Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament

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of nuclear materials, including all plutonium and uranium of all enrichments, theAEC, after the enactment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, implemented a comprehensiveset of accounting procedures. For the first time, facilities had a set of reportingrequirements reflecting generally accepted principles of the accounting profession.Due to the variability and complexity in the different nuclear fuel cycle facilities andprocesses, no particular accounting system was specified; however, requirements includeddouble-entry bookkeeping and nuclear material transactions recording in orderto track the status of any materials within a facility.In the early 1960s, the AEC engaged the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to performa feasibility study on developing a headquarters management information system fornuclear materials. In 1963 the SRI study recommended that a national system be builtand, in 1964, the project was begun in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The NMMSS has beenautomated since 1965.Union Carbide built the new system. Union Carbide seemed to be a logical choicebecause, at that time, it operated three nuclear plants in Oak Ridge (Y-12, X-10 andK-25) plus the uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky and was well informedregarding the principles of nuclear materials accounting. In addition to the Union Carbidesystem, Oak Ridge continued to maintain the AEC mandated accounting recordsof nuclear materials in commercial facilities.The first nuclear materials in NMMSS were of 12 types:••••••••••••Depleted uraniumEnriched uranium (broken down into HEU ranges and LEU based on containedU-235)Plutonium (broken up into weapon-grade and lesser grades)Lithium enriched in Li-6Uranium-233Natural uraniumNeptunium-237Plutonium-238DeuteriumTritiumThoriumUranium in cascades (i.e., unified uranium: depleted, normal, and enriched)NMMSS began tracking helium-3 in 1969 and discontinued tracking it in July 1978.Normal and depleted lithium were reported by contractors beginning in 1971 and discontinuedtwo years later. In 1974, six types of materials in the transuranium groupwere added and all but berkelium (removed in 2006) have remained in the system.These material types are as follows:••••••Plutonium-242Americium-241Americium-243CuriumBerkeliumCalifornium44 Global Fissile Material Report 2009
In the late 1940s, NMMSS was a manually-implemented central store of nuclear materialsinformation—a set of account ledgers with amounts of nuclear materials as entries.AEC operations offices and headquarters staff prepared inventory, transaction, and materialbalance reports for the 12 original NMMSS material types based on feeder reportsforwarded by AEC contractors and by Oak Ridge Operations Office for licensees.These summary Oak Ridge material balance reports were an important source of informationfor creating the U.S. declarations; they chronicled U.S. nuclear activities on anannual basis in material-balance format from the mid-1940s through 1984. The materialbalance categories used in these early reports are still in use today and are the defacto basis for constructing overall historical material balances.The trustworthiness of the quantities stated in the Oak Ridge summary reports wasestablished by correlating and corroborating known elements from the material balancewith data from other sources. For example, from 1945 through 1992, the U.S.conducted 1,054 nuclear tests and two wartime detonations. The quantities of nuclearmaterials expended in these activities were independently recalculated and comparedwith quantities stated annually in the summary reports. Similar correlations were possiblewith HEU produced in the Y-12 Plant calutrons from 1945 through 1947.In addition to calculation reviews, site visits were conducted to examine primary sourcedata documents. Many of these documents currently exist only in summary form, particularlyfor the period prior to 1969. Summarized data presented a major difficultyin the preparation of the HEU report as some of the site records failed to distinguishbetween HEU and LEU. Sites visited included Hanford, Savannah River, Portsmouth,and West Valley. Oak Ridge historical summary reports were then reviewed and comparedfor consistency with the various sites reports, original transfer journals, generalledgers, subsidiary ledgers or journals (designed to provide more information than wasavailable in only the general ledger), and additional transaction and inventory records.The inaugural years’ (1940s to early 1960s) data were generally easy to confirm becausethere was no commercial nuclear industry and very few facilities handled these importantstrategic materials.Computer-based NMMSS began collecting inventory and material balance data in 1965.Transaction data was added to the system in 1967 and, in 1971, the system began processingdata on a daily basis. In 1979 NMMSS completed a two-year project convertingwritten documents into electronically retrievable records. This project consisted of datapertaining to U.S. international transactions. The task involved coding internationaltransaction data from shipment files (in the form of NMMSS transactions) dating asfar back as January 1950, and adding those international transactions to the NMMSSdatabase. Exports, imports, and retransfers of nuclear materials data were included.Thus, the international transaction data in NMMSS cover a longer historical periodthan domestic transactions. Even though there are some minor gaps in the data andeven though comparison of the data (to records maintained by our foreign tradingpartners) is incomplete, the NMMSS database is a highly reliable source of information.NMMSS TodayToday’s NMMSS contains current and historical data on inventories and transactionsinvolving source (natural and depleted uranium and thorium), special (plutoniumand HEU), and other selected nuclear materials not only within the United States butGlobal Fissile Material Report 2009 45
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 17 and 18: China. Over the past year, there ap
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 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
Page 64 and 65: Figure 4.5. Integrated operation of
Page 66 and 67: Figure 4.7. Fissile material produc
Page 68 and 69: • Traces of neptunium. Radioactiv
Page 70 and 71: • conduct all verification activi
Page 72 and 73: When necessary, the verification re
Page 74 and 75: The various aspects of verified war
Page 76 and 77: The numbers of warheads and compone
Page 78 and 79: Quantities of fissile materials in
Page 80 and 81: Figure 5.5. Nuclear-WeaponsIdentifi
Page 82 and 83: There has been considerable skeptic
Page 84 and 85: Below, the ongoing efforts in Russi
Page 86 and 87: down per year. At this blend-down r
Page 88 and 89: Until one or both of these strategi
Page 90 and 91: Of those options, the study found t
Page 92 and 93: With regard to the reprocessing of
Page 94 and 95: weapon-grade plutonium at its Dimon
Page 96: IPFM graphics redrawn from Bulletin
Page 100 and 101:
Any new production of HEU for react
Page 102 and 103:
The IAEA could similarly use instru
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2007. 327 Russia continues to produ
Page 106 and 107:
The fusion research facility ITER i
Page 108 and 109:
in fact, produce tritium in reactor
Page 110 and 111:
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
Page 118 and 119:
Transition PeriodThe discussion so
Page 120 and 121:
9 Societal VerificationThe concept
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After the war, Szilard and others e
Page 124 and 125:
The historical record with regard t
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The limitations of the safeguards s
Page 128 and 129:
Understandably, states that provide
Page 130 and 131:
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
Page 142 and 143:
RussiaCountry Location/Name Region/
Page 144 and 145:
Country Location/Name Region/Provin
Page 146 and 147:
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
Page 180 and 181:
Annette Schaper (Frankfurt, Germany
Page 182 and 183:
Other Contributors to Global Fissil
Page 184 and 185:
SGS Research and Administrative Sta
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Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament

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