IPFM INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON FISSILE MATERIALS Banning the Production of Fissile Materials for Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty Companion Volume to Global Fissile Material Report 2008 Companion Volume to Global Fissile Material Report 2008 Banning the Production of Fissile Materials for Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty www.fissilematerials.org © 2008 International Panel on Fissile Materials This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License To view a copy of this license, visit www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 On the cover: the map shows existing and planned uranium enrichment and plutonium separation (reprocessing) facilities around the world. Table of Contents About the IPFM 1 Foreword 2 Summary 3 Country Perspectives China 7 France 14 Germany 17 India 22 Israel 27 Japan 34 Pakistan 37 Russia 42 South Africa 45 United Kingdom 50 United States 54 Dealing with the Challenges: Achieving an FM(C)T 64 Endnotes 70 Contributors 81 About the IPFM The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) was founded in January 2006. It is an independent group of arms-control and nonproliferation experts from both nuclear weapon and non-nuclear weapon states. The mission of IPFM is to analyze the technical basis for practical and achievable policy initiatives to secure, consolidate, and reduce stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. These fissile materials are the key ingredients in nuclear weapons, and their control is critical to nuclear weapons disarmament, to halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to ensuring that terrorists do not acquire nuclear weapons. IPFM research and reports are shared with international organizations, national gov- ernments and nongovernmental groups. The Panel is co-chaired by Professor R. Rajaraman of the Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi, India, and Professor Frank von Hippel of Princeton University. Its mem- bers include nuclear experts from sixteen countries: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, South Korea, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security provides administra- tive and research support for IPFM. For further information about the panel, please contact the International Panel on Fis- sile Materials, Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, 221 Nas- sau Street, 2nd Floor, Princeton, NJ 08542, or by email at [email protected]. About the IPFM 1 Foreword Nuclear weapons—whether in the hands of governments or terrorist groups—pose one of the greatest dangers to humankind today. The need for achieving stable global nuclear disarmament is urgent and compelling. Clearly, an essential pre-requisite for reaching this goal is ending the production of fissile materials for weapons and dispos- ing of their vast accumulated stocks. The importance of this step has been realized from the beginning of the nuclear era but actual progress in carrying it out has been remarkably slow. As far back as 1946, the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency’s report to the Security Council recommended prohibiting national manufacture and possession of fissile ma- terials. A decade later, in 1957, the General Assembly adopted a resolution to ban their production for weapons. In 1993, the UN General Assembly called for the negotiation of a treaty. The Conference on Disarmament in Geneva (CD) then agreed on a negoti- ating mandate. These negotiations have not yet begun. Meanwhile the number of countries with nuclear weapons has grown to nine. If prog- ress was impeded by disagreements between just the United States and the USSR in the early years, one can imagine the complexity of the problem today. The issues that worry different nations vary from the adequacy of their existing nuclear arsenals to the intrusiveness and cost of verifying a production ban. This report provides a country-by-country analysis of the concerns of individual na- tions to different aspects of a prospective Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty, or FM(C)T. The word “cutoff” is put in brackets here because some countries would like the treaty also to assure that pre-existing civilian fissile materials and weapons materials that have been declared excess are not converted to weapon use. The report covers 11 countries: China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States, i.e., all the weapon states other than North Korea and three key non-weapon states. The analyses are based on government statements as well as personal interviews on the security concerns of the country in question. While the report seeks to describe the positions or likely positions of the individual nations, the authors of the country studies are independent scholars and their summaries do not constitute the official positions of the respective governments. There are some reasons to hope that negotiations may finally get under way at the CD in the next year or two. It is hoped that the studies presented here will clarify some of the issues involved and help speed the progress towards a treaty banning the produc- tion of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. R. Rajaraman, Co-Chair, International Panel on Fissile Materials 2 Foreword Summary The proposal for a binding international treaty banning the production of fissile mate- rials for nuclear weapons has attracted attention and support for over fifty years. Today, a universal and effectively verified fissile material cutoff treaty could strengthen the nonproliferation regime, reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, and help lay the basis for nuclear disarmament by: • Making binding the moratoria of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) weapon states on their production of fissile material for weapons; • Ending production of fissile material for weapons in Israel, India, and Pakistan; • Meeting the demands of the United Nations General Assembly and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; • Extending to all states the NPT ban on production of fissile material for weapons and associated International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards that currently apply only to non-nuclear weapon states; • Improving national monitoring and regulation of fissile material; • Helping make nuclear-weapon reductions irreversible; and • Creating institutions and practices necessary for a nuclear weapons free world. In light of these potential benefits, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in 1995 adopted the so-called Shannon Mandate (named after Canadian Ambassador Gerald Shannon) “to negotiate a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and ef- fectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weap- ons or other nuclear explosive devices.” Despite this initiative, negotiations have never gotten off the ground for a number of reasons. As the critical assessments of the various national perspectives described in this report make clear, both the nuclear weapon states and the non-weapon states have concerns that will have to be addressed. For the nuclear weapon states, these concerns range from questions in China, India and Pakistan about whether they have enough nuclear-weapon materials to doubts in Russia, the United States and other countries about the intrusiveness and cost of inspections. Some of the NPT weapon states also question the point of an FM(C)T if Summary 3 India and Pakistan, which are still producing unsafeguarded fissile material (there is uncertainty about Israel), refuse to join the treaty. The weapon states for the most part want a treaty that simply cuts off further production of fissile material for weapons and does not cover pre-existing stockpiles of weapons-usable material. The non-weapon states, in contrast, want an FM(C)T to serve as a significant step to- ward the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. They therefore want a cutoff treaty that includes deep cuts in the existing weapons stockpiles—at least in those of Russia and the United States—and constraints that would prevent the conversion to nuclear weapons of pre-existing stockpiles of civilian and other fissile material declared excess to military needs. Pakistan too is in the camp of countries that want to include reductions in existing stocks because it fears a cutoff treaty could lock it into a position of disadvantage rela- tive to India. Whether Pakistan actually has a smaller stockpile than India, however, depends upon whether India’s reactor-grade plutonium is considered civilian or weap- on material. Finally, there is Israel, which fears that an FM(C)T would require it to accept intrusive verification and place pressures on it to disarm. Israel also strongly objects to a treaty that does not block Iran’s on-going uranium enrichment program. In the absence of additional constraints on Iran, Israel sees an FM(C)T as irrelevant to its current security concerns. A Way Forward If it is possible to break the impasse over the negotiating agenda of the Conference on Disarmament, FM(C)T the parties will have to be make compromises on a number of very difficult issues. The United States will have to deal with China’s concerns about the U.S. ballistic-mis- sile-defense program, the potential weaponization of space and an emerging U.S. con- ventional threat against its strategic forces. This could include U.S. agreement to begin talks among key concerned countries on a Treaty on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. India and Pakistan each will have to decide that it is in their interest to agree to a veri- fied halt in their buildups of nuclear-weapon materials. Israel and its neighbors will have to come to an accommodation on their nuclear pro- grams. This may require, for instance, that the FM(C)T become coupled with a regional agreement, such as a fuel-cycle-facility-free zone that would give Israel increased assur- ance that its neighbors will not acquire nuclear weapons.