Nuclear Power and Proliferation Resistance

Summary and key recommendations

Benefit: Meeting the global energy demand

Global electricity demand is expected to increase by more than 50 percent by 2025. Nuclear power is a primary carbon-free energy source for meeting this extensive global energy expansion.

Risk: Proliferation and nuclear weapons

The technologies used in peaceful nuclear power programs overlap with those used in the production of fissionable material for nuclear weapons. The elements of a nuclear power system include: facilities that mine and mill uranium ore, facilities that enrich uranium to create fuel, fuel fabrication facilities, reactors that burn that fuel to generate electricity, possibly facilities to reprocess the spent fuel, and waste storage sites.

Nuclear reactors themselves are not the primary proliferation risk; the principal concern is that countries with the intent to proliferate can covertly use the associated enrichment or reprocessing plants to produce the essential material for a nuclear explosive.

Further, poorly secured nuclear materials present a risk of proliferation through theft and transfer to a country or terrorist groups.

Securing benefits, limiting risk

The extent to which nuclear power will be an acceptable option to meeting future global energy requirements will depend upon its cost, safety, waste management, and the associated proliferation risks. While all these issues are important considerations, this report exclusively examines options for limiting proliferation risks.

No single diplomatic, military, economic, institutional, or technical initiative alone will be able to fully deal with this proliferation challenge. The best prospect for achieving non-proliferation goals while expanding nuclear power is to engage all appropriate means.

While nuclear power cannot be made “proliferation proof,” this report examines technological steps that the U.S. can take to enhance the resistance of nuclear power systems to theft, diversion and breakout. These technical steps will be most effective when coupled with changes in institutional arrangements.

Specifically, the U.S. should:

General recommendations

1. Significantly strengthen the federal Technical Safeguards R&D program: increase resources, identify near-term technology goals, formulate a
technology roadmap, and improve interagency coordination.

2. Increase the priority of proliferation resistance in design and development of all future nuclear energy systems.

3. Develop and strengthen international collaborations on key proliferation-resistant technologies.

4. Align federal programs to reflect the fact that there is no urgent need to initiate reprocessing or to develop additional spent fuel repositories in the
US.

National security and proliferation resistance

Worldwide, 30 new nuclear plants were under construction in March 2005, with 20 new plants in Asia alone. In addition to China’s plan to greatly expand its nuclear power program, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Egypt have all declared an interest in building their first civilian nuclear power plants.

As evidenced by the current situation in Iran, technological advances and institutional changes are required to avoid proliferation by countries taking advantage of a global spread of nuclear power. Consequently, whether or not the United States constructs new nuclear power plants over the next quarter century, it is vital to U.S. national security that the US remain engaged in the development of proliferation-resistant nuclear-energy technologies and of technologies that can support new international arrangements to safeguard and coordinate future fuel-cycle deployment.