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1
Introduction:
Task and Context
THE TASK
With the end of the Cold War, the world is faced for the first time with the
need to manage the dismantlement of vast numbers of "excess" nuclear
weapons and the disposition of the fissile materials they contain. If recently
agreed reductions are fully implemented, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons,
containing a hundred tons or more of plutonium and many hundreds of tonsi of
highly enriched uranium (HEU), will no longer be needed for military pur-
poses. These two materials are the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons,
and limits on access to them are the primary technical barrier to acquiring nu-
clear weapons capability in the world today. Several kilograms of plutonium, or
several times that amount of HEU, are sufficient to make a nuclear weapon.2
These materials will continue to pose a potential threat to humanity for as long
as they exist.
The task of managing this reversal of the arms competition is complicated
by the breakup of the Soviet Union and the continuing political and economic
~ Throughout this report metric tons (MT) are used as the measure of the amounts of plutonium
and HEU; all references to tons are to metric tons. One metric ton is 2,205 pounds, roughly 10 percent
more than an English ton.
2 For purposes of this study, 4 kilograms of plutonium per weapon will be used as a planning
figure. The minimum quantities of plutonium or HEU needed to make a weapon are not well defined,
since they depend on the design. Actual quantities used in U.S. weapons are classified.
19
OCR for page 20
20 INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT
crises in the former Soviet states. There are substantial risks that more than one
nuclear state could arise from the former Soviet Union, that the recently agreed
arms reductions could stall, and that control over nuclear weapons or fissile
materials could erode, increasing the danger that they would fall into the hands
of unauthorized parties. Urgent actions are required to secure and account for
these weapons and materials.
The task is pressing, but the solutions will be complex, expensive, and
long-term. The process can be divided into three distinct but overlapping
phases: dismantlement of nuclear weapons, intermediate storage of fissile ma-
terials, and long-term disposition of those materials.3 Figure 1-1 outlines the
policy choices at each stage; Figure 1-2 gives an idea of the time scales in-
volved. For each of these stages, critical policy choices must be made, with
wide-ranging implications for both arms reduction and nonproliferation. In-
deed, without new approaches to managing the reductions process, it is unlikely
that long-term U.S. arms reduction and nonproliferation objectives can be
achieved.
Dismantlement of weapons and storage of the resulting fissile materials are
already under way. Final disposition of the materials will take far longer to ac-
complish. The HEU from nuclear weapons can be blended to make a reactor
fuel that poses little proliferation risk and can return a substantial economic
benefit, but disposition of weapons plutonium is far more problematic; hence,
plutonium is the primary focus of this report. There are no easy answers to the
plutonium problem. Policymakers will have to choose from a variety of imper-
fect options, requiring inherently judgmental trade-offs among different cate-
gories of risks.
It will be more than a decade before any of the plausible options for long-
term disposition of weapons plutonium makes a substantial dent in the likely
excess stockpile. Most of the options would require 20 to 40 years to accom-
plish the task.4 Although use of HEU as reactor fuel could return a profit large
enough to pay for most of the tasks just described, all of the options for disposi-
tion of plutonium are likely to involve net economic costs, not net benefits,
because in the current market plutonium is a more expensive reactor fuel than
widely available uranium (see "The Value of Plutonium," p. 241. Thus pluto-
nium disposition is fundamentally a problem of security, far more than one of
efficient utilization of assets. Exploiting the energy value of plutonium should
not be a central criterion for decision, both because plutonium cannot compete
economically with uranium in the current market, and because whatever eco-
nomic value this plutonium might represent now or in the future is small by
3 The processes of retiring the nuclear weapons from active duty, disabling them, bringing them to
dismantlement sites (if necessary, from foreign deployment), and retiring or dismantling the launchers
involved are also critical parts of the arms reduction process, but are beyond the scope of this report.
4 Even in the simpler case of HEU, which the United States plans to purchase from the states of the
former Soviet Union for use as nuclear fuel, the planned transfer still being negotiated would extend
over 20 years.
