Publications

Global Fissile Material Report 2011: Nuclear Weapon and Fissile Material Stockpiles and Production

2012-01-10T19:34:40Z

Global Fissile Material Report 2011: Nuclear Weapon and Fissile Material Stockpiles and Production, Sixth annual report of the International Panel on Fissile Material, January 2012.

Managing Spent Fuel from Nuclear Power Reactors

2011-09-23T18:36:02Z

Managing Spent Fuel from Nuclear Power Reactors: Experience and Lessons from Around the World, Report of the International Panel on Fissile Material, Edited by Harold Feiveson, Zia Mian, M.V. Ramana and Frank von Hippel, September 2011

Global stocks and production of fissile materials, 2010

2011-06-29T18:04:18Z

Alexander Glaser and Zia Mian, Appendix 7A. Global stocks and production of fissile materials, 2010, in SIPRI Yearbook 2011, Oxford University Press, 2011

]]> Summary

As of 2010, global stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU) totalled approximately 1270 tonnes (not including 208 tonnes to be blended down). Global military stocks of separated plutonium totalled approximately 237 tonnes and civilian stocks totalled 248 tonnes.

China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA have produced both HEU and plutonium. India, Israel and North Korea have produced mainly plutonium, and Pakistan mainly HEU for weapons. All states with a civilian nuclear industry have some capability to produce fissile materials

PDF copy of the Appendix 7A

IPFM to present findings of forthcoming report on spent nuclear fuel management

2011-05-25T18:16:32Z

The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) will present the findings of a new international study on the experience in ten countries with management of spent nuclear fuel. The two volume study focuses on the policy and technical challenges faced over the past four decades by efforts at site selection and construction of long term storage and geological repositories for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power reactors and high level radioactive waste. These challenges have so far prevented the licensing of a geological spent fuel repository anywhere in the world.

]]> Spent Fuel: Volume 1, Country Studies, summarizes how individual countries are managing their spent fuel and searching for ways to dispose of the fuel. The cases presented here are Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Sweden and Finland, the United Kingdom and the United States. This volume also includes a review of efforts to develop the option of countries sharing a multinational repository for spent nuclear fuel.

Spent Fuel: Volume 2, Technical Issues, describes our current understanding of several of the technical issues relevant to the disposal of spent fuel, and provides a background to the challenges facing individual countries. It includes a discussion of the current state of International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on spent nuclear fuel and the prospects for effective monitoring of a spent fuel geological repository for the indefinite future.

The presentations will be on 3 June 2011 in Washington DC on Capitol Hill (12-1pm, Rayburn House Office Building - Room B-340) and at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (3pm-5pm, AAAS, 2nd Floor).

Materials from the meetings:

Overview of a forthcoming IPFM research report "Spent Fuel From Nuclear Power Reactors"
Presentation slides

Presenters:

Frank von Hippel, Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Co-Chair of the IPFM
Beate Kallenbach-Herbert, Head of the Nuclear Engineering and Facility Safety Division, Oeko Institute, Germany
Pavel Podvig, Princeton University, IPFM
M.V. Ramana, Princeton University, IPFM
Johan Swahn, Director of the Office for Nuclear Waste Review, Sweden, IPFM

Presentation to the U.N. Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters

2011-02-25T19:28:57Z

On February 25, 2011, Zia Mian gave a presentation to United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters.

The Advisory Board's mission is "To advise the Secretary-General on matters within the area of arms limitation and disarmament, including on studies and research under the auspices of the United Nations or institutions within the United Nations system." The Secretary General asked the Board in particular to provide "counsel on measures to overcome the stalemate in the CD and revitalize multilateral disarmament efforts."

The focus of the presentation (PDF file) was options for making progress on the fissile material agenda.

Global Fissile Material Report 2010: Balancing the Books

2010-12-17T16:38:04Z

Global Fissile Material Report 2010: Balancing the Books. Production and Stocks, Fifth annual report of the International Panel on Fissile Material, December 2010

The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy

2010-09-30T12:14:01Z

Frank von Hippel, Editor, with contributions by Matthew Bunn, Anatoli Diakov, Ming Ding, Tadahiro Katsuta, Charles McCombie, M.V. Ramana, Tatsujiro Suzuki, Susan Voss, Suyuan Yu, The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy, IPFM Research Report #9, September 2010

IPFM draft FM(C)T now official document of United Nations Conference on Disarmament

2010-06-30T02:22:13Z

IPFM's draft of "A Treaty Banning the Production of Fissile Materials for Nuclear Weapons or Other Nuclear Explosive Devices", with article-by-article explanations is now available as an official document of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (CD). The CD has been charged with negotiating this Treaty.

