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7
Recommendations
The committee's work on the issues of plutonium management and
disposition has led it to the following four principal recommendations:
1. A New Weapons and Fissile Materials Regime. The committee recommends
that the United States work to reach agreement with Russia on a new,
reciprocal regime that would include
(a) declarations of stockpiles of nuclear weapons and all fissile materials;
(b) cooperative measures to clarify and confirm those declarations;
(c) an agreed halt to the production of fissile materials for weapons; and
(d) agreed, monitored net reductions from these stockpiles.
Monitoring of warhead dismantlement and commitment of excess fissile
materials to non-weapons use or disposal, initially under bilateral and later
under international safeguards, would be integral parts of this regime, as would
some form of monitoring of whatever warhead assembly continues.
2. Safeguarded Storage. The committee recommends that the United States and
Russia pursue a reciprocal regime of secure, internationally monitored storage
of fissile material, with the aim of ensuring that the inventory in storage can be
withdrawn only for non-weapons purposes.
3. Long-Term Plutonium Disposition. The committee recommends that the
United States and Russia pursue long-term plutonium disposition options that:
(a) minimize the time during which the plutonium is stored in forms readily
usable for nuclear weapons;
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224 RECOMMENDATIONS
(b) preserve material safeguards and security during the disposition process,
seeking to maintain the same high standards of security and accounting
applied to stored nuclear weapons;
(c) result in a form from which the plutonium would be as difficult to recover
for weapons use as the larger and growing quantity of plutonium in
commercial spent fuel; and
(d) meet high standards of protection for public and worker health and for the
environment.
The two most promising alternatives for achieving these aims are
· fabrication and use as fuel, without reprocessing, in existing or modified
nuclear reactors; or
· vitrification in combination with high-level radioactive waste.
A third option, burial of the excess plutonium in deep boreholes, has until now
been less thoroughly studied than have the first two options, but could turn out
to be comparably attractive.
4. All Fissile Material. The committee recommends that the United States
pursue new international arrangements to improve safeguards and physical
security over all forms of plutonium and HEU worldwide. In particular, new
cooperative efforts to improve security and accounting for all fissile materials in
the former Soviet Union should be an urgent priority.
~ ~ *
· The president should establish a more systematic process of interagency
coordination to deal with the areas addressed in this report, with sustained top-
level leadership.
DECLARATIONS AND DISMANTLEMENT
· The United States and Russia should make formal commitments that
specific quantities of fissile material from dismantled weapons (representing a
very large fraction of those materials) will be declared excess and committed to
non-weapons use or disposal. Storage and disposition of these materials should
be subject to agreed standards of accountability, transparency, and security. The
standards for accountability and security should approximate as closely as
possible the stringent standards applied to stored nuclear weapons.
· The United States should negotiate with Russia to create, through a step-
by-step process, a broad regime under which each side's stocks of nuclear
weapons and fissile materials would be declared and monitored, and the size of
both stocks would be verifiably reduced over time in line with current reduc-
tions in deployed delivery systems. This regime would include, in addition to
the fissile material steps mentioned in the previous recommendation:
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RECOMMENDATIONS 225
1. a system of mutual declarations of total inventories of nuclear weapons and
of fissile materials in civilian and military inventories;
2. measures designed to increase confidence in the accuracy of the declarations,
and the transparency of each side's nuclear weapons production complexes,
including physical access to production facilities and production records for
fissile materials;
3. a monitored cutoff of production of HEU and plutonium for weapons. If
necessary, the United States should be willing to provide limited funding to
assist Russia in the measures necessary to cut off plutonium production; and
4. an agreement providing for perimeter-portal monitoring of dismantlement
facilities, counting warheads entering these facilities and assaying the fissile
material that leaves. If the net subtractions from each side's stockpile are to
be confirmed, some monitoring of warhead assembly will be required as
well.
· Information concerning the total stockpiles of weapons and fissile
materials, and those weapons characteristics necessary for external monitoring,
should be declassified as part of this transparency regime. Appropriate reviews
to prepare for such declassification should be initiated promptly.
· Russia and the United States should dismantle their retired warheads as
expeditiously as is practical, consistent with protection for the environment,
safety, and health, and cost-effectiveness.
INTERMEDIATE STORAGE
· The United States and Russia should place plutonium excess to military
needs in safeguarded storage as soon as practical.
· Stored excess fissile materials committed to non-weapons use or disposal
by the United States and Russia should be placed under international safe-
guards (possibly combined with bilateral monitoring). In the interest of speed,
monitoring of storage could initially be a bilateral U.S.-Russian effort, but the
IAEA should be brought into the process rapidly.