OCR for page 21
INTRODUCTION: TaSK AND CONTEXT 21
Total Stocks '~Declarations & Monitoring (Reciprocal, Unilateral, None)
of Weapons & Agreement on Reductions, Limits on Additions (Reciprocal, Unilateral, None)
Fissile Materials Security and Accounting Improvements (National, Cooperative)
Weapons - ~Monitoring (Reciprocal, Unilateral, None)
Dismantlement
Intermediate
Storage
Technical
Intact Pits
Deformed Pits
Oxides
Ingots
Others
Indefinite Storage
Long-Term
Disposition
Minimized
Storage
Elimination
FIGURE 1-1 Phases of plutonium management
-
Institutional
Who Safeguards?
Who Protects?
Who Owns?
Who Finances?
Where Located?
Reactors
(without reprocessing)
Disposal
Vitrification, Borehole,
Seabed, Underground
Explosion, etc.
Reactors
(with reprocessing-includes
accelerator-driven reactors)
Disposal
Space Launch
Ocean Dilution
comparison to the security stakes. The cost of management and disposition of
weapons plutonium must be seen as an investment in security, just as the cost of
its production was once viewed.
All of the options for long-term plutonium disposition will require many
years to complete. Thus, storing this material is the only available near-term
option. The United States and Russia must quickly develop appropriate techni-
cal and institutional arrangements for dismantlement and storage, following
through on the discussions already under way. Judgments about the most desir-
able immediate approaches for these tasks must necessarily be based on condi-
tions that exist or can be readily foreseen today. At the same time, these storage
arrangements must be designed to endure for decades.
Planning for long-term disposition of plutonium will inevitably involve
more uncertain extrapolations of risks although because of the longer time
involved, it will also be easier to make corrections in planning over time. Thus,
this report does not provide a single definitive answer for the disposition phase
OCR for page 22
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OCR for page 23
INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT 23
of the plutonium problem. Instead it offers a road map, whose objective is to
provide guidelines for the necessary national debate to come and to focus fur-
ther efforts on those options most likely to minimize future risks. Such a road
map can help avoid wasting resources on options with little promise and can
provide plausible end points for the process that the near-term steps will set in
motion. Developing a broad consensus on such a road map deserves high
. .
pnonty.
OBJECTIVES
The primary goal in choosing options for management and disposition of
excess nuclear weapons and fissile materials should be to minimize the risks to
national and international security posed by the existence of this material. This
security goal can be divided into three main objectives:
1. to minimize the risk that weapons or fissile materials could be obtained by
unauthorized parties;
2. to minimize the risk that weapons or fissile materials could be reintroduced
into the arsenals from which they came, halting or reversing the arms reduc-
tion process; and
3. to strengthen the national and international control mechanisms and incen-
tives designed to ensure continued arms reductions and prevent the spread of
nuclear weapons.
In addition to these security objectives, all options must protect worker
health and the environment, and be acceptable to the public. Timing, which
plays an important part in whether the security criteria can be met, and consis-
tency with other policies and objectives will also be important criteria for
choice.5
Cost will inevitably also be an important consideration. The committee
notes, however, that the expenditures implied by all its recommendations com-
bined would total at most several billion dollars, spread over a period of a dec-
ade or decades. Since the primary objective is the reduction of major security
risks, these expenditures should be considered in the context of the far larger
sums being expended every year to provide national and international security.
Thus, cost should not be the primary criterion in choosing among competing
options.
The most immediate threat to all three of the security objectives is only
partly related to the management and disposition of excess weapons and fissile
materials. This is the possibility that more than one nuclear state may emerge
from the breakup of the Soviet Union. Ukraine is the greatest apparent risk.
5 For more detail on the criteria for choice, see Chapter 3; for more detail on how a regime Thor
management and limitation of weapons and fissile materials could affect the security objectives, see
Chapter 4.
OCR for page 24
OCR for page 25
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OCR for page 26
26 INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT
President Leonid Kravchuk, in the Lisbon Protocol of 1992 and an accompany-
ing letter, established a formal international commitment to denuclearization.
But that commitment remains the subject of intense debate in Ukraine, bringing
the implementation of current strategic arms reduction agreements into ques-
tion. In November 1993, the Ukrainian Rada voted to ratify the first Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty (START IJ without accepting the denuclearization
commitment, explicitly exempting more than half of the missiles on Ukrainian
soil from elimination. Efforts to resolve this issue are continuing, and
Kravchuk has said he will resubmit the agreement to a new parliament in 1994.
