A Deeply Flawed Fuel Bank docx

the fuel bank idea attempts to prevent recipient nations from further enriching the leu to make bombs, forcing them to give up their enrichment capabilities and submit to inspections, pr

P r O V i D i n G n A t i O n S w i t H e n r i C H e D

U r A n i U M w i L L n O t P r e V e n t P r O L i F e r A t i O n

i t w i L L P r O M O t e i t

A m i t A i E t z i o n i

A Deeply Flawed

Fuel Bank

there’s a new and troubling

idea afloat in the world

of nuclear proliferation

to ensure that nations will not

enrich uranium—a key element

in nuclear bomb production—they will

be provided with already-enriched

ura-nium nations that already have

signifi-cant enrichment capabilities, including

France, Germany, the netherlands,

rus-sia, the United Kingdom and the United

uranium to ensure the recipient nations are not dependent on the good will of any one nation, coun-tries will contribute to an inter-national nuclear fuel bank, regulated by the international Atomic energy Agency [iaea] or some other, yet-to-be identified international entity, from which recipi-ent nations could obtain enriched ura-nium Call it a fallback bank

the uranium provided will be

low-enriched, or leu, usually defined as

enriched to 20 percent or less of the fissile

isotope uranium-235, which is used for

energy-related purposes, rather than highly

enriched uranium, heu, usually defined as

90 percent enriched or more of uranium-235,

which is used to make nuclear bombs the

fuel bank idea attempts to prevent recipient

nations from further enriching the leu to

make bombs, forcing them to give up their

enrichment capabilities and submit to

inspections, preventing them from turning

their leu into heu in short, nations will be

able to build nuclear reactors and use them

for peaceful purposes without enriching

uranium, and the world will rest assured

that no nuclear proliferation is in the offing

the plan sounds good, but as is often

the case, a great distance separates the lip

and the cup two significant flaws exist—

one in its design and another in its

imple-mentation Both pitfalls make it likely that

outsourcing uranium enrichment will

actu-ally propel proliferation, rather than slow it

CorreCting a Flaw

Outsourcing enrichment corrects a gaping

hole in the nuclear non-Proliferation

trea-ty [npt]—a flaw that is acknowledged by

long-time experts in nuclear security (my

first books on the subject were published in

1962 and 1964) the treaty allows a nation

to build nuclear facilities, including those

needed to produce enriched uranium, as

long as these facilities are used for

non-mil-itary purposes But the treaty also permits

a recipient nation to give three months’

notice to the other parties and the Un

Se-curity Council that it is opting out of the

treaty—allowing it to take advantage of its fully developed nuclear facilities to manu-facture bombs this is exactly what north Korea did in 2003

Given that there are 189 parties in the npt, including countries such as iran, Venezuela and Myanmar, reaching consensus on modifying the treaty is about

as likely as getting all of the oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico to flow back into Deepwater Horizon’s well when the signatories do meet—once every five years—they have difficulty agreeing

on something as simple as the agenda typically, their efforts produce very little instead of vainly seeking to correct this detrimental flaw in the npt, nuclear experts who lose sleep over these matters came up with the idea that if nations could be cajoled, enticed and pressured not to build uranium enrichment facilities themselves (and instead purchase enriched uranium from other nations) the npt could work without correcting its core loophole in this way, if a nation genuinely committed to not enriching uranium and

to use its reactors merely for non-military purposes, it would have all the ready-made fuel it needed if it strayed, the supply could be cut off Moreover, if a nation quit the npt, it would not have enrichment facilities So far, so good

the SubStitution eFFeCt

the fuel bank idea, which for years was the main subject of position papers and theoretical discussions among experts, was implemented in the United Arab emirates in 2009 it is now being of-fered to other nations in the process,

Amitai Etzioni is a Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University and the author of Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign

Policy (Yale 2007)

the plutonium from used rods

in nuclear reactors in bushehr, iran, could be used

to make 30 bombs a year

the fuel bank faces two major challenges

that are almost never mentioned the

first concerns the used rods leftover in

reactors after the uranium is consumed

these rods can be reprocessed to make

plutonium-239, which can be used

to make bombs Plutonium warheads

are smaller than those that use heu

By some estimates, it takes 15 kilos of

uranium but only 4 kilos of plutonium,

or even less, to make a bomb So the

plu-tonium that can be derived from used

rods in the nuclear reactors in Bushehr,

iran—now fueled by russia—could be

used to make 30 bombs a year, according

to Paul Leventhal, former

president of the nuclear

Control institute this is

not just a theoretical

no-tion, but also an unlikely

development Making

plu-tonium is difficult, turning

it into bombs is far from a

cakewalk, and miniaturizing

the bombs adds further

chal-lenges But this is precisely

how north Korea developed

part of its stockpile of nuclear weapons

it is dangerously smug to assume that

just because iran has had difficulties in

proceeding with its nuclear program that

it will be unable to proceed in a similar

fashion the same holds for other nations

with a sizable industrial and technological

core Selling such nations processed uranium

just makes their journey to proliferation

easi-er, if this is the nation’s desired route

Fuel bank supporters are likely to

argue that the basic deal requires

recipi-ent nations to return sprecipi-ent fuel rods to

the suppliers Many reports simply take

this for granted, as if picking up

radio-active rods is akin to picking up a

pack-age at the post office Gerald Seib writes

in the Wall Street Journal, “By providing

the fuel, and taking away spent fuel, the russians have undercut iran’s argument that it has to do its own enrichment.”

Likewise, a State Department spokes-man tried to reassure critics by saying that Bushehr was “under iaea safeguards and russia is providing the needed fuel and taking back the spent nuclear fuel, which would be the principal source of proliferation concerns.”

One can also imagine that the ura-nium suppliers would cut off future supplies of enriched uranium if the re-cipient nation did not cough up the

used rods However, such

a nation still could use the rods to make a hefty batch of plutonium-based bombs before its ready-made uranium supplies run out it is not known how many years worth of uranium russia is provid-ing for iran’s reactors, but

a single rod, used for one year in a fully loaded reac-tor could make 30 bombs true, such a nation would need a reprocessing plant, which would emit krypton-85, giving away the plant’s location However, the international community can do little

to prevent iran from making

plutoni-um Furthermore, additional uranium supplies may be purchased from some other source (say, South Africa) during the construction of the recipient nation’s own enrichment facilities

the second major catch arises in the implementation methods for the fuel bank when enriched uranium is pro-vided to nations that already have enrich-ment facilities, but are in short supply of uranium ore or have only limited facilities

Brazil, when Colin Powell excused friction between the Brazilian government and the iaea by declaring that he was “sure” the Brazilian government was not pursuing nuclear weapons

this approach has two defects First, governments change One can readily imagine that the authoritarian and op-pressive Saudi regime will come to a sud-den end Moreover, the idea that there are

“good” governments that can be trusted with nuclear weapons and “bad” govern-ments that cannot is a dangerous concept Pakistan could fall to the taliban before you finish reading this text—and even before that, Jordan, which has abundant sources of uranium and is seeking nuclear power plants, could fall to the Palestin-ians even Brazil, which General Powell considered a reliable partner, has taken a rather sharp left turn in recent years Second, to some extent non-prolifera-tion efforts are based on what Brown Uni-versity professor nina tannenwald calls the “nuclear taboo”—the notion that good citizens of the international community develop neither nuclear arms nor the facil-ities that can be used to make them Once exceptions are allowed, it becomes more difficult to encourage other nations not

to follow suit And once one major power holds that it can make exceptions for its allies, other major powers can hardly be expected to be far behind indeed, China responded to America’s deal with india with its own deal with Pakistan, a very troubling development given the failing state of this country

VietnaM

Another exception for a trusted ally is the communist government of Vietnam, which

is also favored because it is considered a counterweight to China the United States

and skills, the bank’s uranium frees them

to use what they already have for military

purposes this substitution effect, as i

will show shortly, is a realistic risk

“truSted” goVernMentS

the United Arab emirates signed a deal

with the United States in January 2009

based on the outsourcing fuel bank

mod-el the pact, called a “123 Agreement,”

(named for the section of the Atomic

en-ergy Act that governs trade on sensitive

nuclear technologies) obligates the United

States to supply the UAe with uranium

for power plants, and the government of

the UAe agreed, in exchange, to forgo any

enrichment or reprocessing activities this

agreement also freed the UAe to sign a $20

billion agreement with South Korea in

De-cember 2009 to build four nuclear reactors

the first will be operational by 2017. 

