Iran has begun converting uranium ore as part of the process of uranium enrichment, the country’s top atomic energy official announced yesterday, defying the latest International Atomic Energy Agency resolution calling on the Islamic republic to halt all enrichment work (see GSN, Sept. 17). Iran has converted “some of the 37 tons” of uranium ore it has mined, said Reza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organization. “Tests have been successful but these tests have to be continued using the rest of this material,” he said (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse, Sept. 21). In a Saturday resolution, the IAEA’s Board of Governors urged Iran to “suspend all [uranium] enrichment-related activities,” among other demands. Iranian leaders quickly rejected the resolution. “We’ve made our choice: yes to peaceful nuclear technology; no to atomic weapons.” Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said yesterday during a military parade in Tehran. “We will continue along our path even if it leads to an end to international supervision” of the country’s nuclear activities (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 21). In Washington yesterday, a U.S. State Department spokesman accused Iran of engaging in an “unrelenting push toward nuclear weapons capability,” AFP reported. “It should come as no surprise that Iran has defied the board (of the IAEA) once again and announced it is producing uranium hexafluoride (gas), the material for centrifuge enrichment,” said department spokesman Kurtis Cooper. “The rush to convert 37 tons of yellowcake into feed stock for centrifuge enrichment has no peaceful justification,” Cooper said. “Iran has no operating nuclear power plants” (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Sept. 21). European Union officials warned yesterday that they would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, Reuters reported. The body however, remained committed to offering energy and other cooperation in exchange for Iran’s agreement to forego nuclear arms, said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. “I think we have to keep on doing the utmost in talking and dialogue. ... If we fail in that direction, we may have to resort to other mechanisms (such as taking the issue to the U.N. Security Council but) we prefer not to have to,” he said (Carol Giacomo, Reuters, Sept. 21). Libya, which last year renounced its WMD programs, Monday urged Iran to follow its example by heeding the IAEA call to stop uranium enrichment, Reuters reported. “As [IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei] said [yesterday], some things have to be fulfilled by Iran,” Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Matouq Matouq said after a meeting with U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Matouq cited Tripoli’s December 2003 decision to abandon weapons of mass destruction as an example for all. “Libya has set an example for everybody” (Reuters, Sept. 20). Iran has said the technologies it is developing, including uranium enrichment techniques and a heavy-water production facility, are for peaceful purposes. Aghazadeh said Monday that the heavy water project “is now going on.” He also announced that Russian Atomic Energy Agency Director Alexander Rumyantsev plans to visit Tehran “in the near future” to “work out and finalize” a fuel supply agreement for the Bushehr power reactor that Russia is helping to build in Iran. Russia has insisted that any agreement would require return of spent fuel to Russia, but the pact has been delayed for years. Financial and technical issues have caused the delay, Aghazadeh said Monday (Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, Sept. 21). Elsewhere, “war games” played by the CIA and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency led to the conclusion that attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities would not be effective in resolving the standoff with Tehran, Newsweek reported. “The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating,” an unnamed Air Force source told the magazine (Barry/Ephron, Newsweek/MSNBC, Sept. 27).
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — More than 90 nations agreed Sunday to support a U.S. initiative to reduce the vulnerability of nuclear and radiological materials worldwide. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) in May and received a broad endorsement for the effort during a two-day “partnership” meeting here (see GSN, Sept. 16). Abraham indicated Saturday that the United States would direct another $3 million toward initiative activities, adding to the more than $400 million already committed. The threat reduction initiative seeks to identify and secure potentially dangerous materials at international nuclear research reactors. In particular, the program seeks to prevent terrorists from acquiring fresh highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel — which could be used to create a nuclear weapon if enough were stolen — as well as spent reactor fuel, which could be used to make “dirty bombs.” The weekend meeting was jointly coordinated