If Ukraine actually reversed its commitment and attempted to acquire an inde-
pendently controlled nuclear arsenal, the entire framework of nuclear arms
reduction and nonproliferation would be severely, perhaps fatally, damaged.
Security concerns may well be the driving factors in Ukraine's ultimate deci-
sion, but that decision could be affected by measures to ensure that weapons
and fissile materials transferred to Russia will not be reused for military pur-
poses, and to provide compensation for these materials.
Beyond that immediate issue, decisions about excess nuclear weapons and
fissile materials are likely to have far-reaching consequences for each of the
three security goals just described:
The Risk of Theft.6 Restricting access to fissile material is the principal
technical barrier to proliferation in today's world, far more so than access to the
information and technologies needed to build a weapon once the fissile material
has been acquired. This makes the task of securing weapons and fissile materi-
als critical.7 The risk that nuclear weapons or fissile materials could fall into
unauthorized hands whether through theft, sale, or other means-can be re-
duced by steps taken singly and jointly to keep strict accounting of these mate-
rials; to improve their security; to strengthen the organizations responsible for
their management; and to dismantle weapons and transfer the resulting mate-
rials into secure, monitored storage and ultimately to civilian use or disposal. In
addition, a well-designed regime to carry out such steps could provide a new
and compelling mission for the organizations once charged with producing
nuclear weapons, reducing the risks that control could erode.
The Risk of Reversal. Even after the START I and START II agreements
enter into force and the reductions they call for are implemented, as long as the
retired warheads and the material they contain remain in usable form, the risk
6 although in many contexts the term "diversion" is used to mean any case in which an
unauthorized party obtains a particular item, in the parlance generally employed in international
nonproliferation efforts, particularly by the International Atomic Energy Agency (L\EA), a distinction is
made between "diversion" and "theft." Diversion refers to the state that owns material under safeguards
removing it for weapons purposes, whereas theft refers to acquisition of these materials by other
unauthorized parties. This report follows that convention.
7 The current concern about North Korea's possible possession of several kilograms of separated
plutonium highlights the importance of tight controls over these materials.
OCR for page 27
INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT 27
will remain that one of the parties may decide to rebuild its nuclear arsenal in
contravention of its agreements and pledges. The retired weapons could be used
directly, or the materials from them could be used to fabricate new warheads.
This risk could be reduced by agreements designed to make such a rearmament
program more difficult, time-consuming, costly, and easily detected. These
could include agreements to verifiably dismantle the weapons, to create barriers
to reusing the resulting fissile material for new weapons, and to improve trans-
parency for the stocks of nuclear weapons and fissile materials.
Strengthening Arms Reduction and Nonproliferation. The current arms
reduction regime would be politically strengthened by appropriate measures to
increase transparency and cooperation in managing excess weapons and fissile
materials. Such measures would help convince doubters worldwide, including
those in the United States, Russia, and Ukraine, that the arms reduction regime
serves the interests of all parties. Credible controls and transparency would also
provide a critical foundation for pursuing deeper reductions, and for convincing
other nuclear powers to limit and reduce their nuclear arsenals as well.
Policy choices in this area will also have a major impact on the future of ef-
forts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons. The foundation of these efforts is
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is up for extension in 1995.
A critical question at the extension conference will be whether the nuclear
powers are fulfilling their disarmament obligations under Article VI of the
NPT.8 The current effort to negotiate a comprehensive test ban (CTB), along
with recent arms reduction agreements and pledges, should allow the nuclear
powers to make a strong case if these efforts are moving forward at the time
of the conference and are not derailed. Agreements for secure, safeguarded
management and disposition of fissile materials from surplus nuclear weapons
would make the case even stronger. Moreover, acceptance by the major nuclear
powers of safeguards and constraints on substantial portions of their nuclear
programs would help to reduce the inherently discriminatory nature of the
nonproliferation regime. These steps, while probably not dissuading all nations
that might be attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, would help build global
political support for indefinite extension of the NPT and strengthening the re-
gime, which are major U.S. policy goals. In addition, steps to improve control
and management of fissile materials from dismantled weapons could provide an
opportunity for taking similar steps with other fissile materials worldwide.
To achieve these objectives, the challenge of arms reduction should be
managed in a way that offers political support to both the arms reduction and
the nonproliferation regimes. In particular, approaches to these and other issues
involving the states of the former Soviet Union must avoid strictures so onerous
or one-sided that they provide new ammunition to domestic political opponents.
