CHAPTER 7.  Atoms For Peace and Nuclear Nonproliferation
 

"Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard...leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future."
Albert Einstein, 1939

Introduction: About Nuclear Energy

The heaviest natural element is uranium, which contains atoms of slightly different weights called isotopes.  One isotope is termed uranium-235, since the number of charged particles (protons) plus uncharged ones (neutrons) in its nucleus or center is equal to 235.   Uranium-235 is unstable.  When subject to bombardment by other neutrons the nucleus splits into two new nuclei of smaller total weight than the original uranium-235 nucleus.  The difference in weight appears as an enormous quantity of energy defined by Einstein's famous equation (E) energy = (m) mass times (c-squared) velocity of light squared: E = mc².

Natural uranium is only about 0.7 percent uranium-235; most is stable uranium-238.  Tedious processes can "enrich" uranium or concentrate or increase its proportion of uranium-235 so that it can be used as in power reactors or explosive devices.  Uranium enriched to three-percent uranium-235 is a common fuel for a power reactor.  Under certain conditions natural uranium can also be used as a fuel, but as nature never gives something for nothing, it is necessary to increase the flux of neutrons so as to assure splitting the few uranium-235 atoms by the use of another rare material, heavy water, to deflect them properly.  Heavy waterHeavy water  is about as tedious to prepare as enriched uranium; it contains heavy hydrogen or deuterium instead of simple hydrogen.  Heavy hydrogen contains a proton and a neutron in its nucleus; normal hydrogen just has a proton.

Thus nuclear power reactorsNuclear power reactors  -- devices for producing heat energy to make steam to drive turbines connected with electric generators -- are of two main types: light-water reactors using ordinary water for cooling and enriched uranium for fuel; heavy- water reactors using heavy water for cooling (and reaction) and natural uranium for fuel.

As mentioned, the uranium-235 nuclei that split produce lighter nuclei plus energy.  The copious supply of neutrons released in the fission process transforms a certain amount of uranium into the element plutonium.  The lighter nuclei and the plutonium can be removed by "reprocessing" the spent fuel, part of which may then be reused.  Nuclear fission weapons use enriched uranium (usually much higher than three percent: 93 percent, or more) or plutonium.  (Nuclear fusion weapons -- thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs -- use uranium-235 or plutonium fission devices to trigger an explosion caused by fusion of hydrogen atoms.  Because of their unique nature hydrogen atoms can give up energy when they fuse just as uranium atoms do when they split.)  Reactors used for research or ship propulsion often use uranium enriched higher than the three percent used in power reactors but not necessarily as high as the 93-percent level used in weapons.

A minimum amount of highly enriched uranium-235 ("critical mass") is necessary to make an explosive device.  Until such mass is reached neutrons capable of causing fission are more likely to escape through the surface of the metal than hit and split an atom inside its volume.  For uranium-235 the critical mass is about twelve pounds.  Since uranium is so dense, a piece weighing that much is about as big as a half-pound of butter.

Nuclear exports and inspections of nuclear facilities thus focus on the manufacture, presence and use of highly enriched uranium
and the capability for reprocessingReprocessing  spent fuel to win plutonium.

Technicians define a "nuclear fuel cycle," complete with "back end" and "front end."  This cycle is simply the progression of uranium from the front end as ore, to fuel, to spent fuel and to reprocessed fuel, which is the back end.  Reusable uranium from this reprocessed fuel repeats the cycle when it is fed in at the front end again, with some new fuel as well.  Reprocessing is carried out legitimately to reclaim unused fuel poisoned by energy-production by-products.
 

