By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — The United States today announced plans to declare 9 metric tons of plutonium in the U.S. nuclear stockpile to be excess to its defense needs and to convert the material into fuel for nuclear power plants (see GSN, Aug. 2).
The material is currently in the form of nuclear weapon pits, the basic nuclear explosive component of every U.S. nuclear weapon. The quantity is sufficient to produce more than 1,000 nuclear weapons, said U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, but he did not specify how pits would be converted in the program over a span of decades.
Bodman disclosed the plans in a statement today to the opening session of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual meeting. “The United States is leading by example and furthering our commitment to nonproliferation and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by safely reducing the amount of weapon-usable nuclear material in the world,” he said. “As the United States continues to reduce the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile, we will be able to dispose of even more nuclear material while increasing energy and national security.” In the mid-1990s, the United States assessed that it had 99.5 metric tons of plutonium under the control of the Energy and Defense departments, according to fissile materials expert Matthew Bunn at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. At that time, 52.5 tons of the material was declared to be excess to the needs of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Today’s announcement moves that quantity to 61.5 tons, according to Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration. That would leave about 38 tons in use for weapons programs, according to Bunn. “This is an important step in the right direction, but ultimately we need to do more,” Bunn said. “It still leaves enough plutonium in the stockpile for thousands of nuclear weapons.” Some studies have suggested that nuclear weapons need a minimum of 4 kilograms, meaning the United States would retain enough material for 9,500 nuclear weapons. That would be an amount well beyond the levels of strategic nuclear weapons the Bush administration has agreed to deploy under a strategic nuclear weapons agreement with Russia. The 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty commits both nations to deploy no more than 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons by end of 2012. In a different agreement inked in 2000, the United States and Russia agreed to remove a total of 68 tons of plutonium from their weapons arsenals, a deal that has seen slow and difficult implementation as the two sides have disagreed on whether to immobilize the material or convert it into nuclear fuel. Both routes would require the development of new technologies, whether they are methods to store plutonium safely for generations or to build power plants capable of using so-called mixed-oxide fuel, a combination of uranium and plutonium. The two nations, however, have committed to removing most of the material through the mixed-oxide method. Today’s announcement means the United States intends to dispose of more plutonium than Russia has so far agreed. “We’re hopeful our Russian partners will follow our example,” National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes told Global Security Newswire. How much of the 9 tons will exceed the 34-ton commitment remains unclear. The United States made that promise in 2000 without specifically identifying which material would apply to the deal. Original plans called for immobilizing much of the plutonium through vitrification — converting it to a glass-like material that could be stored for generations without deteriorating in long-term storage. The Bush administration, however, later reversed that policy and opted to dispose of the bulk of the plutonium by producing mixed-oxide fuel (see GSN, Jan. 23, 2002). That decision meant that some of the material previously considered for disposal could not be used because it did not meet the standards needed for conversion into fuel, Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said today. “Before today’s announcement, they didn’t have 34 tons to dispose of,” he said. “They need to add material to the excess stockpile to get back to the original agreement.” The Energy Department has done a poor job of identifying the quantities of plutonium it manages that could be used in mixed-oxide fuel, he said. Lyman has long been critical of U.S. efforts to explore the mixed-oxide option and today urged the Energy Department to study the expansion of a planned vitrification plant to see if the facility could dispose of the entire quantity of surplus U.S. plutonium.