~ Article VI requires all parties to the treaty to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective
measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and
on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."
OCR for page 28
28 INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT
The future of civilian nuclear power depends on economic, political, and
technical factors outside the scope of this study. In some countries, nuclear
power programs already include the use of plutonium in the fuel loaded into
reactors. But the amount of weapons plutonium likely to be surplus is small on
the scale of global nuclear power use amounting to the equivalent of only a
few months of fuel for existing reactors-and this stock of weapons plutonium
is not essential to the future of any civilian nuclear development programs.
There is thus no reason that disposition of this weapons plutonium should drive
decisions on the broader questions surrounding the future of nuclear power.
THE CONTEXT: WORLD STOCKS
OF FISSILE MATERIALS
The plutonium and HEU resulting from arms reductions are only part of
the world's stocks of these materials, which include:
1. military plutonium and HEU in operational nuclear weapons and their
logistics pipeline;
2. military plutonium and HEU held in reserve for military purposes, in
assembled weapons or in other forms;
3. military plutonium and HEU withdrawn from dismantled weapons and
considered excess;
4. separated plutonium and HEU in storage in preparation for use in military or
civilian reactors;
5. plutonium and HEU currently in reactors;
6. irradiated plutonium and HEU in spent fuel from reactors; and
7. military and civilian plutonium and HEU outside the categories above,
including excess stocks, scrap, residues, and the like.
The problem of management and disposition of excess weapons plutonium
(category 3) is the focus of this report, but policy for it must take into account
the large stocks of plutonium and HEU in these other categories since, with
varying degrees of difficulty. they can all be used in nuclear weapons (see
Figure 1-3~.
~. ~
Although all but a small fraction of the world's HEU is in military use,
civilian stocks of plutonium are several times larger than the military stocks
and are growing much faster, by some 60 to 70 tons each year. Most of these
civilian stocks, however, are in the form of radioactive spent fuel from the
world's power reactors. The difficulty of extracting this plutonium declines
substantially as the radioactivity of the fuel decays over the decades after it
leaves the reactor. Some plutonium is being separated from spent fuel for use as
reactor fuel. Separation has outfaced use of this plutonium; roughly 80 to 90
tons of excess separated civilian plutonium is in store around the world today,
representing more than half of all the civilian plutonium that has ever been
OCR for page 29
INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT 29
-
~.
1992: 1 100 metric tons
U.S. excess
U.S. weapons and reserves*
U.S. scrap and residue
Russian excess
Russian weapons and reserves*
FIGURE 1-3 World plutonium stockpiles
U.S.
-
, ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ e
* ~ ~ ~ G
. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ·
2000: 1600-1700 metric tons
Russian scrap and residue
Separated civilian
In reactors and fresh fuel
~ Spent fuel
t~ Spent fuel > 15 years old
Russia
separated from spent fuel. That figure is expected to grow, as more civilian
plutonium continues to be separated each year than is used in reactor fuel.9
Several kilograms of separated weapons-grade plutonium and a somewhat
larger amount of "reactor-grade" plutonium a minuscule fraction of the world
stock-would be enough to build a nuclear weapon. Thus, the plutonium in a
truckload of spent fuel rods from a typical power reactor is enough for one or
more nuclear weapons. The plutonium stored at a typical civilian reactor site or
reprocessing plant is enough for hundreds of weapons.
Plutonium customarily used in nuclear weapons (weapons-grade pluto-
nium) and plutonium separated from spent reactor fuel (reactor-grade pluto
9 See David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, World Inventory of Plutonium and
Highly Enriched Uranium 1992, (London: Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1993); and Appendix B
of this report. The IAEA has recently estimated, based on reports from the member states, that 86 tons of
civilian separated plutonium was in store as of the end of 1992. This figure is expected to grow
substantially during the course of the decade. See J.S. Finucane, "Summary: Advisory Group Meeting
on Problems Concerning the Accumulation of Separated Plutonium," IDEA, Division of Nuclear Fuel
Cycle and Waste Management, September 1993.
OCR for page 30
30 INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT
nium) have different isotopic compositions. Plutonium of virtually any isotopic
composition, however, can be used to make nuclear weapons.~° Using reactor-
grade rather than weapons-grade plutonium would present some complications.
