CIAO DATE: 06/02

Disposing of Weapons-Grade Plutonium

John Taylor, Project Chair
Robert E. Ebel, Project Director

The Center for Strategic and International Studies

Executive Summary

The Issue

This panel report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies considers an issue of critical importance to U.S. national security interests: Is the United States now pursuing a well-conceived and effective program of working with Russia to dispose of the vast amounts of separated plutonium that have become excess to the nuclear weapons needs of the two countries?

A Clear and Present Danger

Although the United States and Russia have made remarkable and encouraging steps toward political reconciliation and reducing their nuclear arsenals, they are now finding themselves awash in sizable stocks of excess nuclear weapons materials. It is most alarming that many of these stocks now exist in dangerously insecure conditions within Russia. Owing to acute funding shortages many sensitive nuclear facilities in Russia have been unable to provide effective physical-security systems. Moreover, the acute deterioration in the living standards of numerous nuclear workers and others in Russia has been creating serious risks of theft and corruption. For these reasons, there are now serious concerns that vast quantities of weaponsgrade nuclear materials now exist in a particularly vulnerable condition and that this situation is posing a grave threat to global peace and security.

These vast stocks are composed of both highly enriched uranium (HEU) as well as separated plutonium, and both materials pose a major security risk. HEU may be easier to use without testing in nuclear weapons, and there are strong incentives for reducing the excess stocks of this material on an accelerated basis. From a technical perspective, however, the risks associated with HEU can be readily reduced on a commercially viable basis by blending the material down to lowenriched uranium (LEU). LEU can be easily and economically used as a powerreactor fuel and also is difficult to reenrich to a weapons-usable form. Plutonium, however, cannot be made relatively harmless through blending, and other more complex and costly methods are necessary to make the material unsuitable or less attractive for reuse in nuclear weapons. Also, the costs of using plutonium as a nuclear fuel are currently higher than enriched uranium even if the plutonium is made available without cost. Moreover, neither the United States nor Russia has a complete infrastructure in place for either burning plutonium in existing reactors or immobilizing the material. For these reasons the issue of how best to handle the excess weapons-grade plutonium has proved to be the more difficult problem to cope with, and it is the plutonium that is the focus of this report.

The scale of the problem is daunting. As a result of arms control agreements and unilateral commitments, thousands of weapons containing hundreds of tons of fissile material are in the process of being dismantled by the United States and Russia. Substantial portions of these materials have already been declared to be surplus. Specifically, the United States has declared that more than 50 tons of plutonium and some 175 tons of HEU are excess to weapons needs. The recently announced Russian figures are 50 tons of plutonium and 500 tons of HEU. Many more tons of these materials may be released from weapons in the next few years.

The potential threats to these materials are now considerable owing to various new forms of risk that are emerging. For all its dangers, the Cold War competition took place within certain well-defined boundaries, characterized by strong regimes operating in static alliances (e.g., NATO and the Warsaw Pact). Today’s world is far less certain. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact no longer exist, and their demise has led to a loss of internal control that now exposes the extensive nuclear material stocks throughout the former Soviet Union to far greater risks of diversion. At the same time, the end of the Cold War has ushered in a tinderbox of regional and ethnic conflicts–from Bosnia to the Congo–that could become catastrophic with the introduction of nuclear weapons. Terrorism has reached an alarming scale, from the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings to Aum Shinrikyo’s nerve-gas attack in the Tokyo subway. Moreover, the technology required to build crude weapons of mass destruction can be obtained with increasing ease. The basic principles of constructing nuclear weapons have been broadly disseminated. This nexus of terrorism and more ready access to advanced technologies with major destructive capabilities have brought a new and alarming dimension to the threat of proliferation.

Further, there remain serious concerns within the United States, in Russia, and in the international community that the recent arms reductions that have been achieved or that are in process could be quickly reversed. By taking the correct kinds of action in disposing of the stockpiles of excess weapons materials, the United States and Russia can make very substantial contributions to ensuring the irreversibility of the arms-reduction process. Conversely, if the wrong kinds of decisions are taken or if no decisions are made, the dynamics of the arms-reduction process could be seriously impaired.

Many of these considerations prompted the National Academy of Sciences to raise a serious voice of alarm in 1994 that the vast stocks of excess weapons-grade plutonium as well as HEU pose a “clear and present danger” to global peace and security and that major measures need to be taken urgently by the United States to deal with this issue. The panel fully concurs in the academy’s assessment.

