Limiting Nuclear Proliferation

As anticipated a year ago, major new domestic and international nuclear policy initiatives were launched by the United States in 1977 to avert the spread of sensitive nuclear technologies. An initial approach, based on unilateral pressure and denial of proliferating technologies, was gradually transmuted—after rebuffs from other suppliers and recipients alike—into a more internationalized and co-operative strategy. Though the broad outlines of a new U.S. policy have been articulated, there remain serious questions of implementation, effectiveness, and worldwide acceptability.

Initiating a new policy. In 1976, nuclear nonproliferation became a campaign issue in the U.S. presidential elections and the subject of extensive congressional hearings. First candidate Jimmy Carter and later President Ford promised to reassess the move toward a "plutonium economy" in the United States and abroad. With the inauguration of President Carter, both the new administration and powerful forces in Congress favored unilateral export prohibitions designed to inhibit the expansion of nuclear weapons capabilities. Three mechanisms were central to this approach: (1) direct pressure; (2) formal multilateral negotiations among nuclear suppliers; and (3) proposed legislation imposing rigid export criteria.

1. U.S. pressure succeeded in abrogating the French contract to build reprocessing facilities in South Korea (where American powers of persuasion were considerable), but failed to torpedo either the French-Pakistani or the German-Brazilian reprocessing deals. European competitors suspected that the true U.S. motive was to maintain commercial dominance in light-water reactors. Energy-poor nations felt that only the United States, with its substantial uranium and fossil fuel reserves, could afford to give proliferation dangers priority over energy supply. The aggressive attitude of U.S. negotiators and rumored threats to cut off supplies of enriched uranium reinforced these impressions.
2. The London Suppliers' Conferences, beginning in 1975, established multilateral consultations on nuclear export policy, but excluded consumers. The London group tightened the "trigger list" of embargoed items, including reprocessing facilities, and established uniform safeguards for all nuclear exports. But these required safeguards apply only to current exports by a supplier, not to the "full scope" of nuclear facilities in a recipient country. Moreover, although France and Germany undertook to refrain from further exports of reprocessing and enrichment facilities, the existing agreements with Pakistan and Brazil were not rescinded.
3. Congressional initiatives included proposals for international review of limitations on sensitive nuclear exports, for strengthened safeguards, and for increased U.S. reliability as a supplier of nuclear fuels and equipment. But the real "teeth" in the congressional proposals were mandatory, upgraded export criteria, including the immediate agreement by recipients of U.S. nuclear fuels, technology, and equipment (including European exporting countries dependent on U.S. fuel supplies) not to spread the "plutonium economy," and to require full scope safeguards.

From unilateralism to cooperation. By April, a more cooperative approach to nonproliferation had superseded the counterproductive strategy of early 1977. With a more tempered appreciation of the limits to unilateralism and the concerns of other countries, the Carter administration presented three major lines of action.

First, as foreshadowed in the election campaign, President Carter announced that the United States will defer indefinitely the construction of commercial plutonium reprocessing and breeder reactor facilities. That decision had been recommended in Nuclear Power Issues and Choices, a report by the Ford-MITRE study group, which included a member of the Resources for the Future staff.

Second, the president proposed a modified nuclear export policy composed of three elements: controls, denials, and a new emphasis on incentives. Full scope safeguards would be sought and the United States would continue to embargo exports of enrichment and reprocessing technologies. Existing agreements, however, would be honored during negotiations with trading partners to seek their adherence to stricter norms for future nuclear exports. New export contracts would have stiffer requirements, but the president would retain some discretion to decide, case-by-case, whether nonproliferation goals would be better served by stricter controls or by utilizing incentives. The agreement with Japan in September to permit fuel of U.S. origin to be reprocessed at Tokai Mura is an example of such incentives. Japan, a country which shares U.S. non-proliferation objectives and has advanced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, was prepared to limit reprocessing to experimentation for future development of breeders, and to defer current commercial use for fueling light-water reactors. That decision also avoided discrimination between Japan and Europe, where long-standing agreements gave the United States no control over the reprocessing of fuel of U.S. origin.

Other incentives anticipated by the administration proposal are intended to eliminate the need for immediate national reprocessing. Adequacy and security of fuel supplies are an indispensable and minimal condition for this purpose. Increased exploration for uranium would be accompanied by a three-tiered system of unilateral supply assurances, bilateral back-ups in case of default, and an international fuel bank. For some countries, where reprocessing has been planned to reduce the problem of waste disposal, limited spent fuel storage in the United States is already being offered, but the sufficiency of this plan is uncertain. Multinational fuel cycle centers (MNFCs), another alternative to national reprocessing, have been endorsed by the IAEA, but at this stage, U.S. interest is limited to the use of such regional centers for spent fuel storage.