But even with relatively simple designs such as that used in the Nagasaki
weapon- which are within the capabilities of many nations and possibly some
subnational groups nuclear explosives could be constructed that would be
assured of having yields of at least 1 or 2 kilotons. With more sophisticated
designs, reactor-grade plutonium could be used for weapons having considera-
bly higher minimum yields. Thus, the difference in proliferation risk posed by
separated weapons-grade plutonium and separated reactor-grade plutonium is
small by comparison to the difference between separated plutonium of any
grade and unseparated material in spent fuel (see "Reactor-Grade and Weapon-
Grade Plutonium in Nuclear Explosives," p. 32.)
Unseparated material, however, also poses some risk. The chemistry for
separating plutonium from spent fuel is described in the open literature, and the
essential technologies are available on the open market. Although separating
plutonium on a commercial scale at competitive prices is difficult and costly, a
potential proliferator could use a much simpler and less costly facility to extract
enough material for a few weapons. Moreover, the intense radioactivity that
initially makes the fuel effectively impossible to handle without remote-han-
dling equipment decays substantially over the decades after the fuel leaves the
reactor. (See "How Accessible Is Plutonium in Spent Fuel?" in Chapter 6,
p. 150.) Plutonium, whether in "military" or "civilian" stockpiles, and whatever
its physical, chemical, or isotopic form, must be strictly safeguarded.
Although plutonium and HEU can both be used to make nuclear weapons,
there are several differences between them, of which two are particularly
important here. The first is that HEU can be diluted with other, more abundant,
naturally occurring isotopes of uranium to make low-enriched uranium (LEU),
which cannot sustain the fast-neutron chain reaction needed for a nuclear ex
plosion.~i LEU is the fuel for most of the world's nuclear power reactors. In
contrast, plutonium cannot be diluted with other isotopes of plutonium to make
a An exception is Plutonium-238 (Pu-238), which generates too much heat to make fashioning a
weapon from it practicable Pu-238 is a rare and difficult-to-produce isotope, however, used primarily
for powering certain types of space probes. Similarly, it would be difficult to fashion a workable weapon
of Pu-242, another relatively rare isotope.
unnatural uranium includes only 0.7 percent Uranium-235 (U-235), with almost all of the
remaining 99.3 percent being U-238, whose atoms will not sustain a nuclear chain reaction. (Isotopes
are different types of the same chemical element having differing numbers of neutrons 92 protons and
143 neutrons in U-235, and the same number of protons but 146 neutrons in U-238.) To sustain the
chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion, the concentration of U-235 must be greatly increased, a
process known as enrichment. Typical weapons-grade uranium is more than 90 percent U-235. Because
the various isotopes of an element are essentially identical chemically, enrichment of the fissile isotopes
requires techniques that are costly and time-consuming, and for which the technology is not widely
available-which provides one of the primary technical barriers to nuclear proliferation. Chain reactions
in power reactors, by contrast, can be and have been sustained with natural uranium, although most
reactors today use LEU containing 3-5 percent U-235.
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INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT 31
it unusable for weapons. "Re-enriching" LEU to the level needed for weapons
requires complex enrichment technology to which most potential proliferators
do not have access, while separating plutonium from other elements with which
it might be mixed in producing fresh reactor fuel requires only straightforward
chemical processing. Thus, management of plutonium in any form requires
greater security than does the management of LEU.
Second, as noted earlier, in the current fuel market, the use of plutonium
fuels is generally more expensive than the use of widely available LEU fuels-
even if the plutonium itself is "free" because of the high fabrication costs re-
sulting from plutonium's radiological toxicity and from the security precautions
required when handling it. As a result, although most of the world's roughly
400 nuclear reactors could in principle burn plutonium in fuel containing a
mixture of uranium and plutonium (mixed-oxide or MOX fuel), only a few, and
none in the United States, are currently licensed to do so.
Because of HEW's commercial value and the possibility of diluting it so as
not to pose major proliferation risks, its disposition can be addressed by the
market. The United States has agreed to buy 500 tons of surplus Russian HEU,
blended to LEU, for $11.9 billion over the next 20 years, provided certain con-
ditions are met. The United States will later resell the material to fulfill the
demand for nuclear fuel on the domestic and world markets. Although it is
possible that a purchase of Russian plutonium could also be justified on security
grounds, both the security aspects and the economics of using plutonium as
reactor fuel would be less attractive than in the case of LEU (see Chapter 5~.