by the United States and Russia and held in the shadow of the adjacent International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters, as officials there discussed Iran’s nuclear activities (see related GSN story, today). The GTRI effort was described by one U.S. official as being “like motherhood: everyone is for it,” and a number of recent successes have bolstered its startup. In particular, the United States has financed or administered several missions to transfer fresh HEU fuel, from research reactors in Eastern Europe and central Asia, back to Russia, the original supplier. Despite these successes, implementation of the global effort poses daunting obstacles, according to experts here. The hurdles consist of an incomplete inventory of nuclear materials worldwide, the cost of implementing reactor security or conversion measures, and some nations’ resistance to surrendering materials they believe give them more international standing. The hopes for the program are ambitious. “The challenge we face in the 21st century … is not just a challenge related to securing dangerous materials,” Abraham said in his opening statement to the meeting. “Rather, the challenge that confronts us is directed at thwarting the aims of senseless killers, killers always searching for more treacherous means to sow terror and death.” To date, U.S.-sponsored missions have returned weapon-usable materials from a number of research reactors to Russia. These missions include the repatriation of 48 kilograms of HEU fuel from Serbia (see GSN, Aug. 23, 2002), 14 kilograms from Romania (see GSN, Sept. 22, 2003), 17 kilograms from Bulgaria (see GSN, Dec. 29, 2003), nearly 17 kilograms from Libya (see GSN, March 8), and most recently 11 kilograms of enriched uranium from Uzbekistan (see GSN, Sept. 14). In addition, the United States recently retrieved spent nuclear fuel assemblies it had provided to research reactors in Germany (see GSN, Aug. 13). More missions are expected in the near future, with Russia’s top nuclear official Alexander Rumyantsev announcing Monday that discussions were under way to remove fresh fuel from Ukraine and the Czech Republic, and that efforts to collect spent fuel are being negotiated with Uzbekistan and Serbia. These missions, however, have dealt only with known stocks of fresh and spent fuel. A looming problem might be to simply identify and locate all the nuclear materials in the United States and Russia as well as the material those nations have supplied to the world over the past five decades. “The first task we must undertake involves creating an official inventory of high-risk materials worldwide, which includes, but is not limited to, materials located at enrichment plants, conversion facilities, reprocessing plants, research reactor sites, fuel fabrication plants and temporary storage facilities. It also includes the kinds of material that could be used in a [radiological dispersal device],” Abraham said. This task would certainly be complicated at a global level, experts here said, but of more worry perhaps would be the initial problem of creating an accurate database of materials located in the former Soviet Union. “We are well aware of the location of research reactors and critical assemblies,” Rumyantsev said in a press briefing Sunday. However, two U.S. officials said that the movement of nuclear research materials was so pervasive during the Soviet era that Russia does not have a complete understanding of where the materials are today. An additional hurdle could be paying for the initiative on a global scale. The United States has so far funded the operations, but the plan calls for more expensive activities, such as converting HEU-fueled reactors to use lower enrichment levels. A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report noted that in the United States itself there are eight research reactors that could be converted to use low-enriched fuel, but so far no funds have been allocated for that work (see GSN, Aug. 2). Also hindering the initiative’s progress is the prospect that some nations could be reluctant to abandon their nuclear facilities, according to Bill Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. In Russia alone, Potter said, no research facility has completely parted with its highly enriched uranium. The Russian sites “do attach importance of certain kinds to the presence of HEU,” he said. Therefore, in applying that experience to other former Soviet states and the wider world, it is critical that U.S. officials work diligently to understand what factors are important — including financial and political — to both site officials and national leaders, Potter said. Despite these potential threats to the initiative’s progress, optimism abounded at the weekend meeting. Rumyantsev reported that 13 of the 17 nations with HEU-fueled research reactors have agreed to switch to low-enriched fuel. The remaining four face technical hurdles that will need more time to overcome, he said, but the problems would be solved. “Together with the U.S. Department of Energy, we will certainly bring this job to conclusion,” Rumyantsev said.
