Managing the Global Nuclear Materials Threat: Policy Recommendations

CIAO DATE: 06/02

Managing the Global Nuclear Materials Threat: Policy Recommendations

Sam Nunn, Project Chair
Robert E. Ebel, Project Director

The Center for Strategic and International Studies

Executive Summary

New Leadership to Reduce the Nuclear Threat: The Vision and the Immediate Priorities

Despite the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons continue to pose the most devastating security threat to Americans. Although the risk of a nuclear war destroying civilization has virtually disappeared, the risk that a single nuclear weapon might be used to destroy a major city has increased, particularly given the erosion of control over nuclear material with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nothing could be more central to international security than ensuring that the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons do not fall into the hands of terrorists or proliferant states. Effective controls over nuclear warheads and the nuclear materials needed to make them are essential to the future of the entire global effort to reduce nuclear arms and stem their spread. At the same time, ensuring protection of public health and the environment in the management of all nuclear materials�from nuclear weapons to nuclear wastes–remains a critical priority. Appropriate management of both safety and security worldwide will be essential to maintaining nuclear fission as an expandable option for supplying the world’s greenhouse-constrained energy needs in the twenty-first century.

The vision of global nuclear materials management is of a world in which all nuclear materials are safe, secure, and accounted for, from cradle to grave, with sufficient transparency to assure the world that this is the case. That is a daunting goal, which must be approached step by step, within a well-defined strategic framework. The Senior Policy Panel of this project has identified two key areas where the need for action is particularly urgent:

The Eroding Controls in the Former Soviet Union

The combination of insecure, oversized nuclear stockpiles and an underfunded nuclear complex in the former Soviet Union (FSU), managed with little or no international transparency, poses a severe threat to U.S. and international security. The possibility that the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and proliferating states is all too real, and immediate actions are needed to reduce this threat to the security of the United States and the world. The recent Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative is only the beginning of what needs to be done. We have developed a recommended action plan of urgently needed steps in this area.

A Withering Foundation for U.S. Leadership
Judged by any of a broad range of criteria, the infrastructure of U.S. leadership in nuclear technologies has greatly weakened over the last two decades. U.S. nuclear research and development (R&D) is dwarfed by R&D under way in other nations, the cadre of experienced personnel is dwindling, and nuclear engineering departments at U.S. universities are shrinking. The United States has virtually disengaged from international discussions and cooperation on the future of the nuclear fuel cycle. If the United States can no longer credibly claim a leadership role in nuclear technology or is seen as having no interest in the future of nuclear energy, its ability to lead in nonproliferation could be substantially undermined. Here, too, immediate action is needed to rebuild the R&D program, a cadre of experts, R&D facilities, and materials infrastructure to help provide the foundation for global leadership. Here, too, we have outlined series of steps for near-term action.

These are category 1 priorities for U.S. national security policy. As Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) recently put it: �The war against these �loose nukes’ and �brain drain’ threats is as important as any war in our history�it is a war that the United States dares not lose.� Major programs are under way to address these threats, and a small beginning is being made on rebuilding the U.S. nuclear technology infrastructure, but much more remains to be done. For the United States to address these issues successfully will require a sea change in the level of sustained, high-level leadership devoted to them–including the personal involvement of the president and the vice president. The five task forces of this study, some of which are described below, have outlined a rich menu of approaches that could quickly and demonstrably reduce the risks we face and increase the potential for continued U.S. leadership. The time for action is now. The costs and risks of failure to act are far higher than the costs of timely action to prevent disaster.

Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Theft and Laying a Basis for Irreversible Reductions