Atoms for Peace and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

The United States, as first to accomplish nuclear fission ("atomic" bomb, 1945) and nuclear fusion (hydrogen bomb, 1952), applied nuclear energy to the production of electrical energy only in 1957 in at a power plant in  Shippingport, Pennsylvania.12

International disposition of nuclear energy was an immediate issue for the Truman administration in 1946 when then-Under Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson was tasked with producing a plan for international control of the technological marvel and horror that had been demonstrated in Japan in 1945.  Acheson, as chairman of the designated committee, and David Lilienthal, as chairman of the board of consultants, produced a report that bears their names and wisely recommended among other things that:

• no nation would make atomic [nuclear] bombs; and
• all "dangerous" activities would be carried out by  an international authority.13

President Eisenhower raised again the question of an international authority in his famous "Atoms For Peace" speech at the United Nations in 1953.  He caught the attention of its members sufficiently so that sixty nations held a session in Geneva in 1955 to discuss peaceful uses of atomic energy.  All of this activity led to foundation in 1956 of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with headquarters in Vienna.  United States participation was made possible not only by President Eisenhower's initiative but also by Congress's 1954 amendment to the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which permitted the United States to cooperate with other countries in the field of atomic anergy.  By 1955, the year of the UN conference, twenty-seven countries were already working with the United States in this field.14

The IAEA is a highly technical organization, and member countries use some care to find technical delegates to send to its meetings and assign as members of its staff.  Besides dissemination of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes the agency's key role is inspection of member countries' nuclear facilities.  This inspection function is carried out during visits by observers, by placement of permanent cameras and by use of control seals on stocks of fuel -- all designed to assure that the plant in question uses its raw materials and byproducts for energy production, not for weapons.15
 

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)

It was, however, only in 1968 that fifty-three countries, including three of the five nuclear weapons states, United States, United Kingdom and USSR, after long negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva, foreswore proliferation of nuclear weapons, effective in 1970.  Conspicuous by their absence in the list of signatories at the time were nuclear weapons states France and the PRCPRC , along with countries like India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Israel and South Africa, all with burgeoning nuclear capabilities.  France, always independent, said it would observe the NPT without becoming a party.  Political developments have since largely defused regional security concerns that drove nuclear programs in South Africa and Latin America .  France, South Africa, Argentina and the PRC have since adhered to the NPT, and Argentina and Brazil have  subscribed to the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the 1967 regional NPT for a nuclear-free zone in Latin America.

To an extent the timing of the NPT was bad.  The IAEA had already set up mechanisms for inspection -- safeguards -- to insure that nuclear programs were not directed toward production of explosives.  Nevertheless, IAEA members were not obligated either to submit to these inspections or, indeed, to refrain from nuclear explosive activities.  In short, the IAEA was the essential nonproliferation mechanism without the definitive instrument.  This instrument was provided in the NPT only fourteen years after the IAEA was founded (1956).  There has been no nuclear explosive device detonated by an NPT member other than one of the five weapons states.  Until 1998 there was only one nuclear explosive device detonated even by a non-NPT member -- by India in 1974 (tests by India  and Pakistan  in 1998 are described below).   Signatories like Iraq and North Korea carried out programs either secret or closed to inspection, in violation of the NPT.   Underground growth of nuclear capability in these and other countries would likely have been less if the NPT had been passed in 1956 and the IAEA founded in 1970 instead of the other way around.

However late, the NPT was extremely important: it prohibited to signatories nuclear weapons transfer and weapons acquisition; it provided safeguards on all nuclear activities and required them for nuclear exports to such activities; it encouraged development and cooperation of peaceful uses of nuclear energy; and it committed the weapons states parties to eventual nuclear disarmament.  The NPT did not, however, prohibit exports to countries with unsafeguarded activities; it required only that the exports themselves be safeguarded.  Thus Argentina and Brazil  were able to import German nuclear technology for their nuclear power plants under IAEA inspection while developing unsafeguarded enrichment and reprocessing on their own, which they could also have exported without safeguards, although they likely did not.  The U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978 prohibited U.S. sales to countries unless all facilities were under safeguards -- termed full-scope safeguardssafeguards:full-scope safeguards .  This condition was essentially a prohibition on exports to non-NPT countries, since NPT signatories already had everything under safeguards.