North Korea’s state news agency announced that the nation would not participate in nuclear talks nor consider dismantling its nuclear weapons program in light of recently disclosed nuclear experiments by South Korea, the Financial Times reported Sunday (see GSN, Sept. 17). “It is self-evident that the resumption of the talks can no longer be discussed unless the U.S. drops its hostile policy based on double standards toward [North Korea] and that the latter can never dismantle its nuclear deterrent force,” said the Korean Central News Agency. “What infuriates (North Korea) is that the U.S. has so far shut its eyes to the secret nuclear activities of its allies under its nuclear umbrella but has pressurized (North Korea) to accept (dismantlement),” said KCNA. The state news agency said it was unfair that all six countries taking part in the talks — China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia and the United States — either have nuclear weapons or the potential to develop them, yet only North Korea’s program was being discussed, according to the Times (Andrew Ward, Financial Times, Sept. 19). South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun met in Moscow yesterday with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss North Korea’s nuclear activities and other issues, Agence France-Presse reported. Senior officials in both countries agreed that “there is no ‘safe’ alternative to the regime of Kim Jong Il” in North Korea at this time, according to the Russian business daily Kommersant (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 21). Putin yesterday called on North Korea to resume six-party talks. “Our country has consistently called for a non-nuclear status on the Korean Peninsula and for the continuation of the six-nation negotiating process,” Putin said (AFP/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 21). Roh, however, said today that he saw no reason to “rush” talks and that he believed the U.S. presidential election was the main factor in Pyongyang’s decision to stall, Reuters reported. “It is important to take things one step at a time, not to rush things, and to stick to the principle on the question of North Korea’s nuclear weapons as long as the situation does not worsen,” Roh said. (Martin Nesirky, Reuters, Sept. 22). Meanwhile, a Chinese official yesterday expressed concern about the stalled talks, focusing on the “lack of trust” between the United States and North Korea, AFP reported. “From the current attitudes of the parties involved, there are major difficulties in the attempt to hold the meeting as scheduled,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan. “We’re worried but we won’t abandon our efforts to push all parties to display pragmatism, restraint and flexibility in their efforts,” he said (AFP, Sept. 21). After meeting in New York with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister for human rights Choe Su Hon, British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell said North Korean officials indicated they remained committed to taking part in nuclear talks despite refusing to set a date, CNN reported. “We do need to see positive steps by North Korea to come back to the next round of the six-party talks to set a date to start the program of disarmament,” said Rammell (Jonathan Wald, CNN.com, Sept. 21). Elsewhere, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday that he does not believe a reported explosion earlier this month on North Korea’s northern border with China was a nuclear blast, but is not “100 percent sure,” the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 17). Reports from agencies with devices that monitor explosions suggest “that it doesn’t look like a nuclear explosion,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said on CNN’s Late Edition. “I am leaving the door open,” he said. “I think I would like to go there. ... If North Korea would like to exclude that possibility completely, they would be well advised to allow us and other experts to go and inspect that. As long as we are not there, I cannot exclude that possibility 100 percent” (Associated Press/Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 20).
South Korea’s recently revealed nuclear experiments should be discussed at the next round of multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, China said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 16). Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said the South Korean experiments, which involved small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium, should be discussed at talks involving China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States. South Korea, however, has rejected such an idea, a senior official said today. “These experiments have no relevance to the six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program,” said Chung Woo-seong, a foreign affairs adviser to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. “The experiments were merely on a laboratory scale and the government had no roles in the experiment” (Agence France-Presse/Channel News Asia, Sept. 22). IAEA Conducts New InspectionsMeanwhile, a five-member team from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived Sunday at a South Korean nuclear facility to begin a weeklong inspection, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Sept. 16). The team traveled to the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, about 100 miles south of Seoul, and is expected to report its findings to the U.N. agency by November, AFP reported. The purpose of the inspection is to interview South Korean nuclear scientists, following the revelation of the country’s experiments involving enriched uranium and plutonium (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 20).
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — At a critical time for the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, the U.N. nuclear watchdog began its annual meeting Monday. This general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency is the first agency-wide meeting since the disclosure of a nuclear smuggling network led by a former top Pakistani nuclear scientist, and it follows nearly two years of international wrangling over how to respond to Iran’s advanced nuclear programs. The agency has taken criticism for not detecting or investigating those events earlier, and member states are scrambling to enhance the organization’s powers and to shore up the shaken foundations of the nonproliferation system. As the first plenary session opened, the Iran issue rose immediately to the forefront as agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei called on Tehran “to continue to accelerate its cooperation, pursuing a policy of maximum transparency and confidence building, so that we can bring the remaining outstanding issues to resolution within the next few months and provide assurance to the international community.” ElBaradei’s remarks were a bit softer than the agency’s Board of Governors, which Saturday cautioned Iran to improve its cooperation with the agency by the board’s next meeting, scheduled to begin in late November (see related GSN story, today). The United States weighed in a few minutes after ElBaradei. “As a party to the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], Iran accepted legally binding obligations. For nearly 20 years, it has acted contrary to those obligations, secretly building sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle facilities, and doing so for weapons purposes,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Iran responded in the afternoon with a statement asserting the nation’s right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy and vowing to continue to its efforts. As for the smuggling problem, Abraham introduced a proposal to help nations crack down on the ability of individuals, acting without state authority, to conduct nuclear trade (see related GSN story, today). Concerned about potential terrorist access to nuclear materials, both the United States and Russia yesterday praised a growing international partnership to identify and secure fresh and spent fuel at research reactors worldwide. Such facilities could be attractive targets to terrorists seeking to acquire materials for making nuclear weapons or dirty bombs (see related GSN story, today). While nonproliferation dominated the headlines here so far, the agency is conducting its routine administrative responsibilities of selecting officers and approving budgets. These activities highlighted the difficult balance the institution has faced from its creation in 1957: To assist nations to develop nuclear technologies — primarily for power and medical applications — while working simultaneously to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Demonstrating the dichotomy, ElBaradei’s 30-page statement to the conference discusses advances to nuclear technology for energy, agriculture, water desalination, cancer treatment, but these topics are followed by a report on measures to improve nuclear safety, security and nonproliferation.