The draft Treaty was jointly submitted to the CD by Japan, Canada and the Netherlands in September 2009. The three delegations noted that while the draft treaty does not represent the official positions of these states, it "is intended to provide the Member States of the Conference on Disarmament with useful resource material for our work in the prospective negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty."

The draft Treaty is now available in all official UN languages:

IPFM recommendations to the 2010 NPT Review Conference

2010-05-16T11:52:32Z

A Fissile-Material Approach to Furthering the Disarmament and Nonproliferation Objectives of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

(Download a PDF copy of this document)

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) establishes a system of controls on the production and use of fissile materials -- most commonly separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU). Since these materials are the key ingredients in nuclear weapons, such controls are critical to halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and the Thirteen Steps agreed at the 2000 Review Conference included commitments by NPT state-parties to achieve quickly a multilateral Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) that would end production of fissile materials for weapons in all states and extend the international system of control over fissile materials to cover civilian and excess weapon materials in nuclear-weapon states.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) recommends that, to further the disarmament and nonproliferation objectives of the NPT, the 2010 Review Conference should:

]]> 1. Reaffirm and strengthen the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conference goal of ending the production of fissile materials for weapons.

This includes renewing the call for the UN Conference on Disarmament "to agree on a programme of work which includes the immediate commencement of negotiations on such a treaty with a view to their conclusion within five years."

The Review Conference should call in parallel for an end to further production of fissile materials for weapons by all states pending negotiations on an FMCT, including Israel, North Korea, India, and Pakistan, even though they are not parties to the NPT.

2. Request the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to conduct studies on FMCT verification.

This would help lay the basis for more informed discussions on a verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.

3. Call for all fissile materials outside nuclear-weapon complexes or declared excess to weapons purposes to never be used for weapons and to be monitored by the IAEA pending disposition.

Drawing a line between weapon and non-weapon stockpiles would close the loophole in the 2000 NPT Review Conference call for "all nuclear-weapon States to place ... fissile material designated by each of them as no longer required for military purposes under IAEA or other relevant international verification." Under this more limited provision nuclear-weapon states can keep non-weapon military stockpiles of fissile material outside of international monitoring.

The United States, for example, has assigned 128 tons of HEU to fuel nuclear-powered submarines and ships. This is sufficient for over 5000 nuclear weapons.

4. Call for nuclear-weapon materials made excess by further nuclear disarmament measures to be placed under IAEA monitoring as quickly as possible.

Fissile material in the thousands of weapons that have been and are to be taken off deployment bilaterally by the US and Russia under the Moscow Treaty and the New START agreement, and unilaterally by UK and France, should be declared excess for weapon purposes and placed under IAEA monitoring pending irreversible disposition. This would demonstrate that the principle of irreversibility is being applied to nuclear arms reduction measures, as called for in the 2000 NPT Review Conference.

5. Call for the FMCT to include extending IAEA safeguards to non-weapons material in the nuclear-weapon states.

The UN Conference on Disarmament should include in the design of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty the objective of extending IAEA safeguards to pre-existing non-weapons materials in the nuclear-weapon states.

6. Call for an end to both civilian and military use of HEU for reactor fuel.

If the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom were to follow France's example and convert their naval-propulsion reactors to low-enriched uranium fuel, an estimated 200 tons of HEU currently in naval reserves--enough to make 8000 nuclear weapons--could be eliminated. The use of highly enriched uranium fuel in civilian research reactors is already being reduced as part of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative.

7. Call for an end to plutonium separation for civilian as well as weapon purposes.

Today, about half of all separated plutonium is civilian--but it is still weapon-usable. While the weapons stockpile is slated to shrink, the civilian stockpile of two hundred and fifty tons is still growing because of reprocessing operations in France, Russia, the United Kingdom, India and Japan.

8. Call on nuclear weapon-states to make early national declarations of stockpiles and facilities.

To help lay the basis for nuclear disarmament negotiations and subsequent verification, nuclear weapon states should declare

stockpiles of fissile materials,
status of fissile material production facilities,
plans for the shutdown and decommissioning of production facilities,
conversion of former production facilities to safeguarded civilian uses.

9. Call on the nuclear-weapon states to preserve production facilities, historic production records and process wastes to enable verification.

Nuclear weapons states should preserve their fissile material production facilities (enrichment plants, production reactors and reprocessing plants) and related waste materials and historic production records in a condition that will facilitate verification of declarations of past production and to work with the IAEA to determine what needs to be preserved and how, and to develop appropriate verification methods.

