaiting dismantlement, bringing thetotal U.S. inventory to about 9400 warheads.Russia. Russia continues to reduce the number of its nuclear warheads to meet its MoscowTreaty obligations. It is estimated to have less than 2800 operationally deployedstrategic warheads. 3 The large uncertainty in the total number of Russia’s warheadsis due to a lack of information on the number of its tactical nuclear weapons and thenumber of excess warheads that still await dismantlement.Russia and the United States. In July 2009, Russia and the United States agreed to negotiateby the end of the year a follow-on to the 2004 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,which will expire in 2009. They have announced that the objective is to agree beforethe end of 2009 to a reduction to 1500–1675 deployed strategic warheads each, withthe cuts to be completed by 2016. 4 Beginning in 2010, there may be negotiations onfurther reductions—perhaps including non-deployed and non-strategic warheads. 5The United States is estimated to be dismantling about 350 warheads per year. 6 Thecurrent net dismantlement rate in Russia is estimated as perhaps 200–300 warheads ayear. 7 At these rates, it would take decades for the United States and Russia to dismantleto about 1000 total warheads each, approximately the total possessed by all the othernuclear-weapon states. Both countries achieved much higher dismantlement rates inthe 1990s when the United States was dismantling warheads at an average rate of about1300 per year 8 and Russia was estimated to be dismantling about 2000 per year. 9United Kingdom. In March 2009, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that“Britain has cut the number of its nuclear warheads by 50% since 1997” and notedfurther that “our operationally available warheads now number fewer than 160.” 10 TheUnited Kingdom has 50 U.S.-supplied Trident missiles, currently deployed with up tothree warheads each. There may be a relatively small number of reserve warheads.The United Kingdom has declared as excess less than ten percent of its weapon-gradeplutonium. Its weapon-grade uranium is apparently kept in reserve for future use asnuclear-submarine fuel.The United Kingdom is currently debating a decision to replace the four nuclear submarinesthat carry the Trident missiles, which are the country’s only remaining nuclear-weapondelivery system. 11 It may reduce its future fleet to three submarines. 12France. France is reducing the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal to meet thetarget set by President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008, who announced that, after the plannedreduction, “our arsenal will include fewer than 300 nuclear warheads.” 13 At the sameoccasion, President Sarkozy also revealed that France “has no other weapons besidethose in its operational stockpile.” France has not indicated its plans for the dispositionof the fissile materials contained in the roughly 300 warheads it has removed fromservice.10 Global Fissile Material Report 2009
China. Over the past year, there appear to have been no significant changes in China’snuclear arsenal or major announcements of policy. The 2009 edition of the U.S. Departmentof Defense report Military Power of the People’s Republic of China suggests a continuingeffort to move towards more mobile and survivable delivery systems, includingtransitioning from liquid-fuel to solid-fuel road-mobile missiles and to submarinelaunched ballistic missiles. 14Nuclear-weapon and component sitesNuclear weapons can be found at a large number of sites around the world. It is estimatedthere may be a total of 111 nuclear warhead storage sites, with 105 of these sites innuclear weapon states. The United States currently maintains six sites in non-weaponstates—with one site each in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey and twosites in Italy. 15 In the past, the United States stationed nuclear weapons in as many as23 foreign countries. 16 Table 1.2 gives the total number of warhead and nuclear-componentstorage sites currently estimated in each country. Appendix B to this report givesa preliminary listing of these sites for each country.CountryWarhead storage sitesChina 14France 7India 5Israel 4Pakistan 8Russia 48United Kingdom 4United States (domestic) 15United States (in five foreign countries) 6Total 111Table 1.2. Estimated number of nuclear warheadstorage sites by country. There are currently anestimated 111 warhead storage sites worldwide, inat least 13 countries, not including North Korea. Insome cases sites are counted twice, when there arewarheads deployed on missiles and spare warheadsat nearby storage areas. Source: Hans Kristensenand Robert S. Norris, FAS/NRDC.Russia accounts for almost half of all the nuclear warhead storage sites worldwide. Thisis in part due to Russia’s large number of tactical nuclear warheads, which are ordinarilyat a small number of national-level storage sites but for which storage areas are heldready at a much larger number of air and naval bases. The United States has withdrawnall but 500 tactical weapons from operational service and has mostly dismantled theretired weapons.Nuclear Weapon Free Zones. In March 2009, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistanand Uzbekistan established the Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone. 17It is the first nuclear-weapon free zone in the Northern Hemisphere and breaks newground by requiring its parties to accept an Additional Protocol agreement with the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to become parties of the ComprehensiveNuclear Test-Ban Treaty.Global Fissile Material Report 2009 11
Page 5: Table of ContentsAbout the IPFM 1Fo
Page 8 and 9: ForewordOver the past year, the imp
Page 12: Verified warhead dismantlement. A c
Page 19 and 20: Figure 1.2. National stocks of high
Page 21 and 22: 1400 kg that were used annually in
Page 30 and 31: 2 Fissile Materials andNuclear Disa
Page 32 and 33: The number of nuclear weapon states
Page 34 and 35: Figure 2.3. An Advanced CruiseMissi
Page 36 and 37: discussed both rationing access to