RISKS AND STANDARDS
None of the policy options for managing the dismantlement of excess nu-
clear weapons and the storage and disposition of the resulting fissile materials
plutonium can entirely eliminate the risks these items pose. Standards must be
set by which to judge whether the remaining risks are acceptable. In the secu-
rity area, two complementary standards suggest themselves.
The Stored Weapons Standard. Options should be designed to avoid any
increase in the risk of proliferation as a result of arms reductions, which could
result if weapons and materials become more accessible to theft during the
processes involved in dismantlement, storage, and disposition. Thus, to the
extent possible, the high standards of security and accounting applied to storage
of intact nuclear weapons should be maintained for these materials throughout
these processes. The various processing steps will unavoidably make account-
ing more difficult than in the case of assembled weapons, and it may also be
institutionally difficult to preserve the strict security arrangements associated
with nuclear weapons themselves. But precisely because of the difficulty of the
task, it is important to preserve the goal.
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OCR for page 33
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34 INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT
The Spent Fuel Standard. Options for the long-term disposition of weap-
ons plutonium should seek to meet a "spent fuel standard" that is, to make
this plutonium roughly as inaccessible for weapons use as the much larger and
growing stock of plutonium in civilian spent fuel. Options that left the weapons
plutonium more accessible would mean that this material would continue to
pose a unique safeguards problem indefinitely. Conversely, the costs, com-
plexities, risks, and delays of going beyond the spent fuel standard to eliminate
the excess weapons plutonium completely or nearly so would not offer substan-
tial additional security benefits unless society were prepared to take the same
approach with the global stock of civilian plutonium.
This standard, if accepted, has a profound impact on the choice of long-
term disposition options. Approaches that would leave the plutonium in a form
substantially more accessible for recovery and use in weapons than plutonium
in commercial spent fuel can be rejected, and substantially costlier, riskier, or
slower options for eliminating the weapons plutonium or making it less acces-
sible than plutonium in spent fuel should be considered only in the larger con-
text of similar treatment of all of the world's plutonium stock.
Beyond the Spent Fuel Standard. The spent fuel standard should not be
interpreted as an endorsement of today's standards of management for pluto-
nium in spent fuel, however. Although substantially less accessible for use in
weapons than separated plutonium, plutonium in spent fuel does pose a security
risk, and that risk increases with time, as noted above. Further 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 (see Chapter 6~.
THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK
The institutional and political issues involved in managing weapons dis-
mantlement, intermediate storage of fissile materials, and long-term disposition
may be more complex and difficult to resolve than the technical ones. Because
disposition options will require decades to carry out, it is critical that decisions
throughout be made in a way that can muster a sustainable consensus. The en-
tire process must be carefully managed to provide adequate safeguards, secu-
rity, and transparency; to obtain public and institutional approval, including
licenses; and to allow adequate participation in the decision making by all af-
fected parties, including the U.S. and Russian publics and the international
community. Adequate information must be made available to give substance to
the public's participation.
These issues cover a broad institutional and technical spectrum. Establish-
ing fully developed arrangements for managing these tasks will require an un-
usually demanding integration of policy under conditions of dispersed authority
and intense political sensitivity. In the United States, jurisdiction over fissile
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INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT 35
material and fabricated weapons is divided between the Department of Energy
(DOE) and the Department of Defense (DOD) in different phases of the de-
ployment cycle. Each department has many subordinate divisions involved.
Related diplomacy is handled by the State Department and the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency, with input from DOE and DOD. Numerous other
agencies perform supporting functions. The relevant installations are author-
ized and financed by Congress, regulated by independent agencies and com-
missions, constrained by state laws, and increasingly affected by public opinion
in their surrounding communities. Policy debates too often focus on specific
options, such as particular reactor types, rather than the comprehensive view
required to make choices for this complex problem. The consequences of this
fragmentation are illustrated in a related area by the fact that technical assess-
ment of the U.S. high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain is incomplete
after two decades of work and billions of dollars of expenditure, and final
licensing is not projected for another two decades. These challenges to compre-
hensive policymaking are at least as great in Russia, where they must be
surmounted in the midst of continuing political and economic upheaval.
