Nuclear Power and Nuclear Proliferation

Nuclear power may prove to be an essential technology for providing climate-friendly power across the globe.  Concerns about global warming have led many countries and companies to consider building new nuclear power plants.  In France and Japan, nuclear power already provides 80% and 30 %, respectively, of each country's energy needs.  

Nuclear power, however, also has several drawbacks.  Our concern here is with the potential of nuclear power to enhance the likelihood of nuclear proliferation - and specifically nuclear terrorism.

How is nuclear power related to nuclear proliferation?
Nuclear power is produced by using highly radioactive materials to generate heat, which in turn boils water, and the steam produced powers a generator.  The challenges arise with enriching the highly radioactive materials and disposing of the highly radioactive materials.  (There is an additional concern - the generation of nearly pure plutonium-239 as a by-product during the early life of a nuclear power plant, which is addressed later in this section.)

Nuclear proliferation risk from enriching highly radioactive materials
The main way most nuclear power reactors work starts with placing uranium-235 in the main reactor chamber.  This type of uranium is radioactive, and when an atom of it is struck by a neutron it will break into smaller components and release more neutrons.  This process also releases heat, which is used to generate power.  To do this effectively and efficiently, the reactor requires enough uranium-235 to generate sufficient power.  But, too uranium-235 is not helpful, because the efficiency of turning the heat into electricity drops.

The amount of naturally occurring uranium-235 found in uranium mines is roughly 0.7%.  This is not sufficient to use in a nuclear power plant.  Consequently, the uranium must be enriched, increasing the relative amount of the radioactive uranium-235.  For a nuclear power plant, the ideal amount is typically 4% uranium-235.  This is referred to as low-enriched uranium, LEU.   LEU is also good material to use for nuclear power since it cannot itself be used to make a nuclear bomb.

The problem is that the same technology used to enrich uranium to become LEU can be repeated using the now enriched material.  The result is that anyone who can enrich uranium to LEU, can further enrich it to become 40%, 60%, 80%, or even higher uranium-235.  They can make highly enriched uranium, HEU.  And, unfortunately, the easiest way to make a nuclear bomb is using HEU.

There is A LOT of highly enriched uranium and plutonium at civilian sites around the world

Commercial nuclear power plants and storage facilities offer tempting targets for terrorists to burgle and steal highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium.  This is a problem because (1) large amounts of HEU and plutonium are currently located in commercial facilities; and (2) these facilities are not as securely guarded and defended compared to military sites.  

In many places, HEU and plutonium are both currently produced for civilian use.  Although there are only 8 acknowledged nuclear weapons states, 46 countries are known to have significant quantities of HEU.   Civilian manufacture of plutonium - which is not needed for nuclear power plants (see below) - is enormous.  More than 400,000 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium has been put in commercial storage sites, which exceeded military stockpiles in the year 2000.  According to the Nuclear Control Institute, at the current production rate, by 2010 there will be over 900,000 pounds of separated plutonium at commercial storage sites.¹ Recall, less than 18 pounds is needed to make a bomb equivalent to those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Global excess stocks of HEU and plutonium (not needed for current civilian or military use) amount to 532 tons, with total stocks amounting to 3,755 tons.² There are many more nuclear energy facilities than nuclear weapons facilities around the world.  These storage sites are even less secure than military sites.  Combining this large number of facilities with their lower security may make the risk of nuclear materials theft from nuclear energy facilities greater than the risk of military nuclear materials or weapons theft.

PROBLEM: Much of the commercially made and stored weapons-grade nuclear material is not secured well and may be stolen by terrorists

This is a real security threat.  Already, over 600 pounds of plutonium are "unaccounted for" at civilian nuclear power plants - sufficient to make many nuclear bombs.  Over 65 pounds was lost just in the last year in the United Kingdom alone.  ³ Nobody knows where the missing plutonium is.  Hopefully it is not already in the hands of terrorists.

A particularly worrying attack on a nuclear facility recently took place in November, 2007 at South Africa's Pelindaba nuclear facility.  As reported in the Washington Post, ⁴

Worse, actual commercial trade of HEU and plutonium is even more risky, since it is even easier to attack a truck, ship, or convoy to steal enough nuclear material to make a nuclear bomb compared to breaking into a guarded facility.

The mandatory security requirements of commercial nuclear power and nuclear storage facilities should clearly be able to withstand a well-coordinated, well-funded terrorist attack -- equivalent to infiltration or penetration attempts by a military Special Forces squad-level team armed with light weapons, non-military vehicles, and access to publicly available documents.  As shown here next, however, current safety requirements fall well below this mark.

