Steven E. Miller & Scott D. Sagan · 8 Dædalus Fall 2009 Steven E. Miller & Scott D. Sagan on the...

Today, the Cold War has disappeared butthousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of glob-al nuclear war has gone down, but the riskof a nuclear attack has gone up. More na-tions have acquired these weapons. Test-ing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materialsabound. The technology to build a bombhas spread. Terrorists are determined tobuy, build or steal one. Our efforts to con-tain these dangers are centered on a glob-al non-proliferation regime, but as morepeople and nations break the rules, wecould reach the point where the centercannot hold.

–President Barack ObamaPrague, April 5, 2009

The global nuclear order is changing.Concerns about climate change, thevolatility of oil prices, and the securi-ty of energy supplies have contributed to a widespread and still-growing inter-est in the future use of nuclear power. Thirty states operate one or more nucle-ar power plants today, and according tothe International Atomic Energy Agency(iaea), some 50 others have requested

technical assistance from the agency to explore the possibility of developingtheir own nuclear energy programs. It is certainly not possible to predict pre-cisely how fast and how extensively theexpansion of nuclear power will occur.But it does seem probable that in the fu-ture there will be more nuclear technol-ogy spread across more states than everbefore. It will be a different world thanthe one that has existed in the past.

This surge of interest in nuclear en-ergy–labeled by some proponents as“the renaissance in nuclear power”–is, moreover, occurring simultaneous-ly with mounting concern about thehealth of the nuclear nonproliferationregime, the regulatory framework thatconstrains and governs the world’s civ-il and military-related nuclear affairs.The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty(npt) and related institutions have been taxed by new worries, such as thegrowth in global terrorism, and havebeen painfully tested by protracted cri-ses involving nuclear weapons prolifera-tion in North Korea and potentially inIran. (Indeed, some observers suspectthat growing interest in nuclear power in some countries, especially in the Mid-dle East, is not unrelated to Iran’s urani-um enrichment program and Tehran’smovement closer to a nuclear weapons

Dædalus Fall 2009 7

Steven E. Miller & Scott D. Sagan

Nuclear power without nuclear proliferation?

© 2009 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

8 Dædalus Fall 2009

Steven E.Miller &Scott D.Saganon the globalnuclearfuture

capability.) Con½dence in the npt re-gime seems to be eroding even as inter-est in nuclear power is expanding.

This realization raises crucial ques-tions for the future of global security.Will the growth of nuclear power lead to increased risks of nuclear weaponsproliferation and nuclear terrorism?Will the nonproliferation regime be adequate to ensure safety and security in a world more widely and heavily in-vested in nuclear power? The authors in this two-volume (Fall 2009 and Win-ter 2010) special issue of Dædalus haveone simple and clear answer to thesequestions: It depends.

On what will it depend? Unfortunate-ly, the answer to that question is not sosimple and clear, for the technical, eco-nomic, and political factors that willdetermine whether future generationswill have more nuclear power withoutmore nuclear proliferation are bothexceedingly complex and interrelated.How rapidly and in which countries will new nuclear power plants be built?Will the future expansion of nuclear en-ergy take place primarily in existing nu-clear power states or will there be manynew entrants to the ½eld? Which coun-tries will possess the facilities for enrich-ing uranium or reprocessing plutonium,technical capabilities that could be usedto produce either nuclear fuel for reac-tors or the materials for nuclear bombs?How can physical protection of nuclearmaterials from terrorist organizationsbest be ensured? How can new entrantsinto nuclear power generation best main-tain safety to prevent accidents? The answers to these questions will be crit-ical determinants of the technologicaldimension of our nuclear future.

The major political factors influenc-ing the future of nuclear weapons are no less complex and no less important.Will Iran acquire nuclear weapons; will

North Korea develop more weapons or disarm in the coming decade; howwill neighboring states respond? Willthe United States and Russia take sig-ni½cant steps toward nuclear disarma-ment, and if so, will the other nuclear-weapons states follow suit or stand onthe sidelines?

The nuclear future will be stronglyinfluenced, too, by the success or fail-ure of efforts to strengthen the inter-national organizations and the set ofagreements that comprise the systemdeveloped over time to manage globalnuclear affairs. Will new international or regional mechanisms be developed to control the front-end (the produc-tion of nuclear reactor fuel) and theback-end (the management of spent fuel containing plutonium) of the nu-clear fuel cycle? What political agree-ments and disagreements are likely to emerge between the nuclear-weap-ons states (nws) and the non-nuclear-weapons states (nnws) at the 2010 npt Review Conference and beyond?What role will crucial actors among thennws–Japan, Iran, Brazil, and Egypt,for example–play in determining theglobal nuclear future? And most broad-ly, will the nonproliferation regime besupported and strengthened or will it be questioned and weakened? As iaea

Director General Mohamed ElBaradeihas emphasized, “The nonprolifera-tion regime is, in many ways, at a crit-ical juncture,” and there is a need for a new “overarching multilateral nucle-ar framework.”1 But there is no guaran-tee that such a framework will emerge,and there is wide doubt that the arrange-ments of the past will be adequate tomanage our nuclear future effectively.

The authors in both this and the subsequent volume address these andother vexing issues that will affect thespread of nuclear power and the spread

of nuclear weapons. As is necessary to understand such a complex set of real-world issues, the authors repre-sent diverse academic disciplines (in-cluding physical sciences, engineering,and social sciences) and many profes-sions (including lawyers, nuclear reg-ulators, nuclear industry executives, and experienced diplomats and polit-ical leaders). As is appropriate to ad-dress a global issue, the authors comefrom many different countries, fromboth nws and nnws. And as is ap-propriate for an objective intellectualenterprise, the authors represent bothstrong advocates for and skeptics of the global expansion of nuclear power,as well as both supporters and oppo-nents of complete nuclear weapons disarmament.

In this introductory essay, we aim ½rst to demonstrate why the question of which states will develop nuclearpower in the future matters for globalsecurity. To do so, we briefly discuss the connections between nuclear pow-er, nuclear proliferation, and terrorismrisks; we present data contrasting exist-ing nuclear-power states with potentialnew entrants with respect to factors in-fluencing those risks. Second, we intro-duce major themes addressed by the au-thors in both volumes, and explain whythe expansion of nuclear power, the fu-ture of nuclear weapons disarmament,and the future of the npt and relatedparts of the nuclear control regime are so intertwined. Finally, we concludewith some observations about what isnew and what is not new about currentglobal nuclear challenges. The Ameri-can Academy of Arts and Sciences haspublished three important special issuesof Dædalus on nuclear weapons issues inthe past–in 1960, 1975, and 1991–andreflecting on the differences between the concerns and solutions discussed

in those three issues and the nuclearchallenges we face today is both inspir-ing and sobering.

Although many experts talk about the “expansion” or “renaissance” ofnuclear power around the globe, it isimportant to differentiate between tworelated phenomena: a potential growthin the production of nuclear energy instates that currently have nuclear pow-er facilities and the potential spread ofnuclear power plants and related fa-cilities to states that are new entrants to the “nuclear energy club.” Figure 1lists the existing nuclear-power statesand the aspiring states that have request-ed iaea assistance in exploring nuclearprograms, by regions of the world. Withrespect to climate change, it would, intheory, make relatively little differencewhich nations increase their use of nu-clear energy (and other non-carbon-pro-ducing energy technologies); what mat-ters is the overall global reduction in car-bon emissions. With respect to the safe-ty and security dimensions of the nucle-ar future, however, it will matter great-ly which states acquire what kinds of nu-clear technology. Thus, there are threebroad reasons to be concerned about anunconstrained spread of nuclear powerto new nations that have not previouslymanaged the technology.

First, for nuclear energy programs to be developed and managed safely and securely, it is important that stateshave domestic “good governance” char-acteristics that will encourage propernuclear operations and management.These characteristics include low de-grees of corruption (to avoid of½cialsselling materials and technology fortheir own personal gain as occurred with the A.Q. Khan smuggling networkin Pakistan), high degrees of politicalstability (de½ned by the World Bank as


Nuclearpowerwithoutnuclearprolifer-ation?



“likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by un-constitutional or violent means, includ-ing politically-motivated violence andterrorism”), high governmental effec-tiveness scores (a World Bank aggregatemeasure of “the quality of the civil ser-vice and the degree of its independencefrom political pressures [and] the quali-ty of policy formulation and implemen-tation”), and a strong degree of regula-tory competence. Fortunately, we have a great deal of information measuringthese domestic good governance factorsacross the globe. Unfortunately, the datahighlight the grave security challenges

that would be created if there were ram-pant proliferation of nuclear energy pro-duction facilities to each and every statethat has expressed interest to the iaea

in acquiring nuclear power. The WorldBank publishes annual aggregate data,derived from multiple sources, on eachof these good governance characteris-tics, and, as shown in Figure 2, the av-erage scores of the potential new nu-clear-energy states on each of thesedimensions is signi½cantly lower thanthe scores of states already possessingnuclear energy.

Second, all nnws under the npt

must accept iaea safeguards inspections

Figure 1Expansion versus Spread: Existing and Aspiring Nuclear Power States

Sources: iaea Power Reactor Information System, www.iaea.org/programmes/a2; Frank N. von Hippel, ed., “The Uncertain Future of Fission Power,” review draft, www.½ssilematerials.org; Polity IV Project,Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2007, www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm. Figure © Scott D. Sagan.



on their nuclear power facilities in orderto reduce the danger that governmentsmight cheat on their commitments notto use the technology to acquire nuclearweapons; therefore, it is illuminating toexamine the historical record of nnws

violating their npt commitments. Herethere is one very important ½nding abouthow domestic political characteristicsinfluence the behavior of npt members:each known or strongly suspected caseof a government starting a secret nuclearweapons program, while it was a mem-ber of the npt and thus violating its Ar-ticle IInpt commitment, was undertak-en by a non-democratic government.2(The con½rmed or suspected historicalcases of npt member states starting nu-clear weapons programs in violation oftheir Treaty commitments include Northand South Korea, Libya, Iraq, Yugosla-via, Taiwan, Iran, and Syria, all of which

were non-democratic at the time in ques-tion.) It is therefore worrisome that, asFigure 2 shows, the group of potentialnew states seeking nuclear power capa-bilities is on average signi½cantly lessdemocratic than the list of existing stateswith nuclear energy capabilities.

Third, states that face signi½cant ter-rorist threats from within face particu-lar challenges in ensuring that there isno successful terrorist attack on a nu-clear facility or no terrorist theft of ½s-sile material to make a nuclear weaponor dirty bomb. Figure 3 displays datafrom the United States Counterterror-ism Center comparing the ½ve-year to-tals of terrorism incidents in the exist-ing states that have nuclear power facili-ties and the iaea list of aspiring states.India and Pakistan, both of which havenuclear weapons and nuclear power fa-cilities and which face severe terrorist

Figure 2Governance, Corruption, and Democracy

*Measurement for Democracy Score is mean Polity IV score on a 100-point scale. Sources: World Bank, World Governance Indicators, 1996–2007, info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index/asp; Polity IV Project,Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2007, www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm. Figure © Scott D. Sagan.



threats from homegrown and outsiderterrorist organizations, clearly lead thepack. But as Figure 3 shows, the statesthat are exploring developing nuclearpower would take up six of the slots on a “terrorist top ten risk list” if each of them develops civilian nuclear pow-er in the future.

These ½gures clearly represent worst-case estimates about the security impli-cations of the spread of nuclear power,for as a number of authors in these vol-umes note, many of the aspiring stateswill not be able to progress with nucle-ar power development programs anytime soon due to ½nancial or other con-straints. Indeed, most of the growth innuclear power over the coming decade is likely to come from new plants instates that already operate nuclear pow-er plants. But the ½gures do dramaticallyhighlight the intertwined political, tech-nical, and economic challenges we face if the world is to see both the expansionand spread of the use of nuclear poweron a global scale. It seems almost certain

that some new entrants to nuclear pow-er will emerge in the coming decadesand that the organizational and politi-cal challenges to ensure the safe and se-cure spread of nuclear technology intothe developing world will be substan-tial and potentially grave. The propos-als in these two volumes–for interna-tional control of the fuel cycle, for shar-ing best practices for physical securi-ty, and for enhancing the internation-al nuclear safety regime–are designed to mitigate the inherent security risksthat the nuclear renaissance will bring.

The essays collected in these two vol-umes of Dædalus focus on three broad,interlocking subjects: nuclear power,nuclear disarmament, and nuclear proliferation. The new nuclear orderthat will emerge years hence will be the result of the interplay of state mo-tives for pursuing nuclear power andconstraints on that pursuit. Contribu-tors to the volumes consider in detail the changing technical, economic, and

Figure 3Nuclear Power and Terrorism

Asterisk denotes aspiring nuclear power state. Source: Worldwide Incidents Tracking System, National Counterterrorism Center (nctc), http://wits.nctc.gov/Main.do. Figure © Scott D. Sagan.

Incidents of terrorism in past ½ve years, Incidents of terrorism in past ½ve years,current nuclear power states current and aspiring nuclear power states

India 4,462 India 4,462

Pakistan 3,687 Pakistan 3,687

Russia 1,302 Thailand* 3,301

Spain 313 Israel* 2,775

France 277 Russia 1,302

United Kingdom 220 Philippines* 1,061

Iran 56 Sri Lanka* 702

China 31 Turkey* 403

Mexico 29 Algeria* 327

Ukraine 25 Spain 313

environmental factors that are makingnuclear power seem more attractivearound the globe. But they also addressfactors inhibiting the growth of nucle-ar power: enormous capital costs, theneed for public subsidies, limited indus-trial capacity to build power plants, in-adequate electricity grids, the possibleemergence of alternative energy tech-nologies, concern about the cost andrisks associated with nuclear wastes,public fear of nuclear technology, as well as concern about the security riskscreated by the possible spread of weap-ons-usable nuclear technologies. Whenthe constraints are taken into account, it may well be that the spread of nucle-ar power will be neither as fast nor asextensive as many anticipate.3 Never-theless, some expansion and spreadseems inevitable, and accordingly these volumes consider the standards for safety and physical protection thatmust be met to reduce the risks thatcould emerge along with the spread of civilian nuclear power capacity.

Concerns about proliferation(whether to states or terrorists) arise at the intersection of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Indeed, the con-nection between power and weapons issomewhat inevitable because key tech-nologies in the nuclear sector–notably,uranium enrichment and plutonium re-processing capabilities–are relevant toboth. In the nonproliferation context,this is the dual-use dilemma: many tech-nologies associated with the creation ofa nuclear power program can be used tomake weapons if a state chooses to doso. When a state seems motivated to ac-quire nuclear weapons, a nuclear powerprogram in that state can appear to besimply a route leading to the bomb or apublic annex to a secret bomb program.The crisis over Iran’s nuclear activities is a case in point. Depending on what

capabilities spread to which states, es-pecially regarding uranium enrichmentand plutonium reprocessing, a world of widely spread nuclear technologiescould be a world in which more states,like Iran, would have the latent capabil-ity to manufacture nuclear weapons.This could easily be a world ½lled withmuch more worry about the risk of nu-clear proliferation–and worse, a worldwhere more states possess nuclear weap-ons. A fundamental goal for Americanand global security is to minimize theproliferation risks associated with theexpansion of nuclear power. If this de-velopment is poorly managed or effortsto contain risks are unsuccessful, thenuclear future will be dangerous.

What can be done to limit future pro-liferation risks? The contributors tothese volumes explore two fundamentalanswers to that question. First, some au-thors discuss policies that could create a world in which the incentives to ac-quire nuclear weapons are minimized. If nuclear weapons remain the currencyof the realm, if they are the ticket to thehigh table of international politics, ifthey are believed to confer enormousdiplomatic and security bene½ts, if theexisting nws insist on the necessity toretain their nuclear weapons for the in-de½nite future, then it will be very dif-½cult over the long run to make the casethat for all other states nuclear weaponsare unnecessary and undesirable. On theother hand, the context for future nucle-ar decision-making will be very differentif that context is a world where nuclearweapons are being devalued and margin-alized and where the nws are reducingtheir arsenals and perhaps even headingmeaningfully in the direction of elimi-nating nuclear weapons altogether. Thisis why the nuclear disarmament debatecomes into play in considering the fu-ture global nuclear order.