The U.S. Response to Date

To cope with these new challenges, pursuant to an initiative that President Clinton launched in 1993, the United States has undertaken a series of measures to monitor, protect, safeguard, cap, and ultimately reduce the global stocks of excess weaponsgrade materials that are now being created. As part of this effort the United States has been working cooperatively with Russia and other former Soviet countries to implement concrete measures to help assure that the inventories of sensitive nuclear materials in these countries are now brought under more effective control. By way of example these U.S. efforts have included

• A major and productive program to improve the physical security and accounting systems at more than 50 locations in Russia that are handling kilogram-size quantities of weapons-usable nuclear materials;

• The construction of a new secure storage facility for plutonium and HEU at the Mayak nuclear site in Russia;

• The conclusion and implementation of an agreement to purchase from Russia 500 metric tons of HEU, for conversion (through blending) to LEU, which is unsuitable for use in nuclear weapons but ideal for use as fuel in commercial nuclear-power reactors;

• An agreement to end the production of plutonium in Russia’s three remaining plutonium production reactors through a cooperative bilateral effort to redesign the cores of these reactors; and

• Efforts by the United States and Russia to give far greater transparency to the entire process and to subject the new stocks surplus of weapons-grade materials to international verification.

All these measures are extremely important to sustaining the overall armsreduction process, they merit very strong governmental support and increased funding, and their pace of implementation should be intensified where practical. This should include the pace for upgrading physical-security measures, for improving transparency, and for blending down the HEU being purchased from Russia.

With the exception of the HEU purchase, however, most of these actions focus on nearer-term objectives and measures. Accordingly, the United States and Russia have recognized that these steps need to be complemented by several additional steps that will safely dispose of the stocks of excess weapons-usable materials over the longer term.

Looking at the longer-term issues and, notably, excess weapons-grade plutonium, U.S. policymakers have agreed on the basic premise that any political and legal undertakings against military reuse must be clearly reinforced by major concrete actions that will be designed to enhance the “physical irreversibility” of being able to reemploy the material in nuclear weapons. This reflects the fact that, unless it is fundamentally altered, excess weapons-grade plutonium can be remade very rapidly into nuclear weapons. Therefore, in the interest of strongly reinforcing their arms-reduction efforts, President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin agreed at the Moscow Summit in 1996 that their respective excess stocks of weapons-grade plutonium should be made as resistant to misuse, theft, and proliferation as the many tons of spent nuclear-power fuel that already exist in several countries and that this should be done as rapidly as practicable.

After the summit agreement, and with President Clinton’s explicit approval, in January 1997 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a Record of Decision endorsing a “dual-track” approach for achieving this “spent-fuel standard.” Under this approach, one track would entail fabricating weapons-grade plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel to be irradiated in existing U.S. commercial light-water reactors with the view to reducing the plutonium’s vulnerability to theft by consuming some of the material. The second track would entail mixing the weaponsgrade plutonium with high-level radioactive wastes in an immobilized form (now determined to be ceramics) for eventual geologic disposal. DOE has so far suggested that it may immobilize at least 17 tons of excess plutonium that is in various forms that are unsuitable for fabrication into MOX fuel; however, DOE has not yet made any quantitative commitment as to how much of the total 50 tons will be fabricated into MOX fuel and then irradiated in reactors.

The DOE dual-track decision has stimulated some controversy within the United States because of fears that the MOX fuel route could stimulate the wider use of plutonium in the civil nuclear-fuel cycle. Also, a number of major hurdles have to be overcome to make the dual-track program viable. For example, some further technical developments are necessary before embarking on the immobilization route with ceramics. Accordingly, the panel was asked to consider whether the DOE dual-track program is soundly based, whether the U.S. government commitment to solving the problem is compatible with the gravity of the threat that the nation faces, and whether any significant measures should be taken to improve the situation.