The Problem
Theft of just a few kilograms of plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU)– the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons–could allow a rogue state or terrorist group to acquire a nuclear capability, posing a severe threat to the international community. This risk is a global problem requiring global solutions. Today, however, the problem is most acute in Russia, where the world’s largest stockpile of weapons-usable material resides–more than 1,000 tons of HEU and plutonium, roughly half in weapons and the rest in a wide variety of forms distributed over some 300 buildings at more than 50 sites. Moreover, none of this material, whether civil or military, is under international safeguards.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing economic and political turmoil in the former Soviet states dramatically weakened controls over nuclear materials there. A nuclear security system built for a single state with a closed society with closed borders and well-paid nuclear workers has splintered among multiple states with open societies, open borders, and desperate, unpaid nuclear workers. Nuclear guards reportedly go unpaid for months at a time and leave their posts to forage for food; nuclear security systems go unmaintained or even unused for lack of funds; electricity that provides the lifeblood of nuclear alarm and monitoring systems is shut off for nonpayment of bills; and in several documented cases, kilogram quantities of weapons-usable nuclear material are stolen. In Russia, all this is taking place in a nation with a collapsing economy, rampant organized crime, and persistent corruption at many levels of government, where virtually every commodity is for sale if the price is right. Even the Russian minister of atomic energy has acknowledged that the reduction in Russia’s ability to control nuclear materials has been �immeasurable.� The Central Intelligence Agency has gone further, warning that the risk that potential bomb materials could fall into the hands of terrorists or proliferant states is higher than ever before.

At the same time, Russia has not yet downsized its Cold War nuclear complex. The complex is both oversized (which poses a risk to the United States because Russia could rapidly return to producing thousands of nuclear weapons a year, should circumstances change) and underfunded (which poses risks because the desperation of poorly paid workers creates incentives for sale of nuclear materials or nuclear knowledge, particularly when the barriers to proliferation are also underfunded). The Russian nuclear complex still includes 10 entire nuclear cities–cities built only to produce nuclear weapons and their ingredients–fenced off from the outside world and guarded by armed troops–but with a vastly reduced mission and collapsing budgets. It is in both U.S. and Russian interest to shrink this huge complex to a more appropriate and sustainable level, eliminating excess weapons production capacity while providing alternative employment for the nuclear weapons scientists and technicians who are no longer needed for stewardship of Russia’s stockpile.

Finally, Russia and the United States both still maintain very large stockpiles of nuclear weapons and the plutonium and HEU needed to make them. Just one of the Russian nuclear cities holds more plutonium and HEU than the arsenals of Britain, France, and China combined. These vast stockpiles are managed with very little of the transparency that would be needed to build confidence that they are safe and secure or to provide the foundation for deep, transparent, and irreversible nuclear arms reductions. (Transparency is also critical to ensuring that U.S. assistance is spent appropriately, and a number of steps toward achieving that goal have been successfully implemented.)

The Programs
The United States has put in place a broad range of programs costing hundreds of millions of dollars annually to help the former Soviet states in addressing these threats. These are briefly described in the report of Task Force I. Important efforts are under way at the Department of Defense (where the original Nunn�Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program resides), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of State, the Customs Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and elsewhere. These programs represent some of the most cost-effective investments in U.S. national security found anywhere in the U.S. budget and deserve strong and continuing support. Other nations have also contributed to the effort, although on a much smaller scale, and need to do more. President Bill Clinton’s proposal for an Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative recognized the importance of these threats and called for additional funds in some areas. Unfortunately, however, with respect to addressing the �loose nukes� threat, this proposal in essence only continues flat funding for programs that once had been planned to decline, rather than stepping up the level of U.S. efforts or launching major new initiatives. As outlined in the task force reports (particularly the report of Task Force I), enormous and urgent needs remain for additional efforts to address this security problem facing the United States, Russia, and the rest of the world.

The Partnership
Nuclear insecurity problems in the FSU can only be successfully addressed with a true spirit of partnership with the former Soviet states and their experts. Attempts to dictate specific Western approaches or impose solutions will inevitably fail in the long run and will undermine the prospect for intensified cooperation. Ultimately, if an expanded agenda of nuclear security cooperation is to be successful, experts from the former Soviet states will have to play central roles in its design and implementation.