The disarmament-nonproliferationconnection is formally codi½ed in thefamous Article VI of the npt, whichcalls for the nws (and all other states) to make good faith efforts to achievenuclear disarmament. Under the gen-eral rubric of arms control, work overseveral decades has gone toward effortsto regulate, constrain, reduce, and elimi-nate nuclear weapons–efforts that havehelped contain the dangers of nuclear ri-valry. Nevertheless–and despite theirobligations under Article VI and theirrepeated rhetorical commitments tonuclear disarmament–the nws have not, in the opinion of many observers,moved genuinely and signi½cantly in the direction of nuclear disarmament.4Indeed, there have been multiple state-ments by some government of½cials innws that suggest that they are ½rmlycommitted to keeping nuclear weaponsinde½nitely, and the failure of the U.S.Senate to ratify the Comprehensive TestBan Treaty (ctbt) and help bring thatTreaty into force opens up the prospectof testing new nuclear weapons in thefuture. The result has been growing dis-satisfaction among many key nnws

about the failure of the nws to live up to their npt obligations, recurrent acri-monious collisions over Article VI atnpt review conferences, mounting frus-tration with and disaffection from thenpt regime, and a consequent protract-ed inability to address other key npt

issues in a constructive fashion. Fromthe perspective of many nnws, ArticleVIwas one of the core bargains of thenpt and the weapons states are simplynot living up to their end of the bargain.

The current debate over nuclear dis-armament is crucial to the evolution ofthe global nuclear order for two reasons.One way or the other, the debate will in-fluence future incentives to acquire nu-clear weapons, and it will have signi½-

cant implications in terms of preserving,effectively managing, and strengtheningthe npt regime. It is therefore very im-portant that nuclear disarmament hasnow made it onto the public and policyagenda in a prominent way, having beengalvanized by the efforts of four distin-guished American statesmen and rein-forced by President Obama’s remark-able embrace of the nuclear disarma-ment objective in his speech in Prague in April 2009.5 It is generally understoodthat nuclear disarmament is a long-termgoal, not an immediate policy objective.Yet much can be done in the interim toconstrain nuclear forces and reduce theirrole in international politics; such stepscan help to address the concerns thathave commonly arisen in the nonprolif-eration context. The origins, rationale,meaning, and prospects of nuclear disar-mament are therefore addressed in thesevolumes of Dædalus.

Future proliferation risks can also belimited in a second fundamental way: by preserving and improving the non-proliferation regime, that system of rules and institutions that is meant toallow the use of civilian nuclear pow-er while providing reassurance againstthe use of nuclear technology for weap-ons purposes. As the protracted nucle-ar crises of recent decades–Iraq, Iran,North Korea–have shown, the system is not perfect or foolproof even today.But looking to the future, will the non-proliferation regime be adequate in a world where there is more nuclearknowledge and technology spread across more states? The essays collect-ed in the second volume confront thatquestion. Some of the essays explorevarious ways in which the nonprolifer-ation regime could be improved: trans-parency could be enhanced, safeguardsbolstered, the iaea further empoweredto monitor nuclear programs and ex-



plore suspicious activities. npt rules can be more uniformly and universal-ly enforced, with exceptions like theU.S.-India nuclear deal not permitted.The nuclear fuel cycle can be organizedin a way that minimizes the spread ofsensitive dual-use technology; variousschemes for assuring fuel supplies couldreduce the need and incentive for indi-vidual states to acquire enrichment ca-pabilities, for example. Any fuel-cyclearrangement or agreed norm that lim-its the spread of enrichment and repro-cessing technology will greatly circum-scribe the proliferation risks associatedwith expanded nuclear power. It wouldalso be desirable to ½nd more effectivemethods of enforcement when instancesof noncompliance are discovered. Theseideas and more are examined in volumetwo.

But the npt is a nearly global regime–all but four states are members (Israel,India, and Pakistan never joined, andNorth Korea withdrew in 2003)–andnone of the ideas for improving the re-gime will be feasible if they do not in-spire wide assent among npt members.The regime therefore must be consid-ered from a diverse set of national per-spectives in order to gauge what stepsmight be possible and what constraintswill need to be addressed in order toadapt the nonproliferation regime to the emerging global nuclear order. It is far from certain that key nnws willshare the diagnoses and support theremedies preferred by the Western nonproliferation community.6 The es-says in these Dædalus volumes addressthese contrasting perspectives, and thedecision to include authors from mul-tiple nws and nnws was designed toensure that the analysis does not sufferfrom American-centric or nws biases.

The growth and spread of nuclearpower raises a set of concerns about the

risk of nuclear proliferation and nuclearterrorism; working on the problem ofnuclear proliferation raises the issue ofnuclear disarmament. These topics donot completely overlap, but it is not pos-sible to think comprehensively about thefuture of the global nuclear order with-out considering them together and with-out appreciating the extent to whichthey are interrelated.

This two-volume special issue of Dæ-dalus represents the fourth time that the American Academy has dedicated its journal to issues concerning armscontrol and nuclear weapons. Specialissues were published on “Arms Con-trol” in 1960, on “Arms, Defense, andArms Control” in 1975, and on “ArmsControl: Thirty Years On” in 1991. It is valuable to look back on the articles in these volumes, and the strategic is-sues upon which they focused, in orderto appreciate the signi½cant successesthat have occurred in the past, as well asto understand the enduring nature ofmany of the problems we face and thenovelty of some emerging challenges.

The 1960 volume, a product of a special summer study at the AmericanAcademy, is widely recognized as a sem-inal contribution to the development of arms control as a tool to reduce thedanger of nuclear war and to manageSoviet-U.S. relations. Indeed, it has been called “the Bible” of arms control,and “the Cambridge school” has beencredited with identifying and promot-ing three key insights that helped main-tain nuclear peace during the height ofCold War tensions.7 First, the authorsstrongly argued for the creation of a high threshold between conventionalmilitary forces and nuclear forces, instark contrast to the earlier plans devel-oped during the Eisenhower adminis-tration to use nuclear weapons earlier



in any conflict with the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China–theso-called Massive Retaliation doctrine.Second, while the Dædalus authors can-not be credited with being the ½rst toidentify the maintenance of “secure sec-ond-strike forces” as a prerequisite fornuclear deterrence stability (credit forthat insight belongs to Albert Wolhstet-ter and Warren Amster8), the Dædalusauthors were the ½rst to argue that thepursuit of secure second-strike forceswas a mutual interest between the ussr

and the United States, and thus thatarms control negotiations could use-fully seek constraints on offensive anddefensive forces with this form of stra-tegic stability as an objective. Third, the Dædalus authors identi½ed the pre-vention of the spread of nuclear weap-ons to new nations as a key nationalsecurity interest and arms control ob-jective. Again, this was an innovativeargument coming at the end of the Ei-senhower administration, which hadwidely distributed nuclear power tech-nology under the Atoms for Peace pro-gram and was considering providingnuclear weapons to U.S. nato allies in Europe.

The 1960 Dædalus authors went on to become a veritable “Who’s Who” of arms control during the Cold War,both in terms of scholarship and gov-ernment service: Herman Khan, Ed-ward Teller, Henry Kissinger, Paul Doty, Thomas Schelling, and HubertHumphrey. All were relatively youngmen at the time, but they were to playeven more important roles in develop-ing U.S. grand strategy and arms con-trol in subsequent years. With the ben-e½t of hindsight, however, it is as inter-esting to note the major future securi-ty issues that were not addressed in the1960 volume as it is to recognize thosethat were. Concerns about nuclear pro-

liferation focused primarily on stateswithin U.S. and Soviet alliance systems–in nato and the Warsaw Pact, and to a lesser degree, China. The idea thatmany states in what was then deemedthe “third world” might be capable ofproducing nuclear weapons was gener-ally beyond the horizon of vision for theauthors.9 Similarly, future fears aboutthe danger of nuclear terrorism weresimply not on the intellectual agenda of the early 1960s: indeed, it is notewor-thy that in his Dædalus essay HermanKhan feared what he called “nuclear diffusion” primarily because it wouldprovide nuclear weapons to “criminalorganizations” and give the Soviets anew opportunity “to act as agent-pro-vocateurs.”10 Finally, it bears mention-ing that the 1960 “Bible” of arms con-trol was written entirely by Americanauthors. In the Cold War atmosphere of 1960, Americans might speculate onSoviet or Chinese views about nuclearweapons, but it was not possible forexperts or policy-makers from eitherCommunist state to contribute direct-ly to the emerging literature.