As noted in the Background to Section 4(C), military nuclear facilities worldwide are currently vulnerable to attack or theft, and international standards on materials security are vague and have yet to be implemented.  The July 2005 Amendment to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials, and UN Security Council Resolution 1540 have been acknowledged, but have not been widely implemented.  Indeed, "the amended Physical Protection Convention and the Resolution do not have specific standards for nuclear materials security.  The Convention has a series of principles, which each country can interpret as it chooses.  The Resolution does require an 'appropriate effective' nuclear security and accounting system, but there is no agreement on what that means, and until there is, it will mean nothing." ⁵

In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) establishes standards for U.S.  nuclear materials security on the basis of a Design Basis Threat (DBT) requirement.  In 2003, the NRC updated the DBT for "formula quantities of strategic special nuclear material" (meaning fissile material usable in a nuclear weapon) as follows: ⁶

• Well-trained (including military training and skills) and dedicated individuals;
• Inside assistance that may include a knowledgeable individual who attempts to participate in a passive role (e.g., provide information), an active role (e.g., facilitate entrance and exit, disable alarms and communications, participate in violent attack), or both;
• Suitable weapons, up to and including hand-held automatic weapons, equipped with silencers and having effective long-range accuracy;
• Hand-carried equipment, including incapacitating agents and explosives for use as tools of entry or for otherwise destroying reactor, facility, transporter, or container integrity or features of the safe-guards system;
• Land vehicles used for transporting personnel and their hand-carried equipment; and
• The ability to operate as two or more teams.

Unfortunately, security at nuclear power generation facilities tends to be lower than the already inadequate security at the military weapons material storage facilities.  Even in the United States, "sites have encountered a range of problems in meeting NRC's [the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's] security requirements, including a force-on-force inspection in which the site had problems demonstrating it could defend against the revised DBT [Design Basis Threat]....  Twelve of the 18 baseline inspection reports and 4 of the 9 force-on-force inspection reports we reviewed identified problems or items needing correction."⁷

In fact, as reported in front-page news in the Washington Post, a video taken in 2007 at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant facility in Pennsylvania showed guards "were taking regular naps in what they called 'the ready room.'...  [the tape] showed the armed workers snoozing against walls, slumped on tabletops or with eyes closed and heads bobbing." ⁸

In the international arena, as with nuclear weapons facilities, while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has published recommendations for the physical protection of nuclear material, "these IAEA recommendations are not very specific, and they are more rule-based than performance-based - that is, they focus on rules as to where there should be fences, locked vaults, and the like, not on how hard those fences and vaults should be to penetrate, or how well the overall system should perform (that is, what threats it ought to be able to defeat).  In particular, it is possible to comply with these recommendations without having any armed guards at all at nuclear facilities - even facilities with tons of separated plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU)." ⁹

But, it is also important to recognize that nuclear power production may be an important source of energy in the future.  And here is the good news: it is relatively straight-forward to make nuclear power plants safe from terrorists trying to make a nuclear bomb.  

How?

THE ANSWER

Fortunately, the solution for securing nuclear power materials is easy: materials usable for nuclear weapons are NOT required for nuclear power generation.  Nuclear weapons require Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) or plutonium.  But nuclear energy can be easily generated with just Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU).  LEU cannot be simply converted to HEU without a large, expensive and technically complex centrifuge system which would be beyond the ability of any known terrorist group to operate.

HEU and plutonium are not necessary for civilian use.  Indeed, nuclear power generation generally uses LEU.  And many HEU reactors previously used for research have already been successfully converted to LEU. The United States has already converted 31 foreign and 11 domestic reactors from HEU to LEU.¹⁰ The U.S.  has further efforts underway through a Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) HEU decommissioning program begun in May 2004, but that contemplates an outlay of $450 million over 10 years and only partial decommissioning of HEU reactors.  10 years is an unacceptably long time.  Implementation must be rapid and complete.  Terrorists will not wait, and they will strike at the most vulnerable target they can find.

In addition, it is important to distinguish between making the fuel for a nuclear power plant and using the fuel in a nuclear power plant.   The technology used to make nuclear fuel (enrichment technology) is very dangerous and poses a high risk to nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear terrorism.  The technology used to simply build and operate a nuclear power plant, however, is relatively safe in terms of nuclear terrorism.  Fortunately, enrichment is technically quite difficult and requires a large and easily detectable infrastructure.

So, to prevent nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, it is important to limit access to nuclear enrichment technology. A nuclear power plant does NOT need to be able to enrich uranium.  It only needs to be able to purchase LEU.   LEU is safe to buy and sell because it cannot be used to make a bomb without enrichment technology.  

You do NOT need to use highly enriched uranium in a nuclear power plant.  You do NOT need to use plutonium in a nuclear power plant.  Therefore, to reduce the risk of terrorists stealing nuclear material for a bomb:

1. Outlaw the commercial production of plutonium.  Remember: plutonium is NOT needed to generate nuclear power.  Producing plutonium commercially is simply a gigantic risk and an invitation for terrorists.  To accomplish this quickly, we call for shutting down all spent-fuel reprocessing and plutonium fuel programs within one year.   However, the federal government should provide funding to reimburse affected companies for their material losses and cancelled contracts.

2. Oppose the trading of highly-enriched uranium, plutonium and MOX.  Neither HEU nor plutonium is needed to produce energy.  Trading these materials provides the easiest target of all for terrorists -- while the nuclear material is being transported -- to steal enough weapon-grade nuclear material to make a bomb.  Moreover, legal trade encourages both the buyers and sellers to produce and use these dangerous materials, even though they are not needed to generate nuclear power (see point A above).  In light of these dangers, the United States passed the Schumer amendment in 1992 which effectively ended the commercial export of HEU from the U.S.1 Similar bans need to be applied and supported world-wide.
   