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are reported

to be next in line together with the UAe,

these three nations have no uranium

enrich-ment facilities of their own, so the

substitu-tion effect is of no concern But, while the

UAe and Bahrain likely do not have the

wherewithal to make bombs out of the used

rods, the same cannot be said for Saudi

Ara-bia Several observers expect Saudi Arabia

will seek to develop nuclear arms if any are

discovered in iran the United States and

its allies, though, consider the UAe,

Bah-rain and Saudi Arabia to be trustworthy

governments, and are not concerned that

they will abuse their enriched uranium

sup-plies Gary Samore, special assistant to the

president and white House coordinator for

arms control, said recently that the “Gold

Standard” was applied to the agreement

made with the UAe, but from now on it

will be applied “selectively,” meaning that

other nations will be given more leeway

this notion came up before, in reference to

tor in Bushehr, on iran’s southern coast

russia says it will retrieve the used rods from iran, but it is unclear how this will

be enforced iran is short on yellowcake and enrichment facilities, so providing it with enriched uranium allows it to use the supplies it already has for military pro-grams (western powers offered iran en-riched uranium—but only if iran agreed

to shut down its own facilities.) Providing iran with enriched uranium is like pouring gasoline on a fire

After years of protracted negotiations, the United nations has concluded that iran is not living up to the international

obligations it assumed

by signing the npt

iran did not allow the kind of inspections needed to vet its claim that it plans to use the nuclear facilities

it is constructing exclusively for peaceful purposes indeed, the iaea, whose board comprises 35 nations—

including non-western nations such as russia, Malaysia, and Cameroon—has implied that iran is seeking to build nuclear arms Other observers hold that some of the facilities, for instance the one at Qom that iran tried to conceal, are suited only for making bombs And after much give and take, even russia and China agreed

to impose some additional sanctions on iran, albeit not the crippling ones the United States sought in this context, russia’s move has strong consequences

iran has difficulty enriching uranium and was reported, in April 2010, to

is negotiating an agreement with Vietnam

to provide it with nuclear fuel and

tech-nology—without the usual constraints on

uranium enrichment the deal has been

under discussion for several months

follow-ing Hanoi’s announcement that it plans to

build nuclear power stations over the next

20 years Vietnam signed an initial

memo-randum of understanding on nuclear power

with the Bush administration in 2001 and

the Obama administration has accelerated

these talks the United States and Vietnam

signed a new memorandum of

understand-ing in April 2010 over broad cooperation

on nuclear power, including access to

“re-liable sources of nuclear fuel,”

such as enriched uranium in

addition, Hanoi signed nuclear

cooperation agreements with

several other

countries—in-cluding China, France and

rus-sia—as sources for fuel

Henry Sokolski, director

of the nonproliferation Policy

education Center in

wash-ington, says that the United

States, by allowing Hanoi to

produce its own nuclear fuel,

undermines its deproliferation

efforts, along with the efforts

of those who seek to reverse

whatever proliferation has

al-ready taken place: “After the

U.S set such a good example with the

UAe, the Vietnam deal not only sticks

out, it could drive a stake through the

heart of the general effort to rein in the

spread of nuclear fuel-making.” At least it

fully violates the basic fuel bank precept

iran

On August 13, 2010, russia announced it

would supply low-enriched uranium fuel

rods to the 1,000 megawatt nuclear

reac-with russia providing uranium for some facilities, iran can enrich whatever

remaining yellowcake it possesses or is able to acquire for its weapons program

Office took the same position, saying that the “announcement underlines the fact that iran does not need to pursue these

