| April 9, 2010 |  |
The Nuclear Security Summit and Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Getting to the Hard Issues
Newly Released Document Indicates Little Progress in Strengthening International Security Requirements
To address the growing concern of nuclear terrorism, Barack Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential campaign to “lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years.” As partial fulfillment of that pledge, the Obama administration is hosting the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12 and 13.
The goals of the summit, according to the State Department Web site, are “to come to a common understanding of the threat posed by nuclear terrorism, to agree to effective measures to secure nuclear material, and to prevent nuclear smuggling and terrorism.” However, according to physicist Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) Global Security Program, the international community is ignoring several obvious, effective steps to reduce the threat of nuclear-weapon-usable materials falling into the hands of terrorists. As a result, the United States and other countries are pursuing policies that are inconsistent with “locking down” vulnerable materials and the other lofty goals of the summit.
To make real progress in confronting the nuclear terrorism threat, the international community must grapple with hard issues, Lyman says, even if the solutions conflict with other strategic and commercial goals. Below are some critical issues that Lyman says should be addressed—but probably will not be—at the summit next week.
STOCKPILES OF VULNERABLE WEAPON-USABLE PLUTONIUM ARE GROWING
Several countries—primarily France, the United Kingdom, Russia and Japan—produce separated plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons, by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants. Most of this plutonium goes into storage, increasing stockpiles of material that is vulnerable to theft. Global stocks exceed some 250 tons of civil plutonium—enough for tens of thousands of nuclear bombs. Each year, enough plutonium to make at least another 1,000 nuclear bombs is separated at civilian reprocessing facilities.
The United States not only is unwilling to criticize this practice, but it is setting the stage for even higher rates of plutonium production. Last week, it finalized an agreement giving India the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel made from U.S-origin uranium. And at home, there is mounting support for the United States to start reprocessing spent fuel, a practice which it renounced in the 1970s because of its nuclear proliferation risks. Those risks have only grown more acute over the last 30 years.
INADEQUATE INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR WEAPON-USABLE MATERIALS
If terrorists were able to obtain weapon-usable nuclear materials, the entire world could be threatened. Therefore, all nations should be interested in ensuring that any country that possesses such materials be able to protect them from theft. Efforts to develop binding international security standards for storing and transporting such materials have failed, however, because some nations are leery of international interference in their domestic activities.
For example, a 1998 U.S. proposal to amend the International Convention on Physical Protection to include binding requirements for securing domestic nuclear materials faltered, resulting in a weak amendment that addresses only very broad principles. There are no binding mechanisms for international peer reviews or verification to ensure that individual states adopt adequate levels of protection. In particular, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plays only an advisory role regarding domestic security and has no real authority in that area.
International standards for security are now addressed only through an IAEA guidance document, “Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and Nuclear Facilities,” INFCIRC/225/Rev 4. The fourth and most recent revision of this document, which provides internationally approved recommendations for domestic security of nuclear materials and facilities, was released in 1999.
After the 9-11 attacks, the international community realized that the IAEA guidance document needed updating and began a drafting process for the fifth revision in 2003. The fifth revision was scheduled to be finalized by the time of the Nuclear Security Summit, but it is still not complete. However, a draft of Revision 5, dated January 26, 2010, was recently publicly released. According to Lyman, the contents of the draft indicate that little progress has been made in resolving some of the thorniest nuclear-material-security issues.
Although the IAEA guidance document consists only of voluntary recommendations, it has statutory force in U.S. bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements, which require signatories to adhere to the most current version. Thus the content of this document is legally binding for any country with a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States.
According to Lyman, one of the glaring weaknesses of the currently applicable version, the fourth, is that it does not demand essential requirements to protect nuclear-weapon-usable materials from theft. For instance, it does not require that guards be armed when protecting so-called Category I nuclear materials—the most sensitive type, including plutonium in large enough quantities to build a nuclear weapon—when they are stored in a vault or transported in a truck.
In light of the increased degree of tactical sophistication and determination exhibited by terrorist and paramilitary groups over the last decade, Lyman says the new revision should mandate that on-site guards be equipped with weapons capable of defending against sophisticated armed attacks, as is the case with U.S. domestic requirements for both commercial and government-owned Category I materials. There is no such requirement in the January 26 draft of the fifth revision. Regarding storage, the draft document merely states that “guards and response forces should be trained and adequately equipped for their function in accordance with national laws and regulations.” Regarding transport, it merely states that “[s]tates are encouraged to use armed guards to the extent that laws and regulations permit.” The draft does distinguish between “guards” and “response forces,” such as local police, which presumably would be armed. But that begs the question whether local police forces would have the necessary fire power to repel a terrorist attack, and how quickly they could respond.
INADEQUATE DOMESTIC SECURITY STANDARDS FOR WEAPON-USABLE MATERIALS
Although President Obama has called for the world to secure vulnerable nuclear materials, the U.S. government actually has weakened security standards for these materials over the last few years, Lyman says. Most notably, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued new regulations in 2009 that reduced the level of security required for protecting plutonium stored at nuclear reactors when it is contained in fuel elements mixed with uranium (known as MOX fuel), as long as the concentration of plutonium is below 20 percent. However, each MOX fuel element can contain several nuclear bombs’ worth of material, and there are technical means by which terrorists could steal and process this material to make crude nuclear weapons. According to Lyman, there is no justification for reducing protection for this material. Even worse, he says, the nuclear industry is pressing the NRC to reduce security requirements for transporting MOX fuel assemblies so that they could be transported within the United States in ordinary trucks rather than vehicles similar to those used by the U.S. government to transport nuclear weapons.
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