   For disposal of nuclear waste, only safe and secure dry storage shall be used.  Nuclear waste can be melted and mixed with ceramics and glass.  This process produces a solid, dry plug of material that can be stored in a secured underground warehouse.  Because the percentage of plutonium is so small, the size and weight of the rest of the plug is so large, and because the overall radioactivity of the nuclear waste is significant, it is difficult for anyone to steal and separate the plutonium.  Considerable technology, money, and time would be needed.  This material can be stored in a secure warehouse until its radioactivity level drops sufficiently for it to be safely buried, until the technology to permanently destroy the waste and its plutonium is developed.
   
   Other options including destroying the nuclear waste and conversion of the waste into new nuclear fuel, are not acceptable:

   • We do not know how to destroy nuclear waste economically or safely.  While hopefully a way will be developed in the future, current methods are costly, inefficient and result in creation of non-Proliferation Resistant materials.

   • Making new nuclear fuel from the waste requires reprocessing, or extraction of plutonium and uranium from the waste.  The plutonium is then mixed with low-enriched uranium or depleted uranium to make what is called mixed oxide fuel, MOX.  MOX fuel can be used in specially-built reactors, such as fast-neutron reactors, to generate electrical power.  This is very dangerous because the heart of this process relies on extracting plutonium-239 to purify it, which, if stolen, can be used to make a nuclear bomb.  Moreover, even after the plutonium has been mixed back with uranium to make MOX fuel, any terrorist organization able to make a plutonium bomb would have the skill to extract the highly-concentrated plutonium present in MOX fuel.  A related concept is the breeder reactor, which is designed to use LEU to generate power but also optimize the production of plutonium-239 for use as a nuclear fuel.  The use of breeder reactors thus similarly introduces and deliberately enhances the production of nuclear material that can be used to make a nuclear bomb - breeder reactors are not proliferation safe.  It is important to mention that both reprocessing fuel and the use of breeder reactors are not economically efficient and produce energy at costs significantly higher than safe, standard LEU reactors.  A recent Harvard study concluded that "reprocessing would increase spent fuel management costs by roughly 80%, compared to once-through approaches, even making a number of assumptions that were quite favorable to reprocessing."¹¹ Many studies have reached similar conclusions, including studies conducted by the governments of France and Japan.

3. Create an international fuel bank that can be used to supply fuel to nations that wish to build and use nuclear power plants, while also ensuring that the enrichment facilities used to make the fuel for the fuel bank are highly secure, use only produce proliferation-resistant fuel (such as LEU), have regular multinational and international inspections, and be located in countries that already have enrichment technology.  Such a program would provide LEU to any country that wishes to generate nuclear power, but strictly restrain the spread of uranium enrichment technology to prevent the spread of the ability to make nuclear bombs.

4. Increase the mandatory security requirements of commercial nuclear power and nuclear storage facilities.

   For existing stockpiles, both domestic and international, security should be the same as for nuclear weapons materials.  "Because the most difficult part of making a nuclear bomb is acquiring the nuclear material, all weapon-usable nuclear materials should be treated as if they were nuclear weapons, and the highest standards applied to weapons should become the global norm for all such materials regardless of use or location."¹²

   Once nuclear materials are in the hands of terrorists, they are easily moved and easily deployed, and the threat is no longer confined to the nation from which the materials were stolen, but instead becomes world-wide.

   Both the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials and the IAEA standards must be made more specific and amended to include the DBT standards defined above, which are modeled on the NRC standards.  The U.S.  should provide funding to meet these standards, as well as accelerating compliance with its own standards.

   Compliance must be verifiable.  Inspection by other nuclear states will likely be unacceptable to certain nations such as the People's Republic of China.  Inspection capabilities should be concentrated within the IAEA, which is the accepted international body charged with nuclear inspections.  A team within the IAEA should be specifically trained in physical security vulnerabilities by Special Forces personnel.  In order to minimize the perceived threat to sensitive information, this team could be drawn from neutral, non-nuclear weapons states and trained by personnel from states with acknowledged Special Forces capabilities but (i) without nuclear weapons (such as Germany) or (ii) neutral, entirely non-nuclear states (such as Chile).

   Finally, the U.S.  must make clear at the very highest levels that failure to comply with these standards will be viewed as a grave threat to U.S.  national security, as will respond accordingly.

5. Any new nuclear reactor to be constructed must (i) use only lightly-enriched uranium, (ii) be designed around a waste plutonium disposal program, rather than plutonium reprocessing and (iii) be immediately compliant with security requirements at the time nuclear materials become present on site.  As Senator Sam Nunn recently pointed out (March 3, 2005), even "Director General El'Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called for a moratorium on additional facilities for uranium enrichment and converting existing reactors to low-enriched uranium - thereby cutting off the wide distribution of this bomb-making material around the globe."¹³