· The United States should continue providing assistance for a Russian
fissile material storage facility, which should be designed to consolidate all
excess weapons materials at a single site, to facilitate security and international
momtorlng.
· Plutonium from dismantled weapons should continue to be stored as
intact pits for now. Deformation of these pits and perhaps other steps to reduce
the rearmament risk should be given serious consideration, and should be
undertaken if they can be accomplished at relatively low cost and ES&H risk.
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226 RECOMMENDATIONS
· Pits should be stored in sealed containers, with monitors permitted to
assay the containers externally without observing the pits' dimensions, to pro-
vide adequate safeguards without compromising sensitive weapons design
information.
· Once definite disposition options have been chosen, the plutonium should
be converted expeditiously to whatever form is required as part of the disposi-
tion process.
· Financial or other incentives might be provided to encourage Russia to
place the maximum amount of material into monitored storage. With the con-
dition that these not be an open-ended commitment or provide any incentive for
continued production of separated plutonium, such incentives would be desir-
able and should continue to be explored.
· The safeguards budget of the IAEA should be substantially increased,
and other steps should be taken to strengthen that organization's ability to carry
out its critical responsibilities. One promising approach would be the creation
of a voluntary fund, to which nations interested in improved safeguards would
make contributions above and beyond their fixed allocations.
· Appropriate arrangements for intermediate storage are to a large extent
decoupled from long-term disposition decisions and should be considered more
urgent.
DISPOSITION
· It is important to begin now to build consensus on a road map for deci-
sions concerning long-term disposition of excess weapons plutonium. Because
disposition options will take decades to carry out, it is critical to develop op-
tions that can muster a sustainable consensus.
· Storage should not be extended indefinitely, because of (1) the negative
impact that maintaining this material in forms readily accessible for weapons
use would have on nonproliferation and arms reduction, (2) the risk of breakout
and (3) the risks of theft from the storage site. One of the key criteria by which
disposition options should be judged is the speed with which they can be ac-
complished, and thus the degree to which they curtail the risks of prolonged
storage.
· Disposition options beyond storage should be pursued only if they reduce
overall security risks compared to leaving the material in storage, considering
both the final form of the material and the risks of the various processes re
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RECOMMENDATIONS 227
quired to get to that state. In the current unsettled circumstances in Russia, this
minimum criterion is a significant one.
· The United States and Russia should begin discussions with the aim of
agreeing that whatever disposition options are chosen, an agreed, stringent
standard of accounting, monitoring, and security will be maintained throughout
the process-coming as close as practicable to meeting the standard of security
and accounting applied to intact nuclear weapons.
· Disposition options should be designed to transform the weapons pluto-
nium into a physical form that is at least as inaccessible for weapons use as the
much larger and growing stock of plutonium that exists in spent fuel from
commercial nuclear reactors. The costs, complexities, risks, and delays of going
further than this "spent fuel standard" to eliminate the excess weapons
plutonium completely or nearly so would not be justified unless the same ap-
proach were to be taken with the global stock of civilian plutonium.
· The two most promising alternatives for the purpose of meeting the spent
fuel standard are:
1. The spent fuel option, which has several variants. The principal one is to
use the plutonium as once-through fuel in existing commercial nuclear power
reactors or their evolutionary variants. Candidates for this role are U.S. light-
water reactors (LWRs), Russian LWRs, and Canadian deuterium-uranium
(CANDU) reactors. The use of European and Japanese reactors already licensed
for civilian plutonium should also be considered for Russian weapons
plutonium.
2. The vitrification option, which would entail combining the plutonium
with radioactive high-level wastes (HLW) as these are melted into large glass
logs. The plutonium would then be roughly as difficult to recover for weapons
use as plutonium in spent fuel.
A third option, burial in deep boreholes, has until now been less thor-
oughly studied than alternative 1 and 2, but could turn out to be comparably
attractive.
· A coordinated program of research and development should be under-
taken immediately to clarify and resolve the uncertainties the committee has
identified regarding each of these three options. The aim should be to pave the
way for a national discussion, with full public participation, in order to make a
choice within a very few years.
· Applying the spent fuel standard narrows the options considerably:
1. Options that irradiate the weapons plutonium in reactors only briefly
("spiking"), leaving it far less radioactive than typical spent fuel, and with little
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228 RECOMMENDATIONS
change in its isotopic composition, should not be pursued except possibly as a
preliminary step on the road toward the spent fuel option. (Even for that pur-
pose, in those cases the committee has examined, the possible advantages of the
spiking option over continued storage do not appear to be worth the substantial
cost of such spiking approaches.)
2. Options that involve only a chemical barrier to reuse such as vitrifica-
tion of plutonium without HLW or other fission products should not be pur-
sued, except possibly as a first step toward adding radiological or physical bar-
riers as well.