Current U.S. Program Directions Are Well Conceived

The panel judged the January 1997 DOE decision to pursue a dual-track approach to plutonium disposition to be soundly conceived for several important reasons:

• The pursuit by the United States of two avenues for achieving the spent-fuel standard will provide the nation with important insurance that it will have at least one credible route available for converting the U.S. excess stockpile to the spent-fuel standard on a timely basis. Because each route faces some uncertainties and obstacles, the United States is enhancing the prospects of success by building redundancy into the program. Further, there is strong likelihood that the United States ultimately will decide actually to deploy the two routes together, using MOX fuel irradiation for pure plutonium and immobilization for those mixtures that are impracticable to fabricate into such fuel and, possibly, even for some fraction of the pure plutonium as well.

  Russia views any weapons-grade plutonium that will only be immobilized as being easier to reincorporate into nuclear weapons of existing design without testing than will plutonium that has been irradiated in reactors. Therefore, the pursuit of a MOX fuel irradiation approach as well as immobilization will send stronger and clearer assurances to Russia and others that the U.S. plutonium-disposition program will, in fact, be irreversible and impede any reuse of the surplus materials in nuclear weapons. As such, it will greatly enhance the prospects that Russia will move forward, in parallel, with a plutonium-disposition program of its own.

• The use of a dual-track approach will also be essential to assure that the U.S. disposition program receives the requisite support to succeed domestically and internationally. Because there are strong proponents of each of the two options, it is doubtful that the pursuit by the United States of only one alternative, such as immobilization, is likely to gain the requisite broad political support that the program will require over the next several years. Also, because Russia and the other interested P-8 nations are known to favor strongly the use of the MOX fuel alternative, the U.S. pursuit of a dual-track approach, which includes a MOX component, will greatly enhance the ability of the United States to cooperate with these other countries and to influence constructively the nonproliferation conditions that will apply to the Russian disposition program.

• The anticipated costs of the Russian and U.S. disposition programs, while measured in the low billions of dollars, are modest when one considers the important security benefits that will be gained by achieving the spent-fuel standard. Also, the likely cost and lead times of the MOX fuel and immobilization alternatives are roughly comparable, and the costs of pursuing two tracks in some combined manner are only incrementally more expensive than the cost of using just one approach.

• From a policy perspective, the administration’s dual-track decision is fully compatible with existing U.S. nonproliferation policy because it will serve to reduce the global stocks of separated plutonium that are vulnerable to theft or diversion. MOX fabrication and the burning or irradiation of some MOX fuel in this special instance would be aimed at converting already existing excess weapons-grade plutonium to a safer form and, as such, it would not involve the creation of any new separated plutonium. All the plutonium to be used as fuel in reactors would be irradiated on a once-through basis and there would be no reprocessing of the resultant spent fuel. Further, the plant that will be needed to fabricate the necessary MOX fuel would be decommissioned after the plutonium-disposition program is completed. Thus, the panel strongly agrees with the administration’s basic position that the dual-track decision simply does not constitute any form of U.S. endorsement of the broader use of reprocessing and plutonium in the civil fuel cycle.

  Finally, there also are ample grounds for concluding that the facilities that will be involved in the U.S. program can be effectively safeguarded to discourage any theft, diversion, or misuse of the materials. The U.S. government has indicated that it plans to establish at these facilities standards of physical security that are comparable with the effectiveness of standards used to protect U.S. nuclear weapons.

It should be noted that the panel has arrived at this unanimous endorsement of the DOE dual-track decision even though the panel membership includes individuals with varying views about which plutonium-disposition option might be preferable in the abstract. Several panel members strongly favor the MOX fuel alternative as offering greater arms control assurances since this route will serve to burn, or consume, some plutonium as a resource and degrade the weapons quality of the remainder, thereby reducing the prospect that any of the material will ever be reemployed in nuclear weapons. Others believe that the immobilization approach does not have the vulnerability of being misconstrued as a U.S. endorsement of the more general use of plutonium as a nuclear fuel in power reactors. All the panel members, however, have strongly concurred in the view that the administration’s dual-track decision was well conceived and should be strongly supported because it offers the greatest promise of success as well as the greatest promise of assuring that Russia will move forward, in parallel, with a major disposition program of its own.

Challenges and Difficulties

Notwithstanding the solid conceptual basis for the U.S. disposition program, it is disturbing that after several years of effort the United States and Russia are still primarily in a study-and-evaluation stage in determining their next steps. Some major delays have been encountered in getting the U.S. and Russian disposition programs moving and there are grounds for serious concern about whether the United States is devoting attention and resources sufficient to assure the success of the disposition effort.