Page 38 and 39: 3 Declarations of Fissile MaterialS
Page 40 and 41: Declarations of fissile material in
Page 42 and 43: Figure 3.2. History of U.S. plutoni
Page 44 and 45: If declarations are made early and
Page 46 and 47: Even without such concerns, it coul
Page 48 and 49: Appendix 3A. The U.S. Plutonium and
Page 50 and 51: of nuclear materials, including all
Page 52 and 53: also on all exports and imports of
Page 54 and 55: Appendix 3B.Estimating Plutonium-Pr
Page 56 and 57: Thermal power 20-25 MWt Effective c
Page 58 and 59: 4 Nuclear ArchaeologyVerification o
Page 60 and 61: Between 1992 and 1998, the U.S. Pac
Page 62 and 63: econstructed from the plant’s was
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Figure 4.5. Integrated operation of
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Figure 4.7. Fissile material produc
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• Traces of neptunium. Radioactiv
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• conduct all verification activi
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When necessary, the verification re
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The various aspects of verified war
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The numbers of warheads and compone
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Quantities of fissile materials in
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Figure 5.5. Nuclear-WeaponsIdentifi
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There has been considerable skeptic
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Below, the ongoing efforts in Russi
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down per year. At this blend-down r
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Until one or both of these strategi
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Of those options, the study found t
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With regard to the reprocessing of
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weapon-grade plutonium at its Dimon
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IPFM graphics redrawn from Bulletin
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Any new production of HEU for react
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The IAEA could similarly use instru
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2007. 327 Russia continues to produ
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The fusion research facility ITER i
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in fact, produce tritium in reactor
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On the other hand, some argue that
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Although we are assuming a world wi
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Countries with reprocessing. Countr
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Figure 8.6. Enrichment level of the
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Transition PeriodThe discussion so
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9 Societal VerificationThe concept
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After the war, Szilard and others e
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The historical record with regard t
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The limitations of the safeguards s
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Understandably, states that provide
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Appendix AFissile Materials and Nuc
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high-density spherical mass. The co
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Figure A.4. The fast-neutron critic
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IsotopeCritical Mass[kg]Half Life[y
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Appendix BWorldwide Locations ofNuc
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IndiaCountry Location/Name Region/P
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RussiaCountry Location/Name Region/
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Country Location/Name Region/Provin
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14.Military Power of the People’s
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44.The French company Areva is plan
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73.An industry source specified 9.1
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102.United Nations Security Council
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Chapter 3. Declarations of Fissile
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153.The design of the UK’s 50 MWe
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185.For example, graphite of the Fr
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210.Robert Norris and Hans Kristens
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237.Arms Control and Nonproliferati
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263.See e.g. Report on the Savannah
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dissolved, leaving 753 tons of LWR
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311.See e.g. Mycle Schneider and Yv
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343.H. A. Feiveson, Latent Prolifer
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368.A. Glaser, “Characteristics o
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398.A recent U.S. Air Force survey
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IPFM Members, Other Contributors to
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Li Bin (Beijing, China, shared memb
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Annette Schaper (Frankfurt, Germany
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Other Contributors to Global Fissil
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SGS Research and Administrative Sta
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Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament

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