oth-er activities to enjoy the benefits of nuclear power.” However, one wonders if the world needed such evidence, and whether it is worthwhile to enable iran to divert its lim-ited uranium assets to a military program

to gain public relations points

india

india is one of two nations that, though

it admits to having nuclear bombs and fa-cilities, has refused to join the npt the other is Pakistan (israel probably has nuclear bombs, but has not officially ac-knowledged it.) this reason alone should

be enough to pressure both india and Pak-istan equally into giving up their nuclear arms instead of pressuring india to dis-arm, the Bush administration moved in the opposite direction, providing Ameri-can aid to india’s civilian nuclear energy program and expanding U.S.-india coop-eration in nuclear technology, as india ne-gotiated its own 123 deal with the United States for peaceful use of nuclear energy Ostensibly, this assistance was to be used only for non-military purposes But by al-lowing the sale of uranium to india for its civilian reactors, the United States enabled india to move the limited supply of

urani-um it already had to military use (Before that, to make more nuclear bombs, indian power plants were operating at reduced capacity.) the Bush administration ratio-nalized these steps by claiming it would improve relations with india, considered the west’s best hope to “balance” China However, rather than creating a closer re-lationship between india and the United States, the deal remains controversial in india it took years of wrangling before it was finally approved in August 2010

be nearly out of yellowcake Because

russia is providing it with uranium for

some facilities, iran can enrich whatever

remaining yellowcake it possesses or is

able to acquire for its weapons program

equally important is that the rods

russia provides to Bushehr can be

processed to yield enough plutonium-239

to make about 30 nuclear weapons a year

(assuming the reactor is fully fuel-loaded)

Plutonium-239 can make much smaller

bombs than heu, so it is ideally suited for

iran’s evolving offensive missile program

russia announced that the deal entails

iran returning the used rods However

there is no realistic way to enforce this

agreement if iran refuses to release these

rods, the most russia can do is cut off

iran’s future supply this, of course, will

not prevent iran from using what it has

to make bombs or from getting uranium

elsewhere, such as from Jordan

On March 18, 2010, Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton stated, during a press

conference in Moscow following a

meet-ing with the russian foreign minister,

that russia’s deal with iran was

prema-ture, given the suspect nature of tehran’s

nuclear intentions By August, though,

the Obama administration had given a

green light to russia’s move in exchange

for russia supporting additional

sanc-tions against iran—although, again, they

were not as stringent as the Americans

had hoped it was like allowing someone

to deliver an ocean liner full of heroin—

but only after paying customs

white House spokesman robert Gibbs,

trying to put a positive spin on the deal,

stated that the reactor “proves to the world

that if the iranians are sincere about

de-veloping a peaceful program, their needs

can be met without undertaking its own

enrichment program.” the British Foreign

be excluded Hence supplying uranium

to india and Pakistan not only adds to the risks posed by these two nations (and

to the materials that terrorists may ob-tain, one way or another), but also

grave-ly undermines the already-weakening npt Moreover, the basic conditions of the fuel tanks are ignored—india is not even required to turn over the used rods nor to submit to inspection

the next chapter of this outsourced uranium saga will be set in Jordan Unlike india and iran, which are short on

urani-um, Jordan recently discovered that it has sizable deposits it has sought to sign a 123

Agreement with the

Unit-ed States as a way to gain nuclear reactors and know how But so far, Jordan has refused to submit to the same demands that the UAe agreed to in its 123 Agree-ment—no domestic enrich-ment and no reprocessing

of the used rods with its newly-discovered uranium, Jordan insists it has a right under the npt to enrich on its own as much uranium as

it wants Moreover, the King believes that only pressure from israel prevents wash-ington, so far, from acceding to its nuclear ambitions For Jordan to live by the pre-cept of the fuel bank, it will have to ship its own uranium to be processed by others, which is not required by the npt treaty

the diVerSion riSk

enriching uranium is a tricky business

However, the first stage—enriching up to

20 percent—is much more difficult than the next stages, leading to 90 percent en-richment Hence providing a nation with leu (20 percent enriched), gives it a

