Arms control experts prepare draft treaty to ban uranium, plutonium
production for weapons
UNITED NATIONS: Independent arms control experts from 15
countries are preparing a draft treaty to ban production of uranium and
plutonium for nuclear weapons that will rival a proposed U.S. text
submitted to the U.N.’s top disarmament body last year.
Professor Frank von Hippel of Princeton University, a nuclear
physicist who served in the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy in 1994-95, said the International Panel on Fissile Materials is
not only developing a draft treaty “but more importantly, an in-depth
analysis of the verification issues associated with the treaty.”
Von Hippel, the panel’s co-chairman, told diplomats, U.N. staff and
disarmament activists at a meeting on the sidelines of the U.N.
Disarmament Commission’s three-week meeting that the panel does not
think verifying a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty “is of much greater
difficulty” than verifying the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which
came into force in 1970 and is aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear
weapons.
“And we think this can be done with reasonable cost,” he said.
Last May, the United States proposed a new Fissile Material Cutoff
Treaty to curb proliferation of nuclear weapons by banning the
production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium to improve the world’s
leverage against “hard cases” like Iran and North Korea.
The U.S. said it left out verification measures to avoid years of
protracted negotiations, but it said governments could use “national
means” - or intelligence - to detect violations by other countries and
report them to all treaty members or to the U.N. Security Council.
Stephen G. Rademaker, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for
arms control, urged the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament to conclude
work on a new treaty by September. But the U.S. proposal is still under
consideration in the conference, the U.N.’s top arms control body.
During Wednesday’s discussion, differences emerged on whether to
consider a step-by-step or a wide-ranging treaty, with or without
verification.
An Egyptian diplomat insisted that the nuclear powers should be
subject to the same rule as non-nuclear states, and that the treaty’s
aim should be disarmament, not legalizing the retention of weapons by
the nuclear powers.
Princeton research scientist Zia Mian, who works with the panel, said
a key issue is the lack of information on the quantities of highly
enriched uranium in some major countries - first and foremost Russia,
but also France and China. The U.S. and Britain have declared their
stockpiles, he said.
The five nuclear weapon states have all stopped producing
highly-enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons, and Pakistan
appears to be the only country still producing highly enriched uranium
for its nuclear weapons.
So Mian said stopping production is not going to be difficult for the
nuclear weapon states.
But he said the U.S., Britain and Russia use highly enriched uranium
for nuclear propulsion for submarines, the U.S. also uses it for
aircraft carriers and Russia for ice-breakers, so a lot has been set
aside by those countries.
Large quantities have also been set aside for future military and
civilian use, and declared as excess, he said.
If the U.S. and Russia reduced the number of nuclear warheads in
their stockpiles to 1,000, a lot less highly enriched uranium would be
needed, but Mian said the continued naval demands would create problems
and probably require “extra conditions” in a treaty.
France has moved to fuel its submarines with low-enriched uranium, he
said, “and one possibility is that if Russia, the U.S. and Britain are
going to insist on using nuclear-powered submarines for carrying
missiles to deliver nuclear weapons,” they could shift from
high-enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium.
As for plutonium, Mian said, there are about 150 tons in weapons
today, “but there’s about 100 tons that the U.S. and Russia have
declared as excess to their military needs ... and there’s a very large
civilian stock in the world.”
So in preparing a treaty, he said, “we need to get a better handle on
who has how much fissile material in the world.”
New York, Thursday, AP |