• Most important, there has been little, if any, top policy leadership and coordination of the U.S. plutonium-disposition program within the U.S. government above the technical-management or office-director level, even though a number of serious political and financial issues meriting higherlevel attention still need to be resolved both within the United States and with Russia.

  For example, the United States still needs to develop a mutually satisfactory understanding with Russia about how the disposition programs in the two countries will move forward. The two countries still have to develop a suitable plan and agreement that will bind them actually to move to convert their stocks to the spent-fuel standard, and the two sides still have to agree to mutually acceptable nonproliferation conditions to apply to their disposition efforts. Few of these goals are likely to be realized unless the U.S. administration takes the issue far more seriously and devotes sustained high-level leadership and political attention to the program.

• There also is an urgent need to identify, in a systematic manner, ways in which the Russian plutonium-disposition program can best be financed, bearing in mind that the United States cannot be expected to finance its own disposition program and the bulk of the Russian disposition program as well.

• Without detracting in any way from the major goal of actually achieving the spent-fuel standard as soon as possible, policymakers need to devote much greater attention to two important objectives along the path.

  • First, as a matter of high priority, the two countries should start converting their excess stocks that are now in classified shapes (such as plutonium pits) to unclassified forms. The existing materials in these classified shapes can readily be recycled into nuclear weapons and cannot be placed under traditional International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards without compromising sensitive weapons information.

  • Second, in parallel with concrete on-the-ground efforts to reduce the vulnerability of fissile materials, we should pursue verified and early legal commitments against fissile-material reuse in nuclear weapons. These commitments may be achievable sooner than any excess plutonium stocks can finally be disposed of, but they should not be pursued to a degree that will slow down concrete actions that would reduce the vulnerability of these materials.

• By giving near-term priority to these two specific topics, the United States and Russia will be demonstrating their respective commitments to advancing the principle of irreversibility and will be achieving demonstrable advances in reducing the nuclear threat. This should prove valuable in engendering greater support with the Congress, the public, and the other interested P-8 countries for the U.S. and Russian plutonium-disposition programs. The conversion of classified shapes to unclassified forms will be an important intermediate step in the process but clearly will be no substitute for achieving the spent-fuel standard, which remains a desirable basic long-term objective.

• As another major challenge, the U.S. government also has to develop a more hospitable environment for U.S. industrial participation in the dualtrack program. This requires that the administration do a far more credible job in assuring U.S. industry that it is serious about pursuing the plutoniumdisposition program–both the MOX fuel and immobilization alternatives — in a determined, predictable, and vigorous manner. The active cooperation of U.S. industry will be crucial to the successful implementation of the MOX fuel option, but industry is facing major uncertainties as it considers the various overtures from DOE to join in participating in the program. Serious concerns have risen as to whether the DOE procurement process will be too onerous or cumbersome, whether the federal government will be adequately prepared to help industry deal with the public acceptance issues, and whether the anticipated safety reviews to be conducted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) can be handled in a predictable and timely manner. The DOE “Program Acquisition Strategy for Obtaining Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Services (PAS),” published on July 17, 1997, unfortunately did not convey the sufficient sense of urgency, from a national security perspective, that is needed for dealing with the plutonium-disposition issue. Moreover, it included several provisions that could delay by months or even years the accomplishment of desirable program goals. Although DOE has recently modified some of these proposals to make for more rapid progress, there is still substantial concern that the overall program is moving too slowly. These doubts have been aggravated by the fact that DOE has not yet committed itself to authorize any MOX fabrication and irradiation under the program and evidently does not plan to address this issue until a second Record of Decision is processed later in 1998.

  It also will be important to assure that strict nonproliferation controls and conditions continue to apply throughout the entire plutonium-disposition process and that they remain fully credible for both the immobilization and MOX fuel approaches. It will also be vital that the United States and Russia continue to collaborate closely with the IAEA to assure that their excess stocks of weapons-grade plutonium are placed under effective verification measures as soon as practicable. It will be important, in this regard, to assure that effective verification measures are endorsed early in the program and that they are integrated from the start in the design of any relevant new facilities.

• Last, in parallel with pursuit of the MOX fuel approach, DOE must also continue to pursue a vigorous, timely, and credible immobilization program, including full-scale demonstrations passing into a full-scale implementation program.