Much had changed by the time thespecial issue on “Arms, Defense, andArms Control” appeared in 1975. As suggested by the title, arms control had become a signi½cant part of U.S. foreign policy, and many of the essayswere now devoted to analyzing how best to balance potential arms con-trol agreements with the Soviet Unionwith perceived U.S. national securityrequirements for secure and effectivenuclear weapons delivery systems. Incontrast with the 1960 authors, many of whom used early game theory meth-ods and assumed “rational actors” in-side both the United States and the So-viet Union, the 1975 Dædalus authorsdeveloped new ideas about how do-mestic politics, organizational interests,



and bureaucratic politics influenced de-fense programs and arms negotiations.11

The npt had been negotiated and hadcome into force in 1970, and that devel-opment, coupled with India’s 1974 test of a “peaceful nuclear explosive,” led tomuch more attention on proliferationdangers in the developing world. ThisDædalus issue therefore had a much lessbilateral Soviet-U.S. focus, with essaysaddressing the spread of nuclear weap-ons and other advanced military sys-tems from the superpowers to third-world states around the globe.12 Never-theless, the discussion was still takingplace exclusively among Americans, and not one expert from an allied na-tion, much less a Cold War rival or aneutral third-world state, contribut-ed to the 1975 Dædalus volume.

The contributions to the 1991 volume,“Arms Control: Thirty Years On,” werewritten amid great geopolitical change,as the Cold War ended and the SovietUnion was breaking into separate inde-pendent states. It is not entirely surpris-ing therefore that many of the essays–indeed, even the volume’s title–have ahistorical emphasis: looking in the rear-view mirror at the role of arms controlin the Cold War, albeit with attempts touse that history to predict possible fu-ture trends. The 1991 volume did havemore international authors, with a lead-ing Russian nuclear strategist, AndreiKokoshin (who was soon to become a senior Ministry of Defense of½cial), contributing an essay, along with arti-cles by leading European arms controlspecialists Lawrence Freedman andJohan Jørgen Holst.13 Many of the spe-ci½c arms control topics addressed in the volume, such as the conventionalweapons balance in Europe and the

spread of chemical weapons, are sim-ply no longer as signi½cant a concerntoday as they were in the waning years of the Cold War and the start of a new,uncertain era in international politics.Other issues addressed by the Dæda-lus contributors, however, notably thefailure of leading powers to negotiate a ctbt and concerns about the fragil-ity of the npt and its future ability toconstrain states from acquiring nucle-ar weapons, remain as salient today asthey were in 1991.

This special double issue on “TheGlobal Nuclear Future” thus stands in a proud line of Dædalus volumes seek-ing to bring new ideas into the globalpublic policy debate about how to re-duce the risks of nuclear proliferationand nuclear weapons use. We do so,however, in the context of a new glob-al topic: how to manage the potentialgrowth and spread of nuclear power.And this special double issue includesfar more voices from nnws, among U.S. allies and others in the develop-ing world, because their governments’decisions will be as important in deter-mining the global nuclear future as aredecisions made in Washington.

We hope that the analyses presented inthese Dædalus volumes will inform andinfluence policy debates in both nws

and nnws in the future. Today, the na-ture of the global nuclear future remainshighly uncertain. What is clear is thatthe decisions we make in the comingyears regarding arms control and disar-mament, the spread of nuclear powertechnology, and the reform of interna-tional regimes will strongly determinewhether a hopeful or frightening nucle-ar future emerges just over the horizon.





ENDNOTES

1 Mohamed ElBaradei, “Nuclear Energy: The Need for a New Framework,” InternationalConference on Nuclear Fuel Supply: Challenges and Opportunities, Berlin, Germany,April 17, 2008; www.iaea.org.

2 The evidence is presented in Harald Müller and Andreas Schmidt, “The Little KnownStory of De-Proliferation: Why States Give Up Nuclear Weapon Activities,” in Forecast-ing Proliferation, ed. William Potter (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, forth-coming, 2010).

3 For an excellent overview, see Sharon Squassoni, Nuclear Energy: Rebirth or Resuscitation?(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2009).

4 See Christopher A. Ford, “Debating Disarmament: Interpreting Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” The Nonproliferation Review 14 (3) (2007):402–428, and Scott D. Sagan, “Good Faith and Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations,” inAbolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, ed. George Perkovich and James A. Acton (Washing-ton, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2009), 203–212.

5 See George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Freeof Nuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007.

6 See Deepti Choubey, Are New Nuclear Bargains Attainable? (Washington, D.C.: CarnegieEndowment for International Peace, 2008).

7 This paragraph follows the excellent analysis in Jennifer E. Sims, “The American Ap-proach to Nuclear Arms Control: A Retrospective,” Dædalus 120 (1) (Winter 1991):251–272.

8 Albert Wolhstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs (January 1959), and Warren Amster, “A Theory for the Design of a Deterrent Air Weapons System” (San Diego: Convair-General Dynamics Corporation, 1955).

9 For exceptions see Paul Doty, “The Role of Smaller Powers,” William T. R. Fox, “Politicaland Diplomatic Prerequisites of Arms Control,” and Herman Kahn, “The Arms Race andSome of its Hazards,” all from Dædalus 89 (4) (Fall 1960).

10 Kahn “The Arms Race and Some of its Hazards,” 777.11 See especially Graham T. Allison and Frederic A. Morris, “Armaments and Arms Con-

trol: Exploring the Determinants of Military Weapons,” and John Steinbruner and BarryCarter, “Organizational and Political Dimensions of Strategic Posture: The Problems ofReform,” both from Dædalus 104 (3) (Summer 1975).

12 See especially F. A. Long, “Control from the Perspective of the Nineteen-Seventies,” andAbram Chayes, “Nuclear Arms Control after the Cold War,” both from Dædalus 104 (3)(Summer 1975).

13 A. A. Kokoshin, “Arms Control: A View from Moscow,” Johan Jørgen Holst, “ArmsControl in the Nineties: A European Perspective,” and Lawrence Freedman, “ArmsControl: Thirty Years On,” all from Dædalus 120 (1) (Winter 1991).

Many countries around the world are taking a fresh look at nuclear power.An important cause of what has come to be called the global nuclear renais-sance is the prospect of severe disrup-tions to the earth’s climate broughtabout by continued increases in green-house gas emissions, primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels. Nucle-ar power occupies a unique position in the debate over global climate change as the only carbon-free energy sourcethat is already contributing to worldenergy supplies on a large scale and that is also expandable with few inher-ent limits. These attributes are regular-ly highlighted by nuclear energy advo-cates and now, increasingly, by some formerly anti-nuclear activists, even as other environmentalists remainstrongly opposed to this technology.

The list of countries in which nu-clear expansion is being either vigor-ously pursued or at least seriously con-sidered is long. Several countries in Asia and Eastern Europe with activenuclear power programs have recent-ly announced plans to accelerate thoseprograms. The most important case isChina, whose gargantuan appetite for

coal caused it recently to overtake theUnited States as the world’s largest emit-ter of greenhouse gases. In anticipationof continued rapid economic growthand, to a lesser degree, to limit its fossilfuel consumption, last year the Chinesegovernment announced its intention todouble its previous target for nuclearpower growth by the year 2020. Largenumbers of new nuclear plants are alsoplanned in South Korea, Japan, India,and Russia.

Elsewhere, in countries where an earlier wave of nuclear development faltered years ago and the prospects fornew nuclear construction have longseemed dim, the terms of the debatehave shifted, in some cases dramatical-ly. In Sweden, the government recentlydecided to overturn a ban on new nu-clear power plant construction that hadbeen in effect since 1980. The U.K. gov-ernment has announced its support for a large program of new nuclear powerplant construction. Other Europeancountries, such as Italy, Spain, and Bel-gium, are reassessing their current ap-proach to nuclear power. Even in Ger-many, where for many years of½cial policy has called for the phase-out of the country’s nuclear power program by2020, there appear to be growing doubtsabout the advisability of that policy. In


Richard K. Lester & Robert Rosner

The growth of nuclear power: drivers & constraints



Richard K.Lester &RobertRosneron the globalnuclearfuture

the United States, where the last orderfor a nuclear power plant was placedmore than 30 years ago, 17 applicationsto build 26 new nuclear power reactorshad been ½led with the Nuclear Regula-tory Commission as of April 2009.