Third, an International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) Conference was proposed by the United States to examine the relative economic and non-proliferation merits of alternative fuel cycles. INFCE, which held its first meeting in Washington on October 1921, exemplifies the shift in U.S. nuclear policy to multilateral cooperation and incentives. Consumer nations were invited to participate along with suppliers. Over the next two years, international working groups will seek to identify the technical and institutional choices that are available in the following eight fields: uranium resources, enrichment services, long-term fuel assurances, reprocessing, fast breeders, spent fuel storage, waste management, and advanced fuel cycle concepts. Although the United States hopes that INFCE will serve as an educational device and provide an objective basis for consensus on alternatives to the plutonium economy and ways to strengthen safeguards, the findings of the two-year study are not binding on participants.

Informal mechanisms of discouraging near-nuclear states from moving to full nuclear weapons status may be just as significant as the formal U.S. proposals. In August, reports by the Soviet news agency Tass revealed that South Africa was planning to test a nuclear explosive in the near future. The separate insistence of the Soviet Union, France, and the United States that a South African nuclear test would have serious international consequences apparently dissuaded the South African government from its immediate nuclear testing plans. Other informal ad hoc means of discouraging proliferation will undoubtedly be developed in the future.

Lessons of 1977. Important issues for U.S. nonproliferation policy emerge from the experience of 1977. The United States must adjust to the fact that it no longer enjoys a monopoly or even a dominant position in the international nuclear market for fuels, technology, and equipment. Persuasion, not coercion, must be the rule in the future. Even convincing "proof" that national reprocessing is more costly than fuel supplies from the United States or other nations may not dissuade countries which place a high priority on energy security.

Although world uranium resources and enrichment services are regarded as adequate for two decades or more without immediate need for reprocessing, the more important issue for most countries is the location of these resources and services and the export policies of the supplying countries. Prospects for supply assurances from the main uranium exporters, Canada and Australia, are uncertain. U.S. enrichment capacity is being expanded to include the needs of other countries, and the final form of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, likely to be adopted early in 1978, will probably include supply assurances consistent with administration proposals already summarized.

But on the evidence of historical experience and the constitutional division of power between Congress and the executive, American guarantees of enriched fuel supplies cannot be absolute. It is entirely comprehensible that any country looking to nuclear power as an important source of energy will be reluctant to exchange dependence on unreliable Middle Eastern oil for dependence on unilateral foreign fuel supply assurances. Can some new international arrangement assure uranium-poor countries of access to ample supplies of uranium on the one hand, and guaranteed enrichment services on the other?

Technical solutions to the problem of nuclear proliferation may be limited. Even if fuel supplies can be ensured, any plan which entails continuing discrimination against less developed countries (LDCs) in access to the fuel cycle cannot be long sustained. A feasible nonproliferation program must include especially the more advanced LDCs as willing participants, and must respect their perceived energy requirements. Though an alternative fuel cycle may reduce proliferation dangers somewhat by adding to "timely warning" of diversion from energy to weapons purposes, INFCE is unlikely to come up with any simple technical "fix" to decouple the nuclear fuel cycle from nuclear weapons capability. Nuclear suppliers already committed to plutonium breeders, aware of the long lead times required to develop a new technology, and eager to exploit commercial opportunities, may hesitate to switch.

Reprocessing and the plutonium economy may not be the only problem in any case. Many technical experts believe that higher enrichment in 235U and separation of 233U from a thorium cycle, as well as separation of plutonium, could be accomplished on a small scale (especially if costs were of secondary importance) in any country with a rudimentary chemical industry. Moreover, a government bent on possession of a nuclear weapon for reasons of security or prestige could achieve that objective more rapidly and economically by a direct military program (overt or covert), although another government simply wanting to keep open a weapons option might prefer a civilian energy program as a means of legitimate access to nuclear technology. The U.S. Energy Research and Development Agency has estimated that nearly a dozen countries which have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty could build a bomb in one to six years, if the decision were made today.

Technical arrangements and safeguards on proliferation may assist in preventing terrorist groups from developing crude weapons, but are unlikely to be entirely effective in impeding governments motivated to join the "nuclear club." For the latter, persuasion that nonproliferation is a shared global concern and other political measures to reduce their interest in possessing nuclear weapons must be the first line of defense. Its reinforcement through international technical cooperation is a sound objective for high policy, but neither political nor technical measures can recreate the preatomic age.