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — Concerned about “individual profiteers” who can proliferate nuclear technology without their government’s permission, the United States on Monday called for a new international effort to prevent black market nuclear trade (see GSN, Aug. 12). “We must address the threat that individuals with access to nuclear material and technology may in some way or at some time be open to coercion, corruption, or compromise,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, speaking on the opening day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual meeting here. The risk is more than abstract. Early this year top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan reportedly confessed to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea (see GSN, Feb. 2). The United States has accepted Pakistan’s assertion that Khan acted without official authorization. “Individual profiteers, trading in nuclear weapons designs, technology, and equipment, make evident that the nuclear threat is not limited to sovereign states alone,” Abraham said. To combat the problem, Abraham proposed a collaboration between IAEA member governments and the nuclear industry “to ensure that export control laws are followed, and that there will be swift enforcement action when they are not.” The new “partnership” would “seek to find new ways to thwart the black market trade,” he added. This work would involve the full range of fuel-cycle firms, from uranium mine operators to manufacturers of dual-use nuclear equipment.
More than 40 countries may possess the technical knowledge to produce nuclear weapons, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned Monday (see GSN, May 25). In addition to the declared nuclear weapons states, some “estimates indicate that 40 countries or more now have the know-how to produce nuclear weapons,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in his keynote address to the agency’s general conference in Vienna. “We are relying primarily on the continued good intentions of these countries, intentions, which ... could ... be subject to rapid change” (see GSN, July 30). ElBaradei also suggested it was time to strengthen monitoring of nuclear activities, which until recent years has depended mostly on voluntary disclosure, the Associated Press reported. Uncovered or suspected clandestine nuclear activities over the past two years in countries such as Iran and North Korea seem to have prompted ElBaradei’s remarks, according to AP. The “relative ease with which a multinational illicit network could be set up and operate demonstrates clearly the inadequacy” of current nuclear export controls, ElBaradei said, referring to the nuclear black market revealed by the reported confession of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan (George Jahn, Associated Press/Miami Herald, Sept. 20).
A shipment of weapon-grade plutonium is now heading by ship from the United States to France, the Associated Press reported Monday (see GSN, Sept. 17). An armored ship carrying the materials and escorted by a second ship has left U.S. shores, according to U.S. officials, who would not specify when the shipment departed due to security concerns. Plans call for the plutonium to be converted into nuclear fuel at a French reactor, and then returned to the United States for testing at a commercial reactor. The United States does not have a conversion plant. Opponents say the transports create the potential for ecological harm or diversion by terrorists, AP reported. About 20 people waved signs along the Charleston, S.C., waterfront Monday to protest the move, according to AP. “This is really the wrong signal to be sending to countries around the world,” said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes said ample precautions had been taken to guarantee secure transport of the plutonium. “We’re confident this material will be fully protected every step of the way. Each [ship] is equipped with heavy weaponry ... and a specialized guard force. The people that are doing this have a lot of experience doing this. They’re not shipping oranges” (Jennifer Holland, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 20).
The United States has eased restrictions on technology exports to India’s civilian space agency and to Indian civilian nuclear power plants, the Financial Times reported Monday (see GSN, Jan. 13). The move, announced over the weekend, came six years after the United States imposed sanctions against India following its first declared nuclear weapons test, according to the Times. The two countries have also agreed to continue talks on missile defense cooperation, according to the Times (Edward Luce, Financial Times, Sept. 20).
Russia plans to soon conduct a new round of ballistic missile tests, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Monday (see GSN, Sept. 8). “There is a plan, and several submarines are already on combat duty,” he reportedly said during a weekly meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and top officials (Associated Press, Sept. 20). Meanwhile, the Dmitry Donskoy submarine is expected to test the Bulava solid-fueled intercontinental missile next week in the White Sea, according to a source at the shipyard upgrading the submarine (Interfax, Sept. 20).
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