In addition, about 50 countries–almost all of them emerging economies–have declared an interest in nuclearenergy to the International Atomic En-ergy Agency (iaea).1 Some, includingTurkey, Indonesia, and the United ArabEmirates, have moved a considerableway toward building their ½rst nuclearpower reactors, while others are still inthe early stages of considering the op-tion, and at present it appears unlikelythat more than about 20 of these coun-tries will actually have a nuclear powerprogram in place by 2030.

The iaea reports that 44 nuclear units,with a capacity of almost 40 gigawattselectric (GWe), are currently under con-struction. According to the World Nu-clear Association, a trade group, at least70 new units are being planned in thenext 15 years worldwide, and another 250 units have been proposed, suggest-ing that from 470 GWe to as much as 750 GWe will be in place by 2030.

The lengthening list of countries with nuclear programs and plans is striking for its diversity. It includesadvanced and developing economies,large and small countries, highly ur-banized and sparsely populated coun-tries, countries with a long history ofnuclear development and countries with almost none, and countries with no indigenous energy resources andcountries with extensive deposits ofboth uranium and fossil fuels. Thisdiversity of national circumstances,when coupled with new technologi-cal developments in the nuclear ener-gy ½eld, opens up the possibility that the world’s civilian nuclear industry

will in the future develop along diver-gent pathways. This would be somethingof a departure from the recent past andraises a number of challenging questionsfor policy-makers, business practition-ers, investors, and others.

In its earliest years, the nuclear pow-er industry also seemed destined to de-velop along many different trajectories.Nuclear power reactor developers inCanada, the United Kingdom, France,the Soviet Union, Japan, and the Unit-ed States each introduced a differenttype of nuclear power reactor technol-ogy. National strategies for the nucle-ar fuel cycle also differed signi½cantly.Eventually, the light water reactor tech-nology that was ½rst introduced in theUnited States came to dominate theglobal nuclear power industry. Lightwater reactors now account for morethan 90 percent of installed nuclearcapacity worldwide, although today the leading suppliers of this technol-ogy are French and Japanese. (The onlyother power reactor technology with a signi½cant market presence interna-tionally has historically been the Ca-nadian candu design.)

There is today a fairly high degree of uniformity in the nuclear plans andprograms of most of the major nucle-ar countries, and nuclear power is one of the most highly globalized of all in-dustries. The nuclear power plant sup-ply industry is dominated by a smallnumber of large global suppliers of light water reactor equipment and technology. National regulatory stan-dards and practices are harmonized to a substantial degree. National strat-egies for the nuclear fuel cycle are alsoaligned, and major fuel cycle serviceproviders operate globally. And a newclass of global nuclear power plantinvestor-operators is emerging, led by the French utility edf, whose joint

ventures with nuclear power companiesin China and the United States, and itsrecent purchase of the U.K. nuclear op-erator British Energy, have established it as an important player in all of theworld’s largest nuclear power markets.

This global convergence has yielded a number of bene½ts, including econo-mies of scale and accelerated learning.The case for international coordinationand standardization of strategies andpractices is further strengthened by thespecial care with which nuclear technol-ogy and materials must be handled, andthe international consequences of localnuclear accidents or missteps. Fromtime to time this strategic convergencehas also served the purposes of nuclearindustry leaders and government policy-makers, providing them with a sort ofstrength-in-numbers defense against lo-cal critics. A few years ago, when Presi-dent George W. Bush announced hissupport for closing the nuclear fuel cy-cle in the United States, the new policywas welcomed by the French, British,and Japanese, in no small part because it seemed to legitimize their own long-standing commitment to a closed nucle-ar fuel cycle, including reprocessing andmixed-oxide fuel use. Thirty years earli-er, when the United States abandoned itsplans to reprocess spent nuclear fuel andsought to persuade others to do likewiseas a nonproliferation measure, the out-raged reactions from Europe and Japanwere partly stimulated by a fear that the American policy reversal would giveammunition to domestic critics of theirown reprocessing plans, which they hadno intention of abandoning.

The attractions of nuclear conformityremain strong today, yet the prospect ofdivergent development pathways maynow be greater than at any time since theearliest days of the nuclear power indus-try. What are the implications of this for

nuclear energy growth? How might it af-fect the course of international nonpro-liferation efforts?

The increased focus on nuclear ener-gy is motivated by a wide range of otherfactors in addition to the very low car-bon footprint, including:

• Increasing energy and water demand, coupled with strained supply sources. Glob-al population growth in combination with industrial development and ex-pectations of rising living standards will lead to a doubling of worldwide electricity consumption by 2030. These pressures are also leading to shortages of fresh water, and increas-ing calls for energy-intensive desali-nation plants. Nuclear energy offers signi½cant opportunities to meet the increasing requirements for electric-ity base load and to produce indus-trial-scale clean water.

• Economics. Until the onset of the glob-al economic crisis, increasing fossil fuel prices had the effect of improv-ing the relative competitiveness of nuclear power.2 If, as seems probable, future carbon emissions will be taxed at progressively higher rates, the ef-fect will again be to strengthen the competitiveness of nuclear power.

• Insurance against future price exposure.A longer-term advantage of uranium over fossil fuels is the small contribu-tion of the former to the total cost of nuclear electricity, and thus the rela-tively low impact of increased urani-um prices on electricity costs. This relative insensitivity to fuel price fluc-tuations offers a way to stabilize pow-er prices in deregulated markets.

• Security of energy supply. Nuclear energy offers a hedge against the vulnerability to interrupted deliveries of oil and gas.


The growthof nuclearpower: drivers & constraints



The speci½c reasons for the currentnuclear revival vary by country. Pop-ulation growth, accompanied by eco-nomic development, has led to stronggrowth in electricity demand in manycountries. In some of these, a lack of fossil fuel resources has made nuclear an obvious choice to meet the new de-mand. In others where fossil fuels areabundant but relatively expensive, nu-clear is seen as a hedge against furtherfuel price increases and price volatility,and sometimes as an enabler of greaterexport earnings from the domestic fos-sil endowment. For countries with nofossil fuels, nuclear is also cited as a form of insurance against supply or price disruptions. And in most coun-tries, as we have already noted, climatechange is a driver of the renewed inter-est in the nuclear energy option. That is certainly true of the United States,where the current talk of a nuclear en-ergy renaissance would surely be moremuted were it not for concerns overgreenhouse gas emissions.

Many climate scientists have con-cluded that the worst risks of climatechange might be avoidable if the atmo-spheric concentration of CO2 can be kept below 550 parts per million (ppm), or roughly twice the pre-industrial level.The current CO2 concentration is about380 ppm, with smaller amounts of other,more potent greenhouse gases, such asmethane and nitrous oxide, adding an-other 70 ppm of CO2-equivalent. Emis-sions of greenhouse gases (ghgs) con-tinue to rise, and the total ghg concen-tration is increasing at an acceleratingrate–currently somewhere between 2and 3 ppm per year.3 In its latest assess-ment, the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (ipcc) has estimatedthat a doubling of the atmospheric con-centration of ghgs relative to the pre-industrial level would eventually (after

a few centuries) cause an increase in theglobally averaged surface temperaturethat most likely would fall in the rangeof 2 to 4.5°C, with a 50 percent probabil-ity of remaining below 3°C and a smallbut signi½cant probability of exceeding5°C. These are globally averaged ½gures,and expected temperature changes inlarge areas of the world would be sub-stantially greater, accompanied by sub-stantially greater local fluctuations.4

Some analysts, weighing the risksinvolved, have concluded that a 550 ppm limit on CO2 concentration (cor-responding to a total ghg concentra-tion of about 670 ppm) would go be-yond the bounds of rational risk-taking,and advocate a more restrictive limit.The European Union has adopted thegoal of capping the expected equilibri-um global average temperature at 2°C,corresponding to a stabilized ghg

concentration of about 450 ppm CO2-equivalent. Since this level has already been reached (although the offsettingeffect of aerosol cooling lowers the ef-fective ghg concentration to about 380 ppm), the eu goal is extraordinari-ly ambitious and almost certainly un-realistic. Most policy-level discussionsare currently focused on CO2 stabiliza-tion targets in the 450 to 550 ppm range,even though the scienti½c consensus is that signi½cant ecological and eco-nomic damage is very likely at such lev-els. Yet even the upper end of this range will be extremely dif½cult to achieve.The world relies on fossil fuels for morethan 80 percent of its primary energysupplies today, and under “business asusual” conditions, annual energy-relat-ed CO2 emissions (which account for a large fraction of the world’s ghg emis-sions) would likely increase threefold by the end of this century.5 This in turnwould imply atmospheric CO2 concen-trations in the 700 to 900 ppm range by



the year 2100, with the expected globalaverage temperature increase eventuallyexceeding 6°C. There is thus a large gapbetween business-as-usual projectionsand what will be required to reduce therisk of climate change.