A Call to Action

In light of these considerations as well as the need to achieve more demonstrable progress, the panel recommends that the interested federal agencies–notably DOE, Department of State, the NRC, and the White House staff–should pursue the following specific actions as aggressively as possible.

1. Overall, the United States should pursue a more vigorous four-pronged integrated approach in bringing the excess stocks of plutonium and HEU under more effective control as well as in helping Russia upgrade its protective measures for all sensitive nuclear materials, whether they are of military origin or in the civil sector.

   • First, to help counter immediate threats, the United States should strengthen its various existing programs directed at assisting Russia and other former Soviet countries to upgrade their materials-accountability and physical-security regimes.

   • Second, the United States and Russia should enter into binding legal commitments that their stocks of excess weapons-grade material will never be returned to weapons and that they will place these stocks under bilateral and international verification measures as rapidly as practicable.

   • Third, immediate priority should be given to accelerating the U.S. and Russian programs aimed at converting classified excess plutonium shapes into unclassified forms.

   • Fourth, as a matter of high priority all necessary steps should be taken by the U.S. executive branch and Congress to help assure that the United States and Russia will undertake vigorous and well-defined programs to convert their excess stocks of weapons-grade plutonium to the spent-fuel standard as soon as practical.

2. As a matter of urgency the United States and Russia also should promptly develop a work plan, with specific schedules and projected budgets, for proceeding with their respective programs to convert their excess stocks of weapons-grade plutonium to the spent-fuel standard.

   The United States and Russia also should actively pursue talks aimed at concluding a formal new overall agreement or arrangement committing the two governments to convert their excess weapons-grade plutonium stocks to the spent-fuel standard and specify the quantities, schedules, approaches, and conditions under which they propose to carry out these activities. Every effort should be made to achieve such an agreement no later than mid-1999 so that it is in full force and effect before there is a change in the presidency in either Russia or the United States. Because it will take several years to actually begin the conversion to achieve the spent-fuel standard, the early development of such an intergovernmental agreement would significantly increase the credibility of the plans of Russia and the United States to convert irreversibly their excess stocks to forms not readily usable in weapons.

   For example, consideration could be given to having such a new agreement developed in two distinct stages. During the first phase the parties could promptly conclude a joint intermediate agreement or document that would reflect their agreement in principle:

   • to proceed with their respective plutonium-disposition programs as rapidly as practicable;

   • to pursue a dual-track approach in both countries because some of the material is suitable for use in MOX fuel while some might better be immobilized;

   • to work with each other and interested P-8 partners to develop appropriate financing and organizational mechanisms to foster the programs;

   • to accept jointly the application of a series of defined verification and nonproliferation measures to their respective disposition programs; and

   • to conclude a second agreement setting out the quantities, schedules, and approaches each country would use for the disposition of excess plutonium.

   This first agreement also could lay out the nearer-term milestones and programs the two countries would propose to carry out, including concrete test and pilot demonstration projects (such as the irradiation of lead test assemblies [LTAs]) designed to verify the technical as well as the institutional feasibility of the MOX irradiation and immobilization alternatives.

   The form of these proposals is less important than the central point. This material constitutes a “clear and present danger” to our national security and requires urgent action. Protracted diplomatic negotiations should not be permitted to impede concrete actions that will reduce the nuclear threat.

3. In the process of developing mutually satisfactory understandings with Russia, which will include cooperation on plutonium pit conversion, the United States should express its support of the Franco-German pilot MOX fabrication plant to be built in Russia.

   Russia also should be encouraged to build pilot-scale immobilization facilities; and the United States should participate constructively in the Canadian Parallex project, which is designed to help assess the feasibility of burning excess U.S. and Russian weapons-grade plutonium in Canadian CANDU reactors.

4. It is urgent that the P-8 countries seek to identify in a more systematic manner what kinds of mechanisms might be available to help Russia finance its plutonium-disposition program.

   As a proposed first step a special group of highly experienced financial experts (including representatives from international banks and financial institutions) should carry out an independent review of the differing kinds of financing mechanisms that might warrant further attention by the P-8 governments. Private investors, lenders, and financial experts should also be strongly encouraged to identify and take the lead in developing commercially viable funding mechanisms that might help the Russian program. However, because some collective governmental support by the P-8 countries might be required to assure the Russian program, it is important that these P-8 countries recognize fully that they have a strong collective security interest in seeing the plutoniumdisposition program in Russia move forward successfully. They should also recognize that the costs of reducing the current threats by achieving the spentfuel standard will actually be quite modest when compared with the security benefits to be achieved.