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — The war of words over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has escalated this week, with a senior French official warning of war and the world’s top nuclear official urging all parties to allow his agency to further its investigation into Tehran’s past atomic activities (see GSN, Sept. 14). French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner yesterday sought to step up international pressure against Tehran, according to an Agence France-Presse report. Since admitting to a nearly two-decade old covert nuclear program in 2003, Iran has struggled to provide enough information about its activities to alleviate Western fears that the nation is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,” Kouchner said in a broadcast interview in which he described the current tensions as “the greatest crisis.” To address the crisis, France is preparing military contingency plans if the situation deteriorates in the future. “We are trying to put in place plans which are the privilege of chiefs of staff and that is not for tomorrow," he said. “We will not accept that the bomb is manufactured.” Iran today complained that the United States and some West European nations have been treating Tehran with a level of hostility that has prevented a resolution to the nuclear crisis. “Certain Western countries are not after the removal of ambiguities over the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, but are following the ‘Cessation and Depravation Policy,’” Iranian Atomic Energy Organization leader Gholamreza Aghazadeh told assembled delegates to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual meeting here. Menacingly, he warned that “the great nation of Iran has recorded your discriminatory behavior and performance in its memory and will not forget.” Western diplomats here have described IAEA leader Mohamed ElBaradei as feeling growing concerns over the past several months that the world is moving to a situation mirroring the uncertainties over Iraq’s WMD capabilities before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. ElBaradei expressed similar views in a press briefing today and urged Iran and Western nations to negotiate a resolution. “I have no doubt if the two parties sit together [and] start to discuss their grievances, this will be a much better way to move forward than talking about who is going to hit the other first,” he said. “I would hope that everyone would have heard the lesson, got the lesson after the Iraq situation,” he added, pleading for time for a new agency plan to learn about Iran’s past nuclear activities. Late last month, ElBaradei agreed to a “work plan” with Tehran to once and for all resolve continuing questions about the country’s past activities. The plan has drawn considerable criticism from Western nations (see GSN, Sept. 12). “We have been working with the Iran issue for over four years now,” he said. “Giving us the time of two to three months, and encouraging Iran in the process to work with us … would be a step in the right direction.” ElBaradei said his agency is an honest institution that seeks the truth and will not be intimidated by any party. “What I see right now is a lot of hype, it reminds me of a paraphrase of George Orwell’s quotation: ‘In time of hype, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act,’” he said. “I promise I can continue to be a revolutionary by giving the truth in an objective and impartial manner.” “We are not soft, we are not hard. We are not using a stick, we are not using a carrot,” he continued. “We are trying to be impartial and objective.”
Newspapers this weekend puzzled over the purpose of a Sept. 6 Israeli air strike inside Syria, reporting it as a possible attack against a nuclear installation receiving equipment from North Korea or a practice run for a strike against Iran, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 14). The New York Times last week first reported that Pyongyang might be helping Damascus to develop a nuclear facility. Other media outlets quickly picked up the story. An unidentified Israeli official told the London Sunday Times that the air strike eliminated a potential “devastating Syrian surprise for Israel.” “We’ve known for a long time that Syria has deadly chemical warheads on its Scuds (missiles), but Israel can’t live with a nuclear warhead,” the source said. The London Observer theorized that the attack could have been a “dry run” for a strike on Iran. The Observer reported that Israel’s Sept. 6 air strike sent the country’s most advanced F-15 and F-16 fighters through Turkish airspace carrying Maverick missiles and 500-pound bombs (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Sept. 16). An unidentified U.S. expert on the Middle East told the Washington Post that the attack targeted a facility labeled as an agricultural research center located near the country’s border with Turkey along the Euphrates River. The source said that the strike was connected to a North Korean shipment labeled as cement that had arrived three days earlier. The expert has spoken with Israeli officials involved in the raid. They said the belief was that the ship was carrying nuclear equipment, the Post reported. Israel believed that Syria was using the facility to extract uranium from phosphates and had carefully monitored the site, the expert said (Glenn Kessler/Washington Post, Sept. 15). In an interview on Fox News Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates declined to confirm reports that the Israeli strike was carried out against a nuclear weapons facility. “All I will say is we are watching the North Koreans very carefully. We watch the Syrians very carefully,” he said (Agence France-Presse). Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jafari last week dismissed the claim that Israel had targeted Iranian weapons shipments being transported to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, the London Independent reported Saturday. “This is blah blah," Jafari said. “This is nonsense, this is an unfounded statement. It is not up to the Israelis or anyone else to assess what we have in Syria. There was no target, they dropped their munitions. They were running away after they were confronted by our air defense” (Donald Macintyre, London Independent, Sept. 15). North Korea’s deputy U.N. envoy denied reports that Pyongyang was providing nuclear assistance to Syria, Reuters reported yesterday. “They often say things that are groundless,” Kim Myong Gil said (Reuters, Sept. 16) South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said today that there was no firm evidence supporting reports of North Korean involvement in a Syrian nuclear weapons program, AFP reported. “Nobody presents firm evidence while talking about the suspected North Korea-Syria links,” he said. “If Syria received nuclear materials from North Korea, it must have a facility to store them. As far as I know, Syria has no nuclear (storage) facility” (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Sept. 17).