To remain below the limit of 550 ppm,global emissions would have to peak inthe next 10 to 20 years, and then fall to a level well below year 2000 emissions.Equity considerations will require thatwealthy countries accept higher targetsfor emissions cuts than poor countries,and several recent reports have advocatedreductions of 60 to 80 percent in the ad-vanced countries by the year 2050. Presi-dent Obama recently called for a reduc-tion in U.S. carbon emissions of morethan 80 percent by the year 2050. Suchcuts are likely to require even greater re-ductions in the power sector because inother sectors the maximum achievablereductions may be smaller. A key ques-tion here will center on the transporta-tion sector, and how rapidly that sectorcan be weaned off liquid fossil fuels viasome combination of (renewable) ad-vanced biofuels and hybrid or electricvehicles.

Stabilizing the CO2 concentration in the 450 to 550 ppm range will requirerapid, large-scale decarbonization of theglobal energy supply system beginning,in effect, immediately, combined withvigorous and continuing worldwide im-provements in the ef½ciency of energyuse. The longer the delay in embarkingon this path, the more dif½cult it will beto achieve the end goal. Because carbondioxide molecules released into the at-mosphere stay there for about a centu-ry on average, a ton of carbon emittedtoday will have roughly the same effectas a ton emitted at any time over thenext several decades. So it is appropri-ate to think of a global, intergeneration-al “budget” of carbon emissions that

corresponds to a given stabilization target. The more of the emissions bud-get that is used up in the near term, thesteeper and more painful the cutbacks in emissions will have to be in later years.What happens during the next few de-cades is therefore likely to be decisive. If, by the end of this period, the link between economic activity and carbonemissions has not been broken and ifsigni½cant progress toward decarboni-zation of global energy supplies has notbeen made, the world will have lost al-most all chance of avoiding serious andperhaps catastrophic damage from glob-al climate change. It is also important torecognize that we will not be bailed outin this time frame by laboratory break-throughs that have yet to be made. Mostof the heavy lifting during the next fewdecades will have to come from low-car-bon energy systems whose attributes arealready fairly well understood, if not yetcommercialized.

Current trends are not encouraging. In the ½rst half of this decade, the car-bon intensity of the global energy sup-ply system actually increased, reversingan earlier declining trend.6 Extraordi-nary efforts will be required to achievesigni½cant decarbonization of energysupplies by mid-century, with all low-carbon energy sources and technolo-gies–solar, wind, geothermal, biomass,nuclear, and coal use with carbon cap-ture and storage–likely to be needed on a large scale. In each case, formid-able technological, economic, and in-stitutional obstacles stand in the way of scale-up, and there are no guaranteesthat they will be overcome. If any one ofthese technologies–including nuclear–were to be taken off the table, the dif½-culty of achieving the climate stabiliza-tion target would be much greater still.This is the strongest argument fornuclear power.7



The contribution that nuclear powerwill actually make to reducing carbonemissions over the next few decades de-pends upon how rapidly it can be scaledup, and recent history is sobering. Theexisting global fleet of 436 commercialnuclear power reactors, with a total netinstalled capacity of about 370 GWe, provides about 16 percent of the world’ssupply of electricity today. Dependingon how the accounting is done, the emissions avoided by the nuclear fleetamount to about 650 million tons of carbon per year, or 9 percent of the cur-rent global emissions total.8 But it hastaken about 40 years for the nuclear in-dustry to reach this level, and in the fu-ture the rate of expansion will need to be much faster if nuclear is to play a sig-ni½cant role in reducing carbon emis-sions. In business-as-usual scenariospublished by the International EnergyAgency and separately by the ipcc, CO2 emissions are expected to reachabout 41 gigatons (GT) per year (that is,45 percent above today’s level) by 2030and perhaps 45–50 GT (60–80 percentabove today’s level) by 2050.9 If new nu-clear power plants were called upon toeliminate, say, 25 percent of the increasein CO2 emissions that would otherwise occur in these business-as-usual scenar-ios, roughly 700–900 GWe of new nu-clear capacity would have to be added by 2050.10 In other words, in order toachieve the goal of displacing one quar-ter of the projected increase in carbonemissions, at least twice as much nu-clear capacity would have to be built inthe next 40 years as was built in the last40. In fact, since many existing nuclearplants will reach the end of their usefullife during this period and will have to bereplaced, the actual requirement wouldbe closer to three times the earlier result.

Circumstances can easily be imaginedin which the call on nuclear would be

greater still, since it is far from clear that the other non-fossil energy sourceswill be able to grow as rapidly as wouldbe required to meet the other 75 percentof the carbon displacement target. (How-ever ambitious these nuclear growth sce-narios might seem, the growth require-ments for other non-fossil energy sourc-es are at least as challenging.) Moreover,by mid-century the global rate of carbonemissions will probably need to be wellbelow its current level in order to achievean eventual CO2 stabilization goal of 550ppm, in which case the demand for alllow-carbon sources, including nuclear,will be even greater.

In short, much may be riding on howrapidly nuclear power can be scaled up.If so, we will have to act fast–probablyeven faster than at the height of the ½rstnuclear expansion. But this kind of ex-pansion is currently blocked by a thick-et of obstacles, and if the pace of nucle-ar growth is to accelerate, the character-istically long cycle times in the nuclearpower industry–that is, the time it typi-cally takes to move from initial planningof a new investment in a nuclear powerplant or fuel cycle facility to the start ofoperation–will have to be reduced. Buthow realistic is this?

Many of the reasons for the long lead-times in the nuclear power industry arefamiliar and long-standing: protractedsiting and licensing proceedings; under-lying concerns over nuclear safety andwaste disposal and, in some cases, nucle-ar proliferation; and the high costs of nu-clear investments. Other problems haveemerged more recently. The worldwide½nancial crisis has greatly complicatedthe prospects for ½nancing capital-inten-sive projects of all kinds, including nu-clear power plants. Moreover, the globalindustrial infrastructure required to sup-port essential elements of nuclear powerconstruction is at present inadequate to

meet the needs of a broad nuclear pow-er resurgence. For example, there is atpresent just one global supplier of theultra-large forgings needed to make ma-jor nuclear components such as react-or pressure vessels, and the waiting listfor delivery of these components hasbeen lengthening. The electric grid in-frastructure in many parts of the worldis currently unable to support the de-ployment of large nuclear power plants.Serious shortages of human capital arealso in prospect, and will be exacerbatedby the approaching retirement of manyhighly educated and trained nuclear spe-cialists whose careers began during the½rst wave of nuclear growth in the 1960sand 1970s. There is a pressing need to at-tract high-quality students into the nu-clear engineering discipline in order tosupport the growing needs for new pow-er plant design, construction, and safe,ef½cient, and reliable operation. Similar-ly, the stringent quality demands asso-ciated with the construction of nuclearplants and their supporting infrastruc-ture call for a highly trained trades work-force, which today is seriously depletedand must be rebuilt worldwide.11

How these obstacles to nuclear expan-sion are dealt with will depend on par-ticular national circumstances, which, as already noted, vary widely from onecountry to another. Moreover, the ex-tent of these differences is likely to growsince more and more countries are like-ly to be involved. When national popu-lation and economic growth trends aretaken into account, the unavoidable con-clusion is that the group of countriesrelying heavily on nuclear power willneed to expand considerably if nuclear is to make signi½cant contributions togreenhouse gas reductions. An earliermit study showed that it will be effec-tively impossible to achieve an overall

level of nuclear deployment largeenough to make a signi½cant contribu-tion to reducing greenhouse gas emis-sions unless all four of the followingdevelopments occur12: (1) continuedlarge-scale nuclear development in Ja-pan and the other advanced economiesof East Asia; (2) a renewal of nuclearinvestment in Europe; (3) a revival andmajor expansion of nuclear power inNorth America; and (4) signi½cant pro-grams in many developing countries, not just China and India, but also otherpopulous countries like Brazil, Mexico,Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, and SouthAfrica.