3. Advanced reactors should not be specifically developed or built for
transforming weapons plutonium into spent fuel, because that aim can be
achieved more rapidly, less expensively, and more surely using existing or
evolutionary reactor types.
4. Options that strive to destroy a large fraction of the plutonium without
reprocessing and recycle, using existing or advanced reactors with nonfertile
fuels, should not be pursued because such approaches cannot destroy enough of
the plutonium to obviate the need for continuing safeguards, and the modest
reduction in security risk that could be achieved is not worth the extra delay,
cost, and uncertainty that development of such approaches would entail.
· Production of tritium should not be a major criterion for choosing among
disposition options.
· Institutional issues in managing plutonium disposition are complex and
the process to resolve them must be carefully managed. The process must pro-
vide adequate safeguards, security, and transparency, as well as protection for
the environment, safety, and health; obtain public and institutional approval,
including licenses; and allow adequate participation in the decision making by
all affected parties, including the U.S. and Russian publics and the interna-
tional community. Adequate information must be made available to give sub-
stance to the public's participation.
TOTAL PLUTONIUM INVENTORIES
· Although the committee did not conduct a comprehensive examination of
the proliferation risks of civilian nuclear fuel cycles, which would have gone
beyond its charge, the risks posed by all forms of plutonium must be addressed.
· While the spent fuel standard is an appropriate goal for next steps, fur-
ther steps should be taken to reduce the proliferation risks posed by all of the
world's plutonium stocks, military and civilian, separated and unseparated; the
need for such steps exists already, and will increase with time. Options for
near-total elimination of plutonium may have a role to play in this effort, and
research on defining and exploring these options should be continued at a con
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RECOMMENDATIONS 229
ceptual level. These options, however, can only realistically be considered in
the broader context of the future of nuclear electricity generation, including the
minimization of security and safety risks the assessment of which is beyond
the scope of this report. Studies of that broader context should have as one im-
portant focus minimizing the risk of nuclear proliferation, and should consider
nuclear systems as a whole, from the mining of uranium through to the disposal
of waste; should consider feasible safeguarding methods as elements of devel-
opment and design; and should take an international approach, realizing that
other nations' approaches reflect their differing economic, political, technical,
security, and geographic situations and perceptions.
· Urgent steps are needed to improve safeguards and security for all fissile
materials in the former Soviet Union, including materials beyond those consid-
ered excess. The committee recommends a comprehensive approach at a sig-
nificantly higher level of funding, with an emphasis on cooperation in address-
ing the most immediate risks. Western countries, including the United States,
should press Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union to take a
number of steps urgently, and should be willing to provide necessary equipment
and funds for these purposes. In particular, Western countries should press for
and offer assistance for:
1. immediate installation of appropriate portal-monitoring systems to detect any
theft of fissile materials, as well as adequate armed guard forces, at all sites
where enough weapons-usable fissile material to make a nuclear weapon is
stored;
2. an urgent program of security and accounting inspections and improvements
at all of these sites;
3. improved economic conditions for personnel responsible for accounting and
security for weapons and fissile materials, to reduce incentives for corruption
and insider theft;
4. improved national oversight of security and safeguards, with a strengthened
basis in law. In Russia, this would involve strengthening the role of
GOSATOMNADZOR, while in other former Soviet states it would involve
strengthening or creating comparable organizations;
5. consolidation of fissile material storage and handling where possible;
6. conversion of research reactors to run on low-enriched uranium fuels, reduc-
ing the number of sites where weapons-grade fissile materials are used;
7. greater Western participation and cooperation in safeguards and security,
ideally at all fissile material sites, but at all civilian sites at a minimum; and
8. regularized, as well as emergency, working-level cooperation in monitoring
reports of alleged diversions.
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230 RECOMMENDATIONS
· The steps outlined by the committee to improve safeguards and physical
. .
security for fissile materials in the United States and Russia should set a
standard for a regime for improved management of such materials in civilian
use throughout the world. Negotiations should be pursued to:
1. create a global cutoff of all unsafeguarded production of fissile materials;
2. use the U.S.-Russian safeguarded storage regime recommended above as a
base for a broad international storage and management regime for fissile
materials, including registration and safeguards for all civilian separated
plutonium and HEU;
3. extend the U.S.-Russian declaratory regime mentioned above to a global
regime of public declarations of stocks of fissile materials;
4. agree on higher standards of physical security for these materials, with an
international organization given authority to inspect sites to monitor whether
the standards are met; and
5. agree on cooperative international approaches to manage reprocessing and
use of plutonium to avoid building up excess stocks.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
spent fuel