ma-Far from winning the United States

some political support in india, indian

opposition to the deal was loud, swift

and widespread Opposition politicians

maintained that American assurances

of steady fuel supply were not legally

binding Leftist members of Parliament

held that the accord violated indian

sov-ereignty, and that the government was

hiding details of indian obligations in

the agreement Others claimed that the

deal surrendered indian foreign policy

to an American veto the indian

opposi-tion grew as indian politicians came to

believe they were misled by their

govern-ment about the details of

the accord—specifically,

an added provision

stat-ing that the United States

would cut off the uranium

supply if india conducted a

nuclear test

Most disconcerting, in

direct response to the Bush

administration’s deal with

india, Pakistan increased

its nuclear program on its

own by rapidly expanding

its plutonium production,

and China granted Pakistan two more

re-actors as part of an agreement parallel to

the U.S.-india one the result is a case

study in how the expansion of nuclear

fa-cilities in one country leads to the

expan-sion of nuclear facilities in others

the American agreement with india

and the tit-for-tat deal between China

and Pakistan are particularly troubling

the nuclear Suppliers Group [nsg],

an informal cartel of enriched uranium

suppliers—the “shareholders” of the

fuel bank—will not serve nations that

are not signatories of the npt So india,

Pakistan, north Korea and israel were to

By allowing the sale of uranium

to india for its civilian reactors, the u.s enabled india to move its supply to military use

after western intelligence sources discov-ered the planned Qom nuclear facility did iran inform the iaea of its existence And though iran is an npt signatory, it has not done all it can to ensure iaea access even to its declared facilities iran signed

an “Additional Protocol” with the iaea in

2003, an agreement allowing more intru-sive inspections with shorter notice time, but withdrew its assent in 2005

Providing nations with enriched ura-nium works if the nation has neither en-richment facilities of its own nor ore to extract this may be true in the UAe But even in this case, the question of control-ling the spent fuel rods is a very serious consideration there is a considerable risk that the recipient nation will reprocess the spent fuel rods to produce plutonium

to make nuclear weapons, or that the re-cipient country will divert uranium from peaceful programs to military ones there might well be a germ of a good idea in the fuel bank, but for now its major flaws must be addressed to avoid prob-lems with the used rods, nations should

be given only limited supplies of enriched uranium—say, to last them six months— and the material thrown off while these rods are used should be collected every six months and repatriated in this way, we can rest assured that the nation benefiting from the ready-made fuel will be unable to draw on them to make plutonium bombs Finally, to avoid diversion, ready-made fuel should not be given to nations that are not members of the npt and are not in full compliance with its various protocols

in this way, one might well be able to gain reasonable assurance that no diversion of fuel takes place and that the fuel is used only for non-military purposes

jor leg up iran had to start from scratch,

slowing its nuclear progression

More-over, it has been subjected to a

multi-fac-eted and intensive dissuasion campaign,

extending as far as outright sabotage

However, a nation receiving ready-made

leu from the fuel bank without being

subjected to attacks, would have a much

easier journey if it chose to make bombs

to make this central point with numbers:

it takes 24 cascades of 164 centrifuges to

enrich natural uranium to 3.5 percent;

eight cascades of 164 to bring it to 20

percent; but only four cascades of 114

centrifuges to bring it to 60 percent, and

a mere two more cascades of 64

centri-fuges to bring it to weapons grade

Supporters of the fuel bank argue that

those nations receiving leu will have to

submit to inspection in order to ensure

that the fuel is not further enriched and

weaponized we have already seen that

this requirement has been set aside One

should also take into account that

inspec-tions have a sorry record iraq, iran, Libya

and north Korea all managed to make

considerable progress toward clandestine

nuclear stockpile while being subject to

inspections Benn tannenbaum, program

director of the Center for Science,

tech-nology and Security Policy at the

Ameri-can Association for the Advancement of

Science, put it well when he noted that

inspections only work “when you know

for what you’re looking, you know where

you’re looking and you’re allowed to do

the inspections you want to do when you

want to do them, where you want.” these

conditions, of course, almost never exist

there’s an imbalance of information—

inspectors can only visit sites that host