The NPT did not describe in much detail what exports were prohibited.  Article III paragraph 2 of the NPT stated:
 

"Each State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to provide:

(a) source or special fissionable material;
(b) equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material to any nonnuclear-weapon State for peaceful purposes, unless the source or special fissionable material shall be subject to the safeguards required by [paragraph one of] this article." 16

In the customary application of this article, countries sell no fuel or equipment for nuclear power reactors unless the reactors are open to IAEA inspection.

This broad wording took care of key items like bomb material and production equipment for such material, but it made no mention of a host of other items that could be used singly or in combination to make and test nuclear explosives.  Nevertheless, for several years this was the only control list with the force of international law.  Nations sticklers for following the letter (and little more) of international law welcomed its vagueness, which allowed their nuclear firms to export to anybody anything that was not specifically forbidden.

Canada exported reactor technology to India under safeguards since Canada is an NPT signatory.  India  then replicated the technology for its 1974 "peaceful" explosion knowing this activity was not subject to inspection since it had not signed the NPT.

The NPT set up no export control authority.  One had to be created in the ad hoc Zangger Committee .  Formed in 1970, by 1974 the Committee, chaired by the Swiss, Claude Zangger, had agreed on a "trigger list" of nuclear exports that would be exported by the countries involved in accordance with the NPT and only under conditions of IAEA safeguards (Switzerland was not yet a member of the United Nations in 1974, but signed the NPT in 1977).

This commitment was formalized by committee member countries with the IAEA in a document called INFCIRC/209.  Original participants were Australia , Denmark , Canada , Finland , West Germany , The Netherlands , Norway , the USSR , the United Kingdom  and the United States.  Other potential nuclear exporting countries later joined, including Czechoslovakia , East Germany , Japan  and Poland.  France , India  and the PRCPRC  did not join.

World opinion, mechanisms of the IAEA and the provisions of the NPT were insufficient to prevent or dissuade IndiaIndia  (an IAEA member but not an NPT signatory) from setting off a patently belligerent nuclear explosion in 1974.  At about the same time exporters of NPT member countries in Europe who were also IAEA members were eager to supply questionable nuclear programs in Pakistan , Brazil , Argentina  and other nonsignatories of the NPT, most of whom were, however, IAEA members.  For lack of an alternative the United States praised and supported the IAEA and the NPT although the first was hampered in its safeguard function by its technical assistance mandate.

The NPT called for reviews every five years beginning in 1975 and these were often acrimonious.  States that had foresworn nuclear weapons bitterly criticized the nuclear weapons statesNuclear weapons states  (United States, United Kingdom , USSR , France  and PRCPRC ) for making so little progress on the treaty goal of ending the nuclear arms race.  The NPT calls for parties to decide after twenty-five years whether to continue its provisions.  In 1995 the parties met and gave the treaty a vote of confidence by extending it indefinitely.  By 1997 185 countries had signed the NPT.
 

London Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and Other Control Groups

Another effective mechanism to promote the goals of the NPT was established at London in 1975 after India 's 1974 detonation of its absurdly-termed "peaceful" nuclear explosion.  Meeting in some secrecy, key and "threshold" (potential) nuclear exporter countries faced the main question of the requirement of full-scope safeguards on exports.  India had used Canadian technology in its explosive.  A long step beyond the provisions of the NPT, such a new export requirement still made eminent sense:  exporters would require not only what they exported to be operated under safeguards (i.e., open to IAEA inspection) but, as a condition for such export, the importing country would place all its nuclear facilities under safeguards.  Hence the term "full-scope."   Why should exporting countries go through the motions of requiring safeguards on their exports to a country if it was known that the country had other facilities not subject to safeguards?  Export with "safeguards" only on the particular export item seemed a travesty with respect to overall nonproliferation goals.  It might assuage the conscience of the exporter but it hardly comforted countries neighboring the importer.  World trouble spots where such imports caused anxiety in their neighbors as well as other world capitals were Argentina , Brazil , India  and Pakistan .