The Constraints
The policy problem is to identify a set of actions that would make a major contribution to reducing these threats while, at the same time, being capable of gaining political support in the United States and in the former Soviet states, particularly Russia. Each of Task Forces I�IV describes different aspects of the difficult constraints that limit the prospects for expanding particular U.S.-Russian cooperative nuclear security efforts. Sour U.S.-Russian political relations in the aftermath of the air campaign against Yugoslavia may constrain what can be done in some areas– but this political reality also highlights the importance of new efforts to reinvigorate genuine cooperation in areas that serve both U.S. and Russian interests. Problems from widespread corruption to Russian efforts to tax U.S. assistance make it critical to put high priority on ensuring that U.S. taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately. Secrecy concerns–some legitimate, some overdrawn–limit access to information and facilities, restraining cooperation. (Despite the necessity of improving security for U.S. secrets in the wake of recent revelations of Chinese espionage, it is critical not to impose constraints that would limit cooperation between U.S. lab personnel and their international counterparts. Cooperation, such as ensuring that bomb material does not fall into the wrong hands, is critical to U.S. security objectives.) Commercial approaches to converting the Russian nuclear and defense infrastructure are hobbled by a combination of the problems besetting the Russian economy as a whole (including particularly daunting tax and legal obstacles to successful investment and business operation), the problems that have limited the success of defense conversion even in thriving market economies, and problems unique to Russia’s nuclear complex, particularly secrecy and limits on access to the nuclear cities. It is clear that government investment will be needed to help overcome these obstacles and leverage private sector funds.

The Necessary Next Steps
Despite these obstacles, the panel is convinced that the time is right for major new U.S. and international initiatives to reduce these critical threats to U.S. and international security. It is simply unacceptable to continue a situation in which lack of sufficient funding and senior leadership attention on the U.S. side are among the major factors preventing faster and more effective actions to reduce these serious security threats. The time has come to outline what it would take to reduce these threats as fast as it is realistically practicable to do so. Such a new program of fissile material threat reduction should focus on efforts to buy, consolidate, secure, monitor, and reduce weapons-usable nuclear material stockpiles; shrink the Russian nuclear complex; and ensure sustainable security for the future.

Buy. Buying Russian HEU–which, when blended to low-enriched uranium, is both proliferation resistant and commercially valuable — is the closest thing yet devised to a �silver bullet� for addressing the huge, complex, and multifaceted problems of nuclear security in the FSU. The U.S.-Russian HEU purchase agreement (covering 500 tons of HEU from dismantled weapons over 20 years) is converting thousands of bombs’ worth of weapons material to peaceful reactor fuel, providing a financial incentive for warhead dismantlement, giving the United States unprecedented transparency at several major Russian military nuclear facilities, and providing hundreds of millions of dollars a year to stabilize the desperate Russian nuclear complex, all primarily on a commercial basis, at minimal cost to the U.S. taxpayer. The panel commends those who worked successfully to achieve the recent government-to-government and commercial agreements to get this deal back on track. The U.S. government must place very high priority on ensuring that this deal continues to move forward in the future–an issue that is likely to arise again soon, as the current contract for purchases of the enrichment component comes up for renegotiation.

In addition to preserving the achievements of the past, however, the time has come to buy more HEU, and faster, in three ways (each is described in the report of Task Force I):

Offer to buy substantial additional quantities of HEU, with a portion of the proceeds designated in the contract to go to an auditable fund to pay for nuclear security in Russia–ensuring that nuclear guards and workers are paid, and security systems operated, maintained, and improved. As an initial step, this might involve an additional 50 tons, at a cost of roughly $1 billion, paid with government money, to be held off the market as a uranium reserve, as is being done with much of DOE’s uranium stockpile now (so as not to disturb the commercial arrangements for the original deal).
Seek to buy not only HEU from dismantled warheads, but the small, vulnerable HEU stockpiles located at small research facilities that can no longer afford to guard it–while providing assistance to close these facilities or help the research facilities pursue research that does not require HEU. Because the amounts are small (only a few tons in total), the cost would be small as well.
Offer to provide the needed capital investment and financial incentives to make it possible for Russia to blend all its excess HEU to non-weapons-usable form within the next few years–perhaps blending it first to an intermediate level such as 19 percent U-235 before later final blending and purification for sale. Rapid blend-down could address the urgent security risks while the material is released into the commercial market at the previously agreed pace.

Consolidate. New U.S.-Russian cooperative efforts to consolidate material at fewer locations should be accelerated and expanded. Consolidation is a critical priority, allowing greater security at the remaining locations to be achieved at lower long-term cost (although significant initial investment is likely to be required to make consolidation happen). One approach that ought to be considered is providing financial incentives for depositing the majority of Russia’s plutonium and HEU in one or more internationally monitored storage facilities (possibly with a similar facility being established in the United States for reciprocity). Facilities that already exist or are under construction (particularly the Mayak storage facility being built for fissile materials from dismantled weapons) could be used for such a program.

