Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament

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ForewordOver the past year, the importance of charting a new common ground for reducing andeliminating stockpiles of the key nuclear weapon materials—plutonium and highlyenriched uranium—has grown. It is not merely that the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty,which would stop all production of fissile materials for weapons, has returned tothe top of the international nuclear disarmament agenda, with the United NationsConference on Disarmament agreeing this year to begin talks on such a treaty. Moreimportant, the entire project of nuclear disarmament has undergone a renaissance.Notably, President Barak Obama called in his speech in Prague on April 5, 2009 for aworld without nuclear weapons. The idea of not merely reducing the number of nuclearweapons but of eliminating them entirely is getting more serious consideration than atany time since President Truman proposed the Baruch Plan to the UN to achieve thisend in 1946.It is in this new context, which is the focus of the present report, that the work ofthe International Panel on Fissile Materials is playing an indispensable role. Suddenly,people in government, in academia, and in society at large are asking, in more detailthan ever before, what a world with very few or no nuclear weapons might actuallylook like. The difficult and still-important question of how to get to such a world is nowaccompanied by the perhaps even more difficult and even more important question ofwhat precisely the arrangements in such a world would be and how these would work.The process of getting rid of nuclear weapons (if it really happens), after all, will takeonly a limited time; but the nuclear-weapon-free world will have to last forever. Harderthan getting to zero will be staying there.The number of nuclear weapons in the world has declined from a peak of more than60,000 at the height of the Cold War to about a third of that today. If current talksbetween the Obama administration and the Russian government are successful, thesenumbers will decline further over the next few years, to about ten thousand operationalwarheads, including short-range and reserve warheads, plus perhaps anotherthousand in the arsenals of the world’s other seven nuclear powers, with further reductionsto follow. As the number of weapons declines, the importance of materialsincreases, especially if governments are taking the new goal of zero weapons seriously.In such a world, the immediate fear of nuclear war wanes, and the fear of the return ofnuclear weapons takes its place. Attention turns away from warheads and ballistic missilesand toward uranium enrichment and plutonium separation facilities, plutoniumand tritium production reactors, highly enriched uranium stockpiles for naval reactors,civilian stockpiles of plutonium and the like. Global Fissile Material Report 2009
The 2009 Global Fissile Material Report, in conjunction with its predecessors, places discussionof these matters, more comprehensively and in greater depth than anywhereelse, on a solid technical foundation. It moves the debate out of the realm of sloganand heartfelt wish into the cool light of scientific reality. We come to understand thatunderlying the weapons systems is the more fundamental fact of nuclear technologyand that underlying that is the root of the whole dilemma, the scientific knowledgethat makes the weapons and materials alike possible. Since the fundamental knowledgeis destined to survive even the abolition of the weapons, it is necessary to ask, as theexperts who have written this report do in myriad ways, how, over the long run, wecan live with it.The questions that then move to the fore are such matters as: By what exact routesmight a cheater on an abolition agreement proceed to rebuild nuclear weapons? Whatsafeguards might the world deploy to protect itself against such a cheater? Whatmeasures of verification can give warning of such an attempt? Which nuclear-powertechnologies lend themselves to cheating, and how might they be circumscribed oreliminated? We are invited to school ourselves in “nuclear archeology” (the history ofnuclear production facilities, fathomed through isotopic analysis and other means),in the possible “mining” of nuclear wastes (the danger that a nation will process thesewastes to obtain plutonium), and in the “stuffing” or crushing of the plutonium pits atthe heart of nuclear weapons to disable them while they await dismantlement.Of course, acquiring control over fissile materials—by stopping their production formilitary purposes, by producing a detailed inventory (now woefully incomplete) oftheir existence, by inspecting that inventory—is not useful solely for abolition. It isalso immediately useful for nuclear arms reduction and for reining in nuclear proliferation.If the world’s grip on its fissile materials and technology were ever to become fullysecure, then nuclear proliferation, especially to sub-national groups, would almost bea dead letter. There is no conflict here between the long and the short run. The informationand recommendations presented in this report are therefore as immediatelyurgent as they are fundamental in the larger scheme of things. They are the guts ofnuclear disarmament—a goal that this report represents with new clarity and bringscloser to achievement.Jonathan SchellNew York, September 2009Global Fissile Material Report 2009
Page 5: Table of ContentsAbout the IPFM 1Fo
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 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
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4 Nuclear ArchaeologyVerification o
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Between 1992 and 1998, the U.S. Pac
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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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