It is dif½cult to exaggerate the con-trasts between these countries in termsof nuclear capabilities, expectations, andrequirements. The most highly evolvednuclear program today is that of France,where 58 nuclear power reactors accountfor almost 80 percent of that country’selectricity supply and more than 40 per-cent of total primary energy production.In France, the use of nuclear power forconventional electricity generation isnow approaching a limit set by the op-erational constraints of electric powersystems. The available nuclear capaci-ty exceeds the total base-load demandfor electricity, and many French nucle-ar power plants are now operated at lessthan full capacity at certain times of theday and year. For highly capital-inten-sive facilities such as nuclear plants thisis economically sub-optimal. Frenchnuclear planners are exploring the feasi-bility of using surplus nuclear electrici-ty to displace petroleum use in the trans-portation sector.13 Initially the nuclearelectricity produced during off-peak pe-riods would be used to produce hydro-gen via electrolysis of water. The hydro-gen would be combined with biomassand nuclear heat to produce liquid fuelsfor cars and light trucks. Alternatively,



the electricity could be used directly for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Sub-sequently, dedicated base-load nuclearplants could be built to provide hydro-gen and process heat for liquid fuels production on a larger scale. This is aninteresting possibility since the eventu-al contribution of nuclear power to car-bon emission reductions will depend in part on whether its role in supplyingtraditional electricity markets can beaugmented by displacing petroleum use in the transportation sector. Otherunconventional uses of nuclear ener-gy under active development includeseawater desalination14 and the extrac-tion of oil from tar sands. In both cases,fossil fuels currently provide the heatsource for the process. Nuclear desali-nation projects have been implement-ed in Japan, India, and Kazakhstan, andseveral new projects–some of them in-volving cogeneration of electricity andpotable water–are under considerationin the Middle East and elsewhere.

For the time being, however, the pri-mary role of nuclear power will contin-ue to be the production of base load elec-tricity. Here there are two possible direc-tions of development. The ½rst is a con-tinuation of the long-term trend towardinternational convergence around stan-dardized nuclear power reactor technol-ogies, fuel cycle strategies, and operat-ing and regulatory procedures. The ben-e½ts of this approach are most clearlydiscernible in the case of France, whosesustained commitment to a highly cen-tralized program of progressively larger,standardized nuclear power plants sup-ported by a closed nuclear fuel cycle has yielded what by most estimates is the world’s most successful nuclearpower program. The U.S. nuclear in-dustry, which eschewed this approach in the past, has gradually been moving in this direction, overhauling (and stan-

dardizing) reactor control systems forexisting plants, with the aim of simplify-ing operator training and reducing oper-ator error. This approach, together withextensive preventive maintenance pro-grams, has led the U.S. nuclear industryover the past two decades to outstandingperformance in both human safety andreactor availability (presently averagingwell over 90 percent). Thus one way toreduce cycle times (and, as a side bene-½t, signi½cantly improve performance)is for everyone to pull in the same direc-tion.15 And, indeed, broadly speakingthis is where we are today. There are cer-tainly important, unresolved questionsabout the distribution of fuel cycle facil-ities, especially the sensitive ones, butthe basic pathway of nuclear energy de-velopment is relatively well de½ned. It isless clear whether this approach wouldbe successful in the relatively large num-ber of countries that may take up nucle-ar power on a signi½cant scale for the½rst time, however, and for this reason,among others, we need to consider theother possible direction of development:the emergence of multiple nuclear devel-opment pathways, tailored to individualnational circumstances.

The history of nuclear energy devel-opment teaches us that this technolo-gy has placed formidable demands onthose institutions responsible for man-aging, regulating, ½nancing, and over-seeing it, and that the characteristicallylong cycle times in the industry–and,when they have occurred, its perfor-mance problems–can be attributed moreor less directly to those heavy institu-tional demands. The question is wheth-er alternative developmental strategiescan be designed that would pose fewersuch demands, and hence offer the pros-pect of more rapid scale-up. A “techno-cratic ½x” for all of these problems is, ofcourse, unrealistic. On the other hand,



some con½gurations of nuclear technol-ogy are likely to be less burdensome totheir attending institutions than others.

If a nuclear development strategycould be designed to minimize these bur-dens, and so reduce nuclear cycle times,what criteria would it need to satisfy?

• The ½rst such attribute is cost-effec-tiveness. From the customer’s per-spective, a nuclear kilowatt-hour is indistinguishable from a solar or coal kilowatt-hour, so nuclear power must be economically competitive.

• Second, these nuclear systems would rely as much as possible on passive design features to ensure their safety, as opposed to active safety systems re-quiring intervention by human agents or (more likely) automatically con-trolled engineered systems.

• Third, such systems would minimize the risk of nuclear theft and terrorism, and also of state-level nuclear weapons proliferation.

• Fourth, on the question of scale (as opposed to scale-up), these systems would be appropriate to the scale of the national electricity grid and other relevant institutional capabilities.16

• Finally, any alternative nuclear de-velopment pathway would need to be evolutionary, rather than a disruptive, radical shift. The urgency of scale-up is such that only technologies that have either already been tested in the marketplace or at least are close to commercial demonstration could be eligible for consideration.

If these are indeed desirable attri-butes for alternative nuclear pathways,the obvious place to begin planning newdevelopment strategies is to create thebest possible story for the open fuel cy-cle; that is, we should start with what

we have, and invest in ways to improve it in terms of cost, safety, environmen-tal concerns, nonproliferation concerns,and scale. This suggests a number of ac-tions. First, we could develop an explicitstrategy for dry surface storage of spentfuel for several decades (at both on-siteand centralized off-site locations). Thereare U.S. locations that, with local sup-port, are volunteering as candidate off-site storage sites; we also need a morerobust budgetary and management sys-tem, probably with very active nuclearutility involvement. Second, we couldmove toward the development of alter-native spent-fuel disposal techniquesthat scale well for small nuclear pro-grams, that are less expensive than thecurrent mined geologic repository tech-nology, and that are less demanding in their geological requirements. As anexample, the deep borehole technolo-gy now under active consideration inEurope and elsewhere may meet all ofthese requirements. Third, we couldfocus on power plants that are small-er, that rely to a greater degree on pas-sive safety,17 and that can be built withgreater reliance on modular construc-tion techniques. Fourth, we could ex-plore once-through fuel cycles that aredesigned speci½cally for direct dispos-al and proliferation resistance (by, forexample, substantially increasing thefraction of fuel actually burned in a once-through cycle).18

The one remaining area of uncertain-ty–related to a possible ½fth response–is the long-term uranium fuel supply.The latest edition of the so-called RedBook, the authoritative biennial reportproduced jointly by the Nuclear Ener-gy Agency of the oecd and the iaea,estimates that the identi½ed amount of conventional uranium resources that can be mined for less than $130 per kilo-gram is 5.5 million tons, but world ura-





nium resources in total are expected tobe much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of unconven-tional resources of uranium, such asphosphates, the Red Book considers that more than 35 million metric tonswill be available for exploitation. Giventhat in the entire 60-year history of thenuclear era the total amount of uraniumthat has been produced adds up to about2.2 million metric tons, the availabilityof uranium is evidently not a limitingfactor at this stage of nuclear power de-velopment. For time scales stretching tothe end of this century and beyond, thesituation may be different. On that timescale there are two options (not mutu-ally exclusive) for dealing with poten-tial uranium constraints: ½rst, closingthe fuel cycle so as to achieve very high(for example, above 90 percent) burn-up; second, embarking on an aggressiveprogram to improve the ability to locateand recover uranium resources econom-ically. A life-cycle economic analysis forwaste disposal will be needed to deter-mine the ef½cacy of closing the fuel cy-cle at that time. If closing the fuel cycleis economically sensible, then any fuelsupply problems will be solved as a by-product. A potential backstop for bothoptions is the recovery of uranium fromseawater. Currently, only Japan is pursu-ing this option in a signi½cant way, andJapanese researchers are advertising apresent-day recovery cost of $1,000

per kilogram. That is an order of mag-nitude more expensive than standarduranium production costs, but theJapanese experience suggests that aneventual goal of $150 per kilogram maybe achievable. Since natural uraniumcurrently accounts for only 3 percent of the total cost of nuclear generation,even $300 per kilogram would be at-tractive and well below the break-evencost for competition with a mixed-oxidefuel cycle scheme with plutonium recy-cle in light water reactors or with fastburner reactors.19