Major exporter France (not formally an NPT party until 1992) joined the NSG, along with Canada , Germany , Japan , the USSR , the United Kingdom  and the United States.  The USSR, in general, was a good nonproliferator in such international organizations.  Eager to export technology and uranium, it nevertheless usually required tight controls on equipment and spent fuel.  This London Nuclear Suppliers Group added members and influence as the years passed.

The French and the Germans refused to require full-scope safeguards, but the seven original members, joined later by others, did extend the trigger list to include "know-how" of the type India had utilized in duplicating the safeguarded reactor it had imported from Canada.  The NSG required safeguards, however, only on reprocessing, enrichment or heavy water facilities built with such know-how.

The key goal of the United States was always adoption of full-scope safeguardsFull-scope safeguards  as a condition for export under the NPT worldwide.  The U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978  made such full-scope safeguards a condition for U.S. exports.  It was not until 1992 that continued, if not dogged, U.S. advocacy achieved the highly significant acceptance by all major exporters of full-scope safeguards as a precondition to export, conditions that the United States, Australia , Canada  and Sweden  had required years before.
 

From the USSR to the Commonwealth of Independent States

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 twelve of the fifteen former soviet republics formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) -- that is, all the republics except the three Baltic states.  The formation of these new countries complicated the nonproliferation regime because nuclear weapons were then to be found in Belarus, Kazakhstan  and Ukraine  as well as Russia.  There was some anxiety until 1992 when Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine acceded to START I, the strategic arms limitation treaty of 1991.  By 1994 all three had acceded to the NPT.  As nonnuclear weapons states they were required to relinquish their nuclear weapons, which they completed by 1996.
 

Problem Countries3

The United States has often been willing to label bad actors on the international stage.  In its nonproliferation dealings with its allies the U.S. has singled out a number of countries for which "bad actors" doesn't have good translations into most languages.  India tested a nuclear device in 1974 and both IndiaIndia  and PakistanPakistan  did so in 1998.  South AfricaSouth Africa  probably had a device and may have tested it, but has since renounced nuclear weapons and testing.  IsraelIsrael  may have a device but it has foresworn testing.  NPT signatories Libya , Iraq , North Korea  and Iran  probably all have a bomb near the shelf or have most of the parts with which to assemble one within a few years.  Western experts were given a jolt when Iraq's progress toward a bomb appeared far in advance of best previous technical estimates.  The United NationsUnited Nations  inspection effort in Iraq since the 1990-1 Gulf War  only partly revealed Iraq's capability in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Untold worry and anxiety were once expended over Brazil, Argentina , Taiwan  and South Korea .  Would they or wouldn't they?  It seems clear that their governments of the 1990s wouldn't -- that they clearly recognized the advantages of nonproliferation, economic and political.

Anxiety concerning nuclear importing countries like Argentina , Brazil  and Pakistan  has been matched only by the worry in the State Department and embassies over nuclear exports from countries like France , Germany  and China .  Trade and Economic ministries can be very persuasive in inter-ministerial battles over questionable nuclear exports.  Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) is about one-third exports; no wonder that the country questioned restrictions on nuclear shipments.  Germany was often less than helpful when it was a case of interpretation, not law.
 

Nuclear Reprocessing4

A main technical problem with nuclear energy is reprocessing.  This is an example of a foreign affairs issue where a knowledge of science is most useful.  As described above, nuclear reactors in operation produce a waste "ash" comprised of uranium depleted in the isotope 235, fission byproducts and the highly radioactive element plutoniumPlutonium .  Plutonium was the material used in the U.S. bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945.  (The bomb used three days earlier at Hiroshima was made of highly-enriched uranium.)  Plutonium may be separated from a reactor's burnt-out uranium, but it requires very sophisticated technology to do so.  The whole issue is complicated by the fact that one protocol for nuclear reactor operation calls for routine reworking of the spent fuel to reconcentrate it and run the unburnt uranium through again.  Plutonium would necessarily have to be handled even in this benign process.