Secure. No matter how much material is purchased or transformed into nonweapons- usable forms and how much the remainder is consolidated, a substantial number of facilities in the FSU with nuclear weapons, plutonium, and HEU will remain. It is critical to ensure that all of these stockpiles are secure and accounted for as rapidly as practicable. The current cooperative effort to improve material protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) for weapons-usable nuclear material in the FSU is making good progress and deserves strong support (although a variety of issues continue to arise that constrain cooperation), as do the much smaller efforts of several other countries, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the European Union. Nevertheless, the panel is convinced that substantially more funding and more leadership resources are required to improve security and accounting for this material as rapidly as it would be practicable to do so, while simultaneously moving quickly on consolidation and on putting in place a truly sustainable security system for the future. DOE should develop and propose a program designed to reduce the urgent proliferation threats posed by insecure nuclear material as quickly as realistically possible, and Congress should give that program its support.

Monitor. As described in detail in the report of Task Force IV, increased transparency in the management of nuclear warheads and materials–with continued protection of legitimate nuclear secrets–is critical to a variety of objectives, from building confidence that warhead and fissile material stockpiles are being safely and securely managed to providing the foundation for deep reductions in stockpile size. Transparency is also critical to ensure that U.S. and international assistance is being appropriately spent. Unfortunately, a range of factors are likely to make progress on the possible transparency initiatives outlined in the reports of Task Force IV and Task Force I extraordinarily difficult to achieve in the near term. These factors include strained U.S.-Russian political relations, a reinvigorated Russian security service, the distractions of upcoming elections in both countries, and a renewed U.S. focus on protecting nuclear secrets that is eclipsing the potential security benefits of nuclear openness.

This proposed effort should by no means be abandoned, however, despite the recognition that transparency in nuclear weapons has limitations. The United States should, first, take steps to make transparency progress in Russia’s own interest, through offering strategic and financial incentives. Second, it will probably be necessary to begin with small steps, to rebuild the foundation for trust over time. For example, while the panel judges it quite unlikely that a complete warhead transparency regime could be prepared in time to be part of a Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) III treaty before the current U.S. and Russian presidents leave office, some initial exchanges and demonstrations of technologies and procedures might well be possible in that time frame if coupled with a broader package of incentives.

Reduce. The vast stockpiles of plutonium and HEU built up over decades of Cold War are far larger than needed in the post�Cold War era and must be reduced–converted to forms much less usable in nuclear weapons. These huge stockpiles will pose serious security risks as long as they remain in readily weaponsusable form. The former Russian minister of atomic energy, Viktor Mikhailov, once said, �Real disarmament is possible only if the accumulated huge stocks of weapons- grade uranium and plutonium are destroyed.� As arms reductions proceed, these stockpiles should be reduced in parallel to roughly equivalent levels in the United States and Russia. These levels should be suitable to support whatever agreed warhead levels remain but not large enough to permit a rapid return to Cold War levels of armament.

As noted earlier, the HEU stockpile can readily be reduced by blending with other forms of uranium and sold on the commercial market. Excess plutonium poses far more difficult obstacles, and it will inevitably be many years before all the excess plutonium has been transformed into forms that are no longer directly usable in nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the panel concurs with numerous previous reports on this issue–including the March 1998 CSIS panel report, Disposing of Weapons-Grade Plutonium–that reducing excess plutonium stockpiles as rapidly as practicable is a high priority. Plutonium disposition is in the unusual position of being a long-term issue requiring urgent action–in part because the U.S. Congress has made clear that it will not support requests for funding the construction of plutonium disposition facilities in the United States in the absence of substantial progress toward a clear commitment that Russian plutonium stockpiles will be reduced in parallel. While considerable progress is being made in U.S.-Russian discussions regarding such commitments, the fundamental issue of who will pay the more than $1 billion cost of disposition of the Russian plutonium remains unsolved. The United States, at the initiative of Senator Pete V. Domenici (R-N.Mex.), made a substantial step toward resolving this problem by appropriating $200 million for a first installment in fiscal year (FY) 1999.