North Korean officials told visiting experts last week that they would support a plan to disable the country’s nuclear sites to prevent them from resuming operations, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Sept. 14). Nuclear experts from China, Russia and the United States inspected the Yongbyon complex and then met with officials in Pyongyang. The Yonhap News Agency reported that North Korea appeared open to a disablement plan that would require “a considerable period of time” to undo should Pyongyang decide to resume nuclear operations. The Xinhua News Agency reported that meetings between the experts and North Korean officials resulted in a “detailed plan” on shuttering plants at Yongbyon. The visiting experts were also allowed to see a design illustration of North Korea’s primary nuclear facilities, a diplomatic official told AP. The official said Pyongyang “fully cooperated” with the visitors (Kwang-Tae Kim, Associated Press/NASDAQ.com, Sept. 16). The experts were expected to report their findings on North Korean nuclear disablement this week during a full session of the six-party talks in Beijing. However, that session has been delayed, Agence France-Presse reported. “The Chinese side has notified that the six-party talks will not open on Sept. 19, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said. North Korea apparently forced the postponement due to a delayed delivery of heavy fuel oil from China, the Yonhap News Agency reported. “It appears the North’s refusal is a simple protest against something it is not happy with, rather than to squeeze more out of the others,” said one official. It was not immediately known when officials from China, Japan, Russia, the United States and North and South Korea would gather for their next session, AFP reported (Jun Kwanwoo, Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Sept. 17). U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Friday that reports of North Korean collaboration on a Syrian nuclear program would not undo the effort to close the Stalinist state’s atomic program, the Washington Post reported (see related GSN story, today). “The reason we have the six-party process, and the reason we have put together a number of pretty serious countries in this process,” is to make sure that the North Koreans get out of the nuclear business,” said Hill, lead U.S. negotiator at the negotiations. “At the end of all this, we would expect to have a pretty clear idea of … whether they have engaged in proliferation in other countries” (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Sept. 15). Some experts said Bush administration officials opposed to the February deal on North Korean denuclearization — under which Pyongyang stands to receive energy, diplomatic and security benefits — might have spread the information on the Syrian situation in order to kill the agreement, AFP reported. “There is supposed to be an effort by some officials to torpedo the North Korean nuclear deal by portraying North Korea as a ‘proliferator,’” said nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione (P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Sept. 15). Meanwhile, the Kyodo News agency reported that top North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan recently acknowledged that his nation had purchased aluminum pipes that could be used to develop uranium enrichment centrifuges, according to AFP. Kim provided the information to Hill during a meeting earlier this month. However, he did not say that Pyongyang was conducting uranium enrichment. The identity of the nation that provided the material was also not immediately known. Washington for years has suspected Pyongyang of operating a secret uranium program alongside its known plutonium weapons effort (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Sept. 17).
The United States has not acquired passport numbers and other identifying data needed to fully enforce existing U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran even as the Bush administration advocates a third round of penalties on the country, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Sept. 13). Bush administration officials say they need the information in order to correctly direct sanctions against companies believed to be supporting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. The sanctions are intended to freeze the financial assets and limit international travel of 25 people and 25 companies named in the resolutions. Of those, the United States has imposed the mandated restrictions on two of the individuals and 17 of the named companies. “No one believes in these sanctions more than we do,” said one high-level Bush administration official. “We want to see them applied, not just announced. But there is the technical problem of getting the right identifier information that can pass muster in a court of law. Some European diplomats said the United States is failing to meet international obligations by not fully enforcing sanctions penalties, the Times reported. U.S. officials, however, said the trouble lies in acquiring the information, some of which is held by U.S. allied in Europe and the Middle East. The United States would risk restricting travel or freezing assets of the wrong firms and individuals if it does so without all the necessary data, the officials said. “We have been beating down doors to try to get the information to take these actions,” another official said. Most of the individuals listed in the sanctions resolutions have not attempted to travel, U.S. officials said. However, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard traveled to Moscow this year although Russia had signed on to the sanctions. European critics referred to a May report by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a watchdog group that follows Iranian nuclear and missile activities, which said that lax sanctions enforcement hurt U.S. credibility in its push for additional sanctions. “The United States now lags many other countries in enforcing sanctions that the United Nations has already voted,” the group’s Iran Watch program head Valerie Lincy said in a report on the organization’s Web site. “The lack of follow-through in Washington is baffling.” U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said that U.S. sanctions against Iran, which were mostly imposed following Iran’s seizure of U.S. hostages after its 1979 Islamic revolution, remain stricter than those of any other country (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Sept. 17).