Governments took an intense interest in what would happen to this by-product building up all over the world, a potential substance for new nuclear weaponsNuclear weapons .

Another nuclear phenomenon appeared on the international scene -- the breeder reactorBreeder reactor .  Policy makers were momentarily attracted by the idea of this device.  In it the extra neutrons produced in the fission of U-235 can actually convert a larger amount of U-238 into plutonium than the amount of U-235 consumed, so that the end result is an increase in nuclear fuel.  Because of uranium anxiety, particularly at about the time of the Mideast oil embargo (1973)Oil embargo (1973) , people reckoned breeder reactors could conserve uranium if it came into short supply due to some new international uranium cartel similar to OPEC.  Uranium anxiety was also widespread in the 1970s as countries realized that the NPT did not necessarily provide safeguards on nuclear facilities in nonsignatory countries.

President Carter in 1977 convened a study called the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE)International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) .  The clear purpose of INFCE was to limit the use of reprocessing and breeder reactors, and hence the production of plutonium.  It was a study and not a negotiation, according to the terms of reference; and participants were not "committed" to INFCE's results.

INFCE was useful as a technical enterprise, but it made little if any impact on participating countries' short-range nuclear programs.  With its intricate plans, INFCE was another potentially useful U.S. initiative that arrived before its time.  Twenty years later its time had come and gone.  Fast breeder reactors were dead for economic and environmental reasons.  The potential risks of reprocessing and its alternative, storage or disposal, were widely known.  Some countries considered INFCE as another example of U.S. heavy-handedness, although over sixty participated in the study.  Sometimes the United States is ahead of the game.

The 1978 U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Act required importers to open all their nuclear facilities to inspection, not just the ones fitted with products from the United States as required under terms of the NPT.  The 1978 Act also essentially killed the U.S. breeder reactor program and embargoed all exports of enrichment and reprocessing technologies.  In a provision that had widespread foreign affairs effects, the Act prohibited foreign reprocessing of U.S.-supplied nuclear fuels without permission.

A newer issue arose after the breakup of the Soviet Union.  It was the prospective use of plutonium from surplus nuclear weapons from both the United States and RussiaRussia  in commercial power reactors.  The fuel, called MOX for mixed-oxide, would put weapons material in civil energy installation, a procedure that the INFCE program was designed to question.  In a related move the U.S. government asked for bids from reactor operators to make tritium, a radioactive gas used to make nuclear fission more efficient in the same way as heavy water.  (Hydrogen is the simplest element, with one proton in its nucleus.  In heavy water the hydrogen atoms are replaced by heavy hydrogen or deuterium, in which each nucleus has one positive proton and one uncharged  neutron.  Tritium nuclei have one proton and two neutrons.)  The risk is one of diversion of tritium to unauthorized use from a relatively insecure civil installation.5

The international pall that hangs over the once-bright prospect for nuclear energy depends in part on the enormous difficulties and expense of handling spent fuel and of finally decommissioning spent reactors.  Accidents contribute to apprehensions about safety.  In 1979 there occurred the worst commercial reactor accident in U.S. history at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.  Loss of coolant led to a partial meltdown, or uncontrolled fission in the reactor, close to a nuclear explosion.  Then in 1986 the world's worst accident took place at Chernobyl, near Kiev, USSR.  Besides thirty-one persons killed at once, tens of thousands of deaths due to radiation are feared in the following decades.  No new nuclear plant has been licensed in the United States since the mid-1970s.
 