In the panel’s judgment, the time has come for the United States to either commit to pay the full cost itself or reach agreement with other leading nuclear countries on an equitable financing scheme that will allow the program to move forward rapidly. Compared with the national security risk, the required funds are insignificant. First priority should be placed on ensuring that the material is securely stored and accounted for, converted to unclassified forms, and placed under bilateral and/or international monitoring.

Shrink. More must be done to shrink the enormous Russian nuclear complex to a sustainable size suitable for its post�Cold War missions and provide appropriate civilian work for the facilities, scientists, and workers who are no longer needed. The United States and the international community can help with dismantling or converting facilities once used for nuclear weapons missions and providing support for a variety of targeted efforts to create new jobs for excess workers. Russia itself, of course, must shoulder the burden of financing the maintenance of a smaller, safe, and secure weapons complex to provide stewardship for the reduced nuclear weapons stockpile Russia will surely retain. Task Force III outlines the obstacles to success in building a sustainable commercial future for these facilities but also provides a number of valuable suggestions for steps that could be taken. A substantial increase in investment, from both the United States and other leading industrialized countries, is likely to be necessary if these root causes of the nuclear insecurity problems in the FSU are to be successfully addressed.

Sustain. U.S. and international financial assistance for nuclear security in the FSU will not, and should not, last forever. Ultimately, the former Soviet states will bear the full burden of ensuring safety and security for all their nuclear materials themselves. U.S. and international efforts to work with the former Soviet states to build these states’ own capacity to provide sustainable security over the long run must be radically increased. In particular, given the grave continuing economic difficulties in many of these states, intensive efforts are needed to identify new revenue streams that could support nuclear security activities, both immediately and after international assistance ends–from MPC&A to disposition of excess plutonium. One possibility, addressed in detail in the report of Task Force II, is to use revenue from the establishment of an international facility for storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel, in Russia or elsewhere. Task Force II clearly outlines the substantial obstacles still facing such proposals–but also describes some of the incentives for moving forward with such an effort. It suggests that the United States should be prepared to outline the criteria such concepts would have to meet to win U.S. support (which will be essential for such facilities to receive any of the large fraction of the world’s spent fuel over which the United States has consent rights). In addition to offering the potential for substantial revenue to support nonproliferation and cleanup in the FSU, an international storage or disposal facility would offer substantial additional benefits as well, including offering a proliferation-resistant way to manage growing global inventories for spent fuel.

The Role of the Private Sector
Commercial industry–particularly the nuclear industry–has an essential part to play in addressing many of these issues, bringing expertise, experience, and entrepreneurial energy to the table. But as Task Force III points out, the private sector cannot do the job alone: the obstacles and risks to commercial success in many of these areas are too great, and the avenues for potential profit too few. Government funding will be necessary to fund some of these efforts in their entirety, and others in part. Government funding should be targeted to areas that must remain in government control and those areas where government support can overcome obstacles and manage risk, thus leveraging far larger flows of private capital. The private sector has a particularly critical role to play in the effort to provide alternative jobs for Russia’s excess nuclear workers and facilities and in the management of the vast excess HEU and plutonium stockpiles in the United States and Russia.

The Role of Other Leading States and Organizations in the International Community
Nuclear insecurity is not just a U.S. and Russian problem. It affects the entire international community. To date, the United States has done much more to provide funding to reduce these nuclear security threats than have other major industrialized nations. The panel believes that the time has come for leading developed states in Europe and Asia to increase substantially their contributions in these areas. Japan’s recent announcement of a new $200 million contribution to submarine decommissioning and plutonium disposition is a welcome first step in this direction. At the same time, it would be tragic if the possibility of larger contributions from other countries were used in the United States as an argument against providing U.S. funding for these extraordinarily cost-effective investments in U.S. national security.

The Need for Leadership
Reducing the nuclear threat before catastrophe strikes will require energetic and visionary leadership, pulling together a broad range of critically important initiatives into an integrated effort. A sea change in the level of sustained leadership from the highest levels of the U.S. government–including the president and the vice president–is needed. The panel recommends designating a senior, full-time point person for this task, with direct access to the president, as was recently done for reviewing U.S. policy toward North Korea. Preventing nuclear material from falling into the hands of states like North Korea or Iraq is certainly no less critical to U.S. security; indeed, the entire global effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons depends on it.