5. The DOE should take all necessary measures to help assure effective industrial participation in the U.S. plutonium-disposition program.

   As we have emphasized, the effective implementation of the program, and especially the MOX fuel alternative, will require the active cooperation of U.S. industry. U.S. companies, however, are likely to be cautious about entering into the needed long-term business relationships with DOE because of the serious delays that have occurred in moving the program forward and the unfortunate past reputation of DOE for canceling before completion several major projects. These negative perceptions of DOE will be reinforced if further serious delays are encountered in implementing the DOE procurement and decisionmaking process, or if the terms for private participation in the program are perceived as too onerous.

   Therefore DOE should aim its implementation strategy toward building greater confidence among potential industrial participants that the government fully intends to carry out the dual-track program in a resolute, predictable, and effective manner. It will be crucial for DOE to approve and issue its planned second Record of Decision on the program in a timely manner. DOE also should sponsor an aggressive LTA program, availing itself of whatever avenues (either domestic or foreign) promise to get the job done in a secure fashion, in the quickest time, and for the least money.

6. DOE and the other interested agencies also should initiate a far more aggressive program to explain the important national security benefits and rationale for the program to the Congress and the public, including the states and localities that might host some of the applicable U.S. plutonium-processing activities.

7. The NRC should promptly begin to implement its anticipated responsibilities under the program, possibly through the establishment of a dedicated NRC staff office for that purpose.

   All the evidence to date suggests that the proposed MOX fuels can be safely irradiated in U.S. reactors since this has been true now for several years in several European reactors. Thus there are strong technical grounds for being optimistic that the necessary NRC approvals will be granted on a timely basis. To assure that this occurs, however, and without compromising any safety considerations, the NRC should be strongly encouraged to expedite the licensing process wherever possible in recognition of the strong national security imperatives for prompt action.

   The NRC should make full use of the extensive environmental and other assessments that DOE already has prepared on the subject, it should focus its attention on safety and environmental issues, and it should avoid revisiting foreign policy and arms control questions that already have been thoroughly considered by the executive branch. Clear congressional directives along these lines should be included in the necessary legislation that will be required to permit the NRC to carry out its responsibilities under the program (in particular regulating those facilities that will be owned by DOE). Adequate funding should be provided promptly to the NRC to carry out this task.

8. Because the Russian program will require significant technical and financial assistance from the interested G-7 nations, a suitable international consultative body should be established among the prospective donor or contributing countries to help assure that their assistance is provided to the Russian Federation in a well-coordinated manner. The United States should initiate early exploratory discussions with Russia and the other P-8 countries on the merits of establishing an appropriate international entity that would monitor and assist the plutonium-disposition programs in Russia and the United States.

9. The quantity of plutonium that Russia and the United States agree to retain for defense purposes should be sufficient to support agreed numbers of nuclear warheads, but not enough to either reconstitute Cold War stockpiles or create an unacceptable risk of diversion. If reserves of fissile materials sufficient to support large-scale rearmament are retained in military stocks, the very important objective of achieving irreversibility in nuclear arms control, which has been endorsed by President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin, will not be achieved. In reducing military stockpiles, it also will be critically important to assure that adequate protective measures will be applied to the additional stocks of plutonium and HEU that are declared to be excess to the weapons needs of Russia and the United States.

10. The panel believes that this vitally important national security program will be achievable only with strong personal leadership from the president and strong active support by the secretaries of energy and state and the senior staff of the National Security Council.

    Far more aggressive leadership and support from within the administration will be needed to overcome the hurdles the program is facing. Moreover, far more aggressive and effective U.S. political leadership will be essential to better promote U.S. national security interests in the necessary ongoing negotiations with Russia and other P-8 countries. It will be crucial during 1998 to move the program to pilot-scale operations and then to industrial-scale commitments and operations.

    The panel recommends that a senior U.S. policy official with ready access to the president be given the key responsibility for overseeing and coordinating the entire U.S. plutonium-disposition program and that this official should be assisted and guided by a senior interagency working group of subcabinet officials. Moreover, the president should personally take all necessary steps to help assure the success of the U.S. and Russian plutonium-disposition programs and to underscore the importance that the United States ascribes to this effort.

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