Nuclear Testing

Related to nuclear weaponry, an issue with an overwhelming scientific component was nuclear testing.  This came up in international forums when LDCs especially feared that testing of nuclear weapons would inevitably lead to their use, and a ban would prevent such use.  Radioactive falloutFallout  from tests above ground was also an international concern.  The need for occasional checks of nuclear weapons designs to make sure they worked and to gauge their power was not unrealistic in the initial view of a country charged with keeping the peace.  But tests were often equated with potential use to the point that such experiments occupied more and more time on international diplomats' agendas.

Associated with the idea of testing for validity (will it explode where and when expected?) was the idea: why should one country stop testing if its potential adversary tests?  This question led to a long wrangle over clandestine testing that sorely tried participating scientists and diplomats.

Simply stated, two weapons states (the U.S. and the USSR, for example) would assume that in the case of a test ban the other side would cheat.  Scientists devised elaborate schemes by which they imagined the other side could cheat.  This approach required development of more elaborate counterschemes so that the other side could foil the cheating, if not actually cheat itself.

For a time, scientists foresaw possible Soviet stratagems to deceive the U.S. by clandestinely testing nuclear weapons in hollow underground caverns that would somehow muffle the blast.  Every attempt at accommodation on this issue was met with further objections by the American scientists.

In 1963 the United States did agree to a first step in control of nuclear testing: a multilateral treaty on the prohibition of nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space or under water, and an eventual limit on tests of high-yield weapons underground.
 

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)6

The conclusion of the cold war and the breakup of the USSR  considerably lessened the urgency for nuclear weapons testing.  Starting in 1993 the United States reviewed its long opposition to a comprehensive test ban -- a ban on all tests, air, land, underground, space -- and asked other nations to join in a moratorium.  By 1995, with negotiations underway in the UN Conference on Disarmament  (CD), a permanent committee that meets in Geneva, the United States extended its moratoriumMoratorium:nuclear testing  even though China had tested in 1993.  France reserved the right to eight final tests before it would be prepared to sign the CTBT in 1996.  China made one last test in 1996 before pledging to join the moratorium.

The Conference on Disarmament  was unable to reach consensus on a treaty due mainly to obstruction by India.  The situation was ironic because in the 1970s and 80s members of the CD, led by developing countries, had criticized the United States and other weapons states for lack of progress on disarmament and resistance to a ban on nuclear tests that in their view increased the risk of nuclear war.  By 1996 the two biggest nuclear weapons states, the United States and Russia, had negotiated strategic arms limitation in the START treaties I and IISTART treaties I and II , and all five weapons states were observing a total moratorium on testing.

Facing the deadlocked CD Australia:and CTBT  devised the tactic of taking the issue directly to the UN General Assembly.  Within a month the CTBT was adopted by a vote of 158-3, with five abstentions, and opened for signature.  The United States signed the treaty September 24, 1996.  By the end of 1998 151 nations had signed, including all the nuclear weapons states .  (In 1998 the UN had 185 members.)  Absent from the list of signatories were India , Pakistan and North Korea.  Of countries at one time or another under suspicion of having a nuclear weapons program Argentina, Brazil, Iran, Israel and South Africa all signed.  All the republics of the former USSR have signed.
 

India Tests Again and Pakistan Follows Suit7

Consistent with its refusal to sign the CTBT, India on May 11, 1998, detonated three nuclear blasts.  Two days later it set off two more.  The tests subjected India to international aid cutoffs and other sanctions including those mandated by the 1994 U.S. Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act.  Despite pleas for forbearance from U.S. officials, Pakistan tested five devices on May 28, subjecting the country to similar sanctions.  International consternation was predictably acute.  While the application of sanctions was no surprise, neither country immediately continued testing.

The tests marked the failure of the nonproliferation regime so laboriously constructed and maintained under the NPT (with only India's previous lapse in 1974).  Legally, India and Pakistan had broken no laws since neither has signed the NPT.  Both countries had not only rejected joining the treaty for thirty years but they had also felt no restraint in flouting the treaty and the 185 countries for whom it was law.