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Uranium Constraints in Pakistan: How Many Nuclear Weapons Does Pakistan Have?

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Uranium Constraints in Pakistan: How Many Nuclear Weapons Does Pakistan Have? GENERAL ARTICLES Uranium constraints in Pakistan: how many nuclear weapons does Pakistan have? Lalitha Sundaresan* and Kaveri Ashok It is generally accepted that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme relies on domestic supplies of uranium. Although constraints on uranium supply in Pakistan are recognized, this is often not taken into account when estimating the amount of fissile material that Pakistan may have produced. In simple words, most assessments of Pakistan’s fissile materials and arsenal size fail to look at the supply and demand situations in Pakistan in an integrated way. This paper attempts to rectify this lacuna by taking a combined look at the supply and demand situations for uranium in Pakistan. It specifically addresses issues of how shortages in supply or increases in demand will affect the allo- cation of available uranium resources for meeting various military and civilian needs. Keywords: Fissile materials, highly enriched uranium, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, weapons grade plutonium. 1 PAKISTAN’S nuclear weapon capabilities and the size of some researchers like Zia Mian suggest that Pakistan its arsenal is a major area of international concern. The could face uranium fuel constraints for their Khushab amount of fissile material that a country possesses, directly reactors, this does not seem to be factored into IPFM determines the number of nuclear weapons that it can projections. The underlying assumption seems to be that make. The International Panel for Fissile Materials Pakistan has adequate supplies of domestic uranium to (IPFM), that provides data on the stockpile of fissile meet all its needs. material held by various countries is the standard source While there could be problems with supply, there is no used by analysts for estimating the size of Pakistan’s need to doubt that the demand for uranium has been nuclear arsenal. IPFM also provides periodic updates to increasing in Pakistan. One of the problems in estimating its stockpile reports and their implications for the number the size of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has been that, most of nuclear weapons. assessments of fissile materials and arsenal size fail to The IPFM estimates that at the end of 2014, Pakistan look at the supply and demand situations in Pakistan in an had approximately 3100 kg of highly enriched uranium integrated way. (HEU), and 190 kg of Weapons grade Plutonium (WgPu). A major question that has continued to bother the Indian In its earlier report of 2010, IPFM said that Pakistan had strategic community has been ‘How much fissile material a stockpile of approximately 2600 kg of HEU and 100 kg does Pakistan really possess’? Trying to find an answer to of WgPu. This implies that Pakistan added 500 kg of this question needs a number of other issues to be HEU and 90 kg of WgPu in four years between 2010 and addressed. These are: 2014. According to IPFM, this translates into an arsenal of • The Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP) elec- 120 to 130 warheads made up of both HEU and pluto- tricity producing reactor began operations in 1971 and nium weapons as of end 2010. Most analysts studying the continues to work till today. Since 1980 it has nuclear weapons programme in South Asia use these depended on domestically produced fuel for its work- estimates to determine the number of warheads in Pakis- ing. Can we estimate the amount of uranium that is tan. This data is also widely used in most narratives on needed for operating KANUPP on a continuing basis? nuclear deterrence to reinforce the dangers of a nuclear • Can we estimate the amount of HEU that Pakistan arms race in the region. could have produced since the start of operations at As a trend, the IPFM estimates show that the amount the Kahuta enrichment facility? of fissile materials in Pakistan is increasing. Though • How much weapon grade plutonium has Pakistan pro- duced since the start of the Khushab reactor complex in 1996? Lalitha Sundaresan is in the National Institute of Advanced Studies, 2 IISc Campus, Bengaluru 560 012, India and Kaveri Ashok is in the • How much yellowcake has Pakistan produced ? Center for Science, Technology and Policy, Bengaluru 560 094, India. • Does Pakistan have enough uranium to meet its *For correspondence. (e-mail: [email protected]) demands? 