Vietnam has returned about 10 pounds of weapon-grade uranium to Russia and has converted its sole civilian research reactor to use proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium fuel, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration said today (see GSN, March 20). Russia, the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency aided the effort, according to a press release. The uranium was placed into two Russian TK-S15 specialized transport containers under the supervision of U.S. technicians and IAEA safeguards inspectors. It was then moved under heavy guard from the Dalat reactor and flown to a secure facility in Russia where it is expected to be blended down to a low enrichment level. The National Nuclear Security Administration, an office of the U.S. Energy Department, provided $2.4 million and additional technical support for the operation as part of its Global Threat Reduction Initiative. The United States is also expected to fund new physical security measures at the Dalat site and improvements at other Vietnamese facilities and radiological sources (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, Sept. 17). The Dalat reactor is now expected to use 20 percent of low enriched uranium rather than roughly 36 percent of highly enriched uranium, Reuters reported today. Vietnam and Washington agreed in a March nuclear conversion pact “to protect materials that could be used for harmful purposes.” The Vietnamese Atomic Energy Commission that month pledged to the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it would repatriate Russian-origin highly enriched uranium. Vietnam expects to receive 36 low-enriched uranium fuel rod bundles by the end of 2007 in exchange for the 34 highly enriched uranium fuel rod bundles being returned (Reuters, Sept. 17).
By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — Eleven nations yesterday joined a U.S.-led initiative to promote the use of nuclear power internationally, a plan that is also intended to discourage developing nations from building their own nuclear fuel facilities that could be used to produce weapon materials (see GSN, June 27). Announced last year, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initially involved the United States, China, France, Japan and Russia. Yesterday, the five were joined by Australia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine. Senior officials from all 16 nations yesterday signed a statement of principles outlining the partnership’s goals, chiefly to “expand nuclear power to help meet growing energy demand in a sustainable manner and in a way that provides for safe operations on nuclear power plants and management of wastes.” The principles also include a nonproliferation component in striving to support the use of “facilities that do not separate pure plutonium, with a long-term goal of ceasing separation of plutonium and eventually eliminating stocks of separated civilian plutonium.” The program would still seek to recycle fissile materials created as uranium fissions in nuclear reactors, but would try to do so in a way to prevent plutonium from being easily separated and diverted to nuclear weapons programs (see GSN, July 24). The partnership has been partly spurred by the nuclear crisis surrounding Iran, which “has pursued military programs under the cover of civilian ones,” U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today in an address to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual meeting. Several officials described the partnership as a “viable alternative” to nations that might be considering developing their domestic nuclear fuel production sites. IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday strongly endorsed the partnership. “We need energy as an engine for development,” he told the partnership members yesterday. “Without development, there is misery, there is conflict, and there is war.” The demand for energy, Bodman said today, is growing rapidly. “In just 25 years, global energy consumption is expected to rise by over 50 percent,” he said. “At present, nuclear power is the only mature technology that can supply large amounts of emissions-free base load power to help us meet the expected growth in energy demand.” So far, the partnership has made all of its decisions by consensus, a key feature of its success, said one U.S. official. Sticking to that process could cause problems in the future, however, as the group grows and faces potentially controversial issues. The United States, for example, has not ruled out the possibility that energy recipients would not be required to be members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or to have IAEA safeguards over all their nuclear facilities, Bodman said yesterday. Those conditions had been mainstays of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policies until the Bush administration struck a nuclear trade deal with India (see GSN, Sept. 13). Asked at a press conference yesterday about what nonproliferation rules might apply to partnership agreements, Bodman said, “We have not reached any firm conclusions. I don’t want to speak in a dictatorial fashion in any way of responding. This is something that we decide by consensus within this partnership.”
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