10. Call for new bilateral, trilateral and multilateral cooperative verification projects.

Nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states should continue their work on cooperative projects that would involve the IAEA for verifying:

chain-of-custody for warheads and fissile materials,
dismantlement of warheads and components containing fissile materials, and
disposition of the recovered highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

For detailed analysis see:

Global Fissile Material Report 2008: Scope and Verification of a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty
Draft Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty, September 2009
Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament

Reducing and Eliminating Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to Nuclear Disarmament

2010-05-12T08:13:48Z

Reducing and Eliminating Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to Nuclear Disarmament, Companion Volume to the Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament, May 2010

Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status

2010-02-17T12:30:00Z

Thomas B. Cochran, Harold A. Feiveson, Walt Patterson, Gennadi Pshakin, M.V. Ramana, Mycle Schneider, Tatsujiro Suzuki, Frank von Hippel, Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status, IPFM Research Report #8, February 2010.

Seminar on fissile materials stocks at UNIDIR

2010-01-19T13:46:03Z

On January 19, 2010, Annette Schaper and H. A. Feiveson of IPFM made presentations at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The lunch-time seminar was organized by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). There were approximately 120 attendees at the seminar, most delegates to the Conference on Disarmament. Both presentations focused on the importance and feasibility of including in a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty certain pre-existing stocks of fissile materials - notably civilian stocks, fissile materials declared excess by nuclear weapon states to any military uses, and highly enriched uranium reserved for naval reactors.

The briefing paper published by UNIDIR: Harold A. Feiveson, Treatment of Pre-existing Fissile Material Stocks in an FM(C)T, UNIDIR, January 2010

Briefing at AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy

2009-12-10T09:35:39Z

On Thursday, 10 December, the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) presented Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament in Washington, DC to Congressional staff, government officials, and nuclear arms control and disarmament groups at an event sponsored by the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy and another organized jointly by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Non-Proliferation and the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

To help inform the Washington policy making process, IPFM members James Acton, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian and Frank von Hippel presented some of the key technical and policy issues and IPFM recommendations for practical steps toward verified world-wide nuclear disarmament developed in Global Fissile Material Report 2009. The presentation (available here) covered the context of the new disarmament debate, the status of fissile material stockpiles and their implication for a disarming world, how declarations of fissile material stocks could be verified using nuclear archaeology, the verifiable dismantlement of nuclear weapons and the disposition of the roughly 2000 tons of fissile material existing today (both plutonium and highly enriched uranium) that could be used for weapons.

Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament

2009-10-29T14:08:08Z

Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament, Fourth annual report of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, October 2009

IPFM presents "A Path to Nuclear Disarmament" at the United Nations

2009-10-28T08:42:31Z

On Wednesday, 28 October, the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), presented Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament at the United Nations General Assembly's First Committee, which is responsible for international peace and security.

Global Fissile Material Report 2009 charts some of the key technical and policy steps for securing verifiable world-wide nuclear disarmament and eliminating the world's huge stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the key materials for making nuclear weapons.

Nuclear disarmament has returned to the center of international debate following President Barack Obama's April 2009 speech in Prague, in which he pledged "to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." In September 2009, the United Nations Security Council, which includes the five major nuclear weapon states, unanimously agreed "to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons."

Global Fissile Material Report 2009 discusses how nuclear-armed states could declare their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, plutonium and highly enriched uranium, and how these declarations might be verified using the methods and tools being developed for what is now called 'nuclear archaeology.'

The report includes IPFM's annual assessment of worldwide stocks, production, and disposition of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, and current efforts to eliminate these materials. There are nine nuclear-armed states and over 20,000 nuclear weapons today. The report includes for the first time an estimate of the number and locations of nuclear weapons sites worldwide, listed by country.

The IPFM estimates that the current global stockpile of highly enriched uranium is about 1600 metric tons. There are about 500 tons of separated plutonium, divided almost equally between weapon and civilian stocks, but it is all weapon-usable. The global stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium together are sufficient for over one hundred thousand nuclear weapons. The report lists the location, size and safeguards status of operating, under construction and planned fissile material production facilities around the world.

The report considers options for monitoring nuclear warhead dismantlement and the disposition of the fissile materials they contain as well as other stockpiles of fissile materials; verifiably ending the production of fissile materials for weapons, through a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (a topic treated in detail in Global Fissile Material Report 2008); the potential roles of nuclear fuel-cycle facilities in enabling nuclear breakout in a disarmed world; and the potential contributions of societal or citizen verification to making it impossible to conceal illicit nuclear-weapon-related activities.