1042 CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 115, NO. 6, 25 SEPTEMBER 2018 GENERAL ARTICLES The purpose of this study is to find an answer to each of other reactor characteristics. Another standard method of these questions and then make an assessment of Pakis- calculating the fuel required is based on the installed tan’s nuclear arsenal. The analysis presented here is electric capacity, the number of days of operation, based on publicly available information on Pakistan, thermal efficiency and the burn-up rate4. together with a few assumptions. All our estimates are The fuel needed for KANUPP reactor depends on reac- based on yellowcake (U3O8) requirements. tor power, the capacity factor and the fuel burn-up. The KANUPP reactor is designed for a high burn-up (average 7500 MWt.d/ton) with the fuel staying in the reactor for Estimating demand more than a year. It is possible to estimate the fuel required for such a reactor by assuming the burn-up, the There are three major facilities in Pakistan that need to be thermal efficiency, the number of days of operation and fed with domestically produced yellowcake. These are the cumulative generation of thermal energy that is avail- the KANUPP civilian reactor, the enrichment facility at able from the IAEA data5. Kahuta and the plutonium production reactors at the Khu- The effective full power years (EFPY) of KANUPP by shab complex. While the KANUPP reactor is under safe- end 2002 amounted to only 10.8 according to PakAtom, a guards, the Kahuta complex and the Khushab reactors are Newsletter of PAEC put out in January–February 2003. outside the purview of safeguards. This would mean that KANUPP on an average operated The enrichment facility in Kahuta started operations in for only 150 days in a year. Hence for our purpose, we 1984. There is a lot of uncertainty about the number and calculate the fuel requirement for 150 days. type of centrifuges housed within this facility. Some Using the Power Reactor Information System (PRIS)6 assumptions are therefore needed for estimating the data base, we estimate that the total amount of yellow- demand. Though Pakistan probably has more than one cake required to fuel KANUPP for the period 1980–2014 enrichment facility, we will only consider the major facility is 805 tonnes. This is based on an average of 150 operat- at Kahuta. Additional enrichment facilities would only ing days in a year. mean that the demand for yellowcake would increase. Our demand estimates are in that sense quite conservative and the actual demand may be even higher. Demand by Kahuta enrichment plant The Khushab complex has four plutonium reactors referred to as K1, K2, K3 and K4. All of them are iden- The primary Pakistani fissile-material production facility tical. K1 began operations in 1996, K2 in 2010, K3 in is located at Kahuta. It uses gas centrifuge enrichment 2013 and K4 in 2015. technology to produce HEU. This facility started operat- ing in 1984. The amount of feed required for an enrich- KANUPP reactor demand ment plant will depend on the Separative Work Unit (SWU) available, the type of centrifuges used, the per- Pakistan began construction of its first Nuclear Power centage of enrichment desired, and the percentage of tail- Plant (NPP), KANUPP, in 1966 at Karachi. The plant ings. For Pakistan many of these characteristics are was connected to the national grid on 18 October 1971. unknown. Yet, estimates of the cumulative amount of KANUPP, a Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) HEU are available in open source literature. One of the design reactor of 137 MW was constructed by Canadian IPFM reports estimates that Pakistan could have pro- General Electric (CGE) under a turnkey contract. duced 1750 kg of HEU over a period of thirty years. This After India’s first nuclear test of 1974, Canada with- is equivalent to producing 58 kg of HEU annually. By as- drew support and cut off fuel supplies to KANUPP in suming different SWU values and different tailings per- 1976. The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) centages, the feed required to produce 58 kg of HEU then undertook the manufacture of some spares and fuel annually7 can be calculated. Table 1 shows the possible rods on an emergency basis. KANUPP has been using scenarios. domestic fuel since 1980. Though KANUPP uses indige- From Table 1, we can see that an amount of 58 kg of nously developed fuel elements, it continues to operate HEU can be obtained with a capacity of 13,000 SWU at under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safe- 0.2% tails, or with a capacity of 11,000 SWU at 0.3% guards3. tails or with a capacity of 9000 SWU at 0.5% tails. The There are different ways of estimating the amount of corresponding feed for these cases will be 10, 12 and fuel required for a nuclear reactor of the KANUPP type. 25 tonnes respectively. For our calculations, we assume a Ideally if we know the total number of fuel bundles HEU product with a 0.3% tails. A capacity of 11,000 SWU loaded in the reactor, then a straightforward estimate of with a tailing fraction of 0.3% will produce about 57 kg the fuel could be obtained. This is rarely available. If we of HEU. The uranium feed required for achieving this is knew the effective full power days of operation, then an 12.4 tonnes.
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