Beyond the Former Soviet Union: A World of Issues
As the name implies, the vision of global nuclear materials management is not limited to the states of the former Soviet Union. Although this report has focused primarily on the urgent needs for improved nuclear materials management in those states, there are key issues of nuclear materials management the world over that affect the safety and security of the international community, and whose mismanagement could undermine the future prospects for nuclear energy as an important potential contributor to the world’s energy needs in the twenty-first century. These key issues include management of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors, safe disposal of high-level wastes, efforts to ensure and improve the effectiveness of international safeguards, and steps to reduce the security risks posed by plutonium and HEU in the rest of the world outside the FSU (symbolized by concern during the 1999 air campaign in the Balkans over the fate of the weapons-usable HEU located at a research reactor in Yugoslavia). Greatly increased international cooperation –ideally with a reinvigorated foundation for U.S. leadership–will be needed to address these problems. Space does not allow a full exploration of these issues, but the panel believes that several key action items related to the global management of nuclear material should be highlighted:

The IAEA plays an absolutely central role in safeguarding nuclear material and working with states to improve its management worldwide. The IAEA’s workload has increased dramatically in recent years and will increase further in the future if efforts such as the negotiation of a fissile cutoff treaty and IAEA verification of nuclear material rendered excess by disarmament bear fruit. Having been limited to a zero-real-growth budget since the mid-1980s, the IAEA urgently needs additional funding, and the United States and other major nuclear powers should redouble their efforts to provide it.
Spent fuel storage facilities around the world are filling up; there is a compelling need for new leadership to help establish additional spent fuel storage facilities and increase the pace of progress toward establishment of permanent repositories. These could include both national facilities and regional or international facilities designed to serve the needs of multiple states. Resolution of the longrunning conflict between the U.S. government and U.S. nuclear utilities over responsibility and approaches for spent fuel management is essential to help repair the seriously damaged U.S. credibility on this issue.
As the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology has recently recommended, the United States should undertake a new international cooperative initiative to promote safe and proliferation-resistant spent fuel interim storage in both national and international facilities. The United States should be prepared to help make the case for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel as a safe and cost-effective near-term approach to spent fuel management, as well as provide technology and funding in some limited cases. The United States must also move forward expeditiously on completing the scientific studies and reaching a presidential decision on the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site for a permanent repository.

As described in the report of Task Force III, increased nuclear transparency is needed not just between the United States and Russia but for the international community as a whole. In particular, if nuclear energy is to rebuild the level of government, utility, and public support that would be required for it to grow substantially in the twenty-first century, there will be a central need to provide sufficient transparency to assure the public that its concerns are being effectively addressed, and that nuclear materials and the nuclear enterprises are being safely and securely managed.
n New steps are needed to ensure that plutonium and HEU worldwide, not just in the FSU, are secure and accounted for. Expanded international cooperation is called for to ensure that states are meeting international standards that effectively secure and account for all plutonium and HEU worldwide.

Rebuilding the Foundation for U.S. Technological and Nonproliferation Leadership

U.S. leadership on nonproliferation and safety issues (particularly as they relate to both the government infrastructure and civilian nuclear energy) is fundamentally linked to the strength of its technical foundation, to the perception of the commitment of the U.S. government to maintaining a nuclear power option for the future, and to the policy positions taken by the United States. Unfortunately, at the cusp of the twenty-first century and of a new nuclear era, with critical nuclear security issues around the globe crying out to be addressed, the United States has allowed the essential technical foundations of its leadership in nuclear nonproliferation and safety to atrophy and has greatly decreased its participation in international cooperation on nuclear energy and its fuel cycle.