None of the governments involved have previously faced the problem of
handling excess plutonium in the quantities now contemplated, and none ap-
pear to have developed policies and procedures likely to be adequate to the task.
Yet decisions are urgent, since without new approaches even the near-term
tasks of dismantlement and storage are not likely to meet all of the required
.
security criteria.
In these areas, the United States bears a special burden of policy leader-
ship. If demanding technical assessments are to be completed, if consensus is to
be forged, and if implementation is to be accomplished in reasonable time,
major advances in the formulation and integration of policy and in institutional
coordination will be needed. The president should establish a more systematic
process of interagency coordination to deal with the areas addressed in this re-
port, with sustained top-level leadership. The new interagency examination of
plutonium disposition options envisioned in President Clinton's September 27,
1993, nonproliferation initiative is a first step in that direction, but much more
remains to be done.
THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENT,
SAFETY, AND HEALTH
The history of the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons complexes is replete
with instances where production in the name of national security took priority
over environment, safety, and health (ES&H) concerns. The result is a heritage
of environmental damage whose dimensions are only now becoming apparent.
Remedial actions are just beginning and will continue for decades. The United
States committed about $6 billion from the Department of Energy budget for
Fiscal Year 1993 for these purposes, and some estimates of the eventual cost
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3 6 INTR OD UCTI ON: TASK AND CONTEXT
run to hundreds of billions of dollars. In the former Soviet Union, the ES&H
damage appears to be even more severe.
In reaction to this legacy, new and stringent ES&H regulations are being
imposed on the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Environmental advocates are
seeking comparable requirements in Russia. These are dynamic standards, and
can be expected to change over time with increasing knowledge about long-
term effects and remedies, and with varying public awareness and willingness
to accept environmental risks.
Currently, ES&H requirements set the pace for each of the stages of dis-
mantlement, storage, and disposition. For example, new standards have roughly
doubled the time it takes to dismantle a nuclear weapon at Pantex, the U.S.
facility. The choice of intermediate weapons storage options and the time re-
quired to implement such choices are heavily influenced by the licensing and
approval process, including the extended safety and environmental analyses
required for each option.
Ultimately, these ES&H standards affect the ease and cost of achieving dif-
ferent disposition options and may have a significant impact on the choices
among them. This report does not attempt to evaluate the benefits and costs of
this evolving regulatory framework. Instead, for each option, the potential im-
pact of the ES&H framework is simply assessed as realistically as possible, as
one important factor guiding policy choices.
Fundamentally, ES&H and arms control seek the same goal: minimizing
threats to human well-being, whether from nuclear explosions or from envi-
ronmental and occupational hazards. It would be unfortunate, therefore, if arms
control and ES&H concerns came to be pitted against each other (as they have
become, to some extent, in the parallel debate over chemical weapons destruc-
tion). There are bound to be disagreements about specific issues among those
who bring differing perspectives to these problems. But the committee believes
that the goals of security and protection for ES&H can be achieved without
significantly compromising either objective. What is needed is a consistent,
risk-based approach that integrates ES&H and security concerns, and focuses
finite ES&H resources on the most urgent problems and the most promising
means for addressing them.
PLAN OF THE STUDY
The organization of this report reflects the goals and approaches described
above. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 set the stage. Chapter 2 describes the international
context in which policy choices with respect to dismantlement, storage, and
disposition must be made, including the crisis in the former Soviet Union, the
a~s reduction and nonproliferation regimes, ongoing civilian plutonium pro-
grams, and existing standards of safeguards and security for fissile materials.
Chapter 3 describes in more detail the criteria for judging policy choices. The
three stages of the process of reductions are described in the three "action"
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INTRODUCTION: TASK AND CONTEXT 37
chapters: Chapter 4 addresses dismantlement, and the related question of an
overall regime to limit and monitor the size of stockpiles of nuclear weapons
and fissile materials; Chapter 5 addresses requirements and choices related to
the storage of plutonium, and the related issue of measures to reduce the acces-
sibility of fissile materials in the former Soviet Union; and Chapter 6 discusses
the options for long-term disposition of the plutonium from dismantled weap-
ons. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the committee's recommendations.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
spent fuel