Although the United States still has the largest number of operating nuclear reactors in the world, and reactors with advanced U.S. designs are being built and operated in Asia, no new nuclear reactor has been ordered in the United States for decades. U.S. government-sponsored R&D on civilian nuclear energy fell to zero in FY 1998 and is still at a historic low. The first generation of nuclear technologists is past retirement age; the number of students in U.S. nuclear engineering programs is plummeting, and 70 percent of those who do receive nuclear engineering graduate degrees in the United States are foreign. The United States is doing very little to help develop improved safety, proliferation resistance, waste management, and economics for the nuclear power of the future; and it has lost the lead in many areas of nuclear technology, notably test facility capability, nuclear plant fabrication and construction, and certain aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. The U.S. nuclear industry has been left alone to compete in a rate-deregulated market, without any credit for the atmospheric emissions its energy generation helps to avoid. With the end of the Cold War, DOE’s infrastructure for managing nuclear materials has shrunk, narrowing the options for dealing with the Cold War’s nuclear residues. Although current efforts to rebuild the U.S. R&D effort and technical base should be commended, they represent far less than what is required. The effective U.S. withdrawal from international discussions and R&D on long-term approaches to the fuel cycle in recent years has been particularly damaging to U.S. nonproliferation leadership.

The United States must plan for an international future that will have fewer nuclear weapons but more nuclear waste and more excess defense materials and that may see larger and more widespread use of nuclear energy. Halfway through the first nuclear century, we are at a time of enormous challenges, opportunities, and transition. How the United States responds will determine how it is perceived by other countries. The time has come for a clear statement from the highest levels of the U.S. government that the United States believes it is important to maintain the nuclear option as a potentially critical contributor to meeting the world’s energy needs, which will be constrained in the twenty-first century by potential controls on emissions of both traditional pollutants and greenhouse gases. At the same time, immediate actions are needed to rebuild the technical underpinning of U.S. nonproliferation and safety leadership. First is expanding the U.S. nuclear R&D program, so that the United States is involved in and understands the technologies whose safety and nonproliferation impacts it is attempting to influence, and so that it can be at the cutting edge in developing the safe and proliferationresistant technologies of the future. Second is rebuilding the cadre of nuclear experts who understand these technologies and experts in proliferation and safeguards who can help control such technologies. Third is providing the facilities required for these experts to carry out an effective R&D program and for safe and proliferation-resistant management of U.S. nuclear materials; such facilities are critical for maintaining a viable nuclear industry. Specific recommendations are:

Funding for nuclear R&D should be substantially increased and focused on the critical safety, nonproliferation, waste management, and cost issues that have constrained nuclear power’s growth to date;
Within that R&D portfolio, specific steps should be taken to reinvigorate the nation’s nuclear engineering departments and attract new students to the field (including a new generation of proliferation and safeguards experts), and to rebuild the infrastructure of facilities needed for such R&D;
Steps should ensure that the United States retains the infrastructure needed for an effective R&D program and for effective management of its nuclear materials;
A new initiative should be undertaken for international cooperation in such R&D, as recently proposed by the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, in recognition of the potentially important world role nuclear power could have in addressing global warming;
The United States should reengage in international discussions and R&D on safe and proliferation-resistant approaches to the fuel cycle. Finding ways to better utilize limited nuclear resources and ensure adequate fuel supplies for the long term would range from conceptual studies of more proliferation-resistant recycling systems to explorations of whether recovery of uranium from unconventional resources such as seawater may be viable;
Operators of nuclear facilities should place the highest priority on the safe operations of their plants and should work to reduce incidents that could undermine public trust in nuclear power;
Further steps should be taken toward a more risk-informed, performancebased nuclear safety regulatory process, and wasteful overlaps in regulatory jurisdictions should be eliminated;
Regulators should redouble their efforts to ensure that license renewals and reviews of changes in ownership of nuclear plants are handled expeditiously;
Final agreements should be reached on responsibility, financing, and approaches for storage of commercial spent fuel, pending availability of a permanent repository. Efforts to resolve the safety issues and address public concerns so as to allow a permanent repository to open should also be redoubled;
Appropriate public policy recognition should be given to nuclear power’s ability to generate electricity with zero emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, and particulates. Consideration should be given to allocating tradable emission permits equally among all generators of electricity–fossil, nuclear, and renewable–on the basis of power output, and thus giving nuclear and renewable energy sources credit for the emissions they avoid.

A Call to Action

The world simply cannot afford delay in addressing the urgent security hazards posed by nuclear insecurity in the FSU. There is little remaining margin for continued decay of the U.S. nuclear infrastructure if the United States is to be technically credible in nonproliferation leadership in the twenty-first century. The opportunities are there; an investment of a few billion dollars, properly applied, could dramatically reduce the risks the world now faces. Thefundamental requirement is leadership. The time to act is now — before a catastrophe occurs.

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