The issues we have outlined here aregenerally well understood within theenergy, technical, and policy commu-nities; but it is unfortunately also truethat nuclear energy policies, as they have been implemented both in theUnited States and abroad, have beenlargely at odds with these considera-tions. Given the urgency imposed by the threat of climate change, by strongincreases in energy demand worldwide,and by concerns related to energy secu-rity, it is high time that public policy and our technical understanding of thenuclear energy challenge are broughtinto alignment. This is the intent of our paper. In the end, the public pol-icy and technical communities are on a joint learning curve: “For the thingswe have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”20

ENDNOTES

1 See http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2009/nuclearrole.html. For a list of thecountries that have declared their interest in nuclear power to the iaea, see the Intro-duction to this volume by Miller and Sagan.

2 If the uncertainties in the credit markets persist, the economic competitiveness of nuclearenergy will erode. Because of the high capital intensity of nuclear energy projects, the costof nuclear electricity is particularly sensitive to the availability of ½nancing at competitiverates.



3 Other anthropogenic activities, such as the release of aerosols, have a cooling effect, andthe net warming effect of anthropogenic releases currently amounts to the equivalent ofabout 380 ppm of CO2. Note that there is often confusion about the form in which theseconcentrations are expressed, that is, as CO2 only, as CO2 plus other ghgs, and as CO2plus other ghgs combined with the net cooling effect of aerosols.

4 How long before climate equilibrium is reached depends sensitively on the details of thescenario under which the atmosphere’s ghg concentration ½nally equilibrates.

5 Leon E. Clarke, James A. Edmonds, Henry D. Jacoby, Hugh M. Pitcher, John M. Reilly, and Richard G. Richels, “Scenarios of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Atmospheric Con-centrations,” Sub-report 2.1A of Synthesis and Assessment Product 2.1 by the U.S. Cli-mate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Climate Change Research (U.S. Department of Energy, 2007).

6 Michael R. Raupach et al., “Global and Regional Drivers of Accelerating CO2 Emissions,”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104 (2007):10288–10293.

7 To be speci½c, for nuclear energy to be a “game changer” in bringing emissions down to these levels, nuclear energy would need to be the key backbone for the electrical gridto: (1) power homes, businesses, and factories so that the economic growth prospects for both the developed and developing world are robust; (2) provide the electricity forplug-in hybrids and all other electric vehicles as a replacement for fossil fuels; and (3)enable the production of clean water, hydrogen, and other by-products such as processheat for large manufacturing operations.

8 This calculation assumes that the nuclear plants displaced coal-½red plants. The avoidedemissions from the equivalent amount of natural gas-½red capacity would be about 40 percent of this total.

9 For the former ½gure, see World Energy Outlook 2008 (International Energy Agency, 2008). For the latter ½gure, see Fig. 3.9 of Working Group III Report, “Mitigation of Climate Change,” from the Fourth Assessment Report (Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change, 2007).

10 This assumes that these nuclear plants displaced coal-½red electricity generation.11 The dif½culties recently encountered by the French ½rm areva in building a nuclear

plant in Finland, the ½rst in a new generation of large pressurized water reactors, are areminder of how important the availability of highly trained trades, including civil con-struction, is to keeping this type of project on budget.

12 The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary Study (Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology, 2003).

13 We are grateful to Charles Forsberg for drawing this to our attention. See also Charles W. Forsberg, “Meeting U.S. Liquid Transport Fuel Needs with a Nuclear Hydrogen Bio-mass System,” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (forthcoming).

14 Argonne National Laboratory is completing a detailed cogeneration study in Jordan. The study team found that, because of the signi½cant demand for clean water in theregion, cogeneration is a viable economic approach.

15 Unfortunately, at the moment the U.S. nuclear utilities are pulling in ½ve separate di-rections with their design choices: the abwr (Hitachi-ge) and esbwr (ge) for boil-ing water reactors and the epr (UniStar), ap-1000 (Westinghouse), and apwr (Mit-subishi) for pressurized water reactors.

16 For example, building gigawatt-scale nuclear plants assumes the presence of an appro-priately scaled electric grid infrastructure. If this is not present (as it is not in many developing countries), then one needs to turn to different technologies, namely, grid-appropriate (modular) nuclear reactors. However, the economics needs to be carefully



considered here. In a recent Argonne study for a small developing country consideringnuclear energy, we found that when the “overnight” capital cost increased to $3,500/kWor higher, the economic viability would be reduced substantially. Lower overnight costsare more likely for plants that have already paid down their ½rst-of-a-kind engineeringcosts.

17 An alternative is to focus on greater safety system redundancies; but we would argue thatultimately the better approach is to go for technologically simpler and inherently passivesafety designs.

18 Some have argued that the Department of Energy should switch gears: the rush to full-scale fuel reprocessing should be replaced with a more robust research program to devel-op new recycling technologies.

19 Note, however, that one would build breeders only if there is an economic argument forthem–and that argument is not related to the cost of nuclear fuel, but is instead related to the ½nancial and political costs of alternative nuclear-waste storage strategies.

20 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, trans. William David Ross; ½rst published in1908, republished in 2007 at www.forgottenbooks.org.

Four convictions motivate this paper.1First, nuclear power could make a signi½-cant contribution to climate change mitiga-tion. To do so, however, nuclear powerwould have to be deployed extensive-ly, including in the developing world. A “one-tier” world will be required–that is, a world with an agreed set ofrules to govern nuclear power that are the same in all countries.

Second, the world is not now safe for a rapid global expansion of nuclear ener-gy. Nuclear-energy use today relies ontechnologies and a system of nationalgovernance of the nuclear fuel cycle that carry substantial risks of nucle-ar weapons proliferation. There are still more than 20,000 nuclear weap-ons in the world, and in the current in-ternational system, nations see these weapons as instruments of power andsources of prestige. These nations havecompeting interests and long-standingconflicts. There are also subnationalgroups that resort to force. The risks that a global expansion of nuclear pow-er will facilitate nuclear proliferationand incidents of nuclear terrorism, oreven lead to regional nuclear war, aresigni½cant. Nuclear war is a terrible

trade for slowing the pace of climatechange.

Third, a world considerably safer for nu-clear power could emerge as a co-bene½t ofthe nuclear disarmament process. The na-tional-security community is currentlyengaged, to an unprecedented degree, in seeking progress toward nuclear dis-armament. A by-product of this processcould be different technology choicesand innovations in the governance ofnuclear power–notably, a halt to spent-fuel reprocessing to separate plutoniumas well as multinational ownership andcontrol of uranium enrichment facilities.These developments could begin to de-couple nuclear power from nuclearweapons.

Finally, the next decade is critical. Whileseveral approaches to climate change mit-igation are available for immediate, rap-id scale-up, nuclear power could be so inmaybe 10 years, provided the coming de-cade is used to establish adequate tech-nologies and new norms of governance.Nuclear power ought to be deployed se-riously as a mitigation strategy only whenand if it can provide a sustainable contri-bution. The world will not bene½t if nu-clear power’s contribution is withdrawna decade or two after global scale-up be-gins, as a result of flaws related to itscoupling to nuclear weapons.


Robert H. Socolow & Alexander Glaser

Balancing risks: nuclear energy & climate change

© 2009 by Robert H. Socolow& Alexander Glaser


Robert H.Socolow &AlexanderGlaseron the globalnuclearfuture

There are 3,000 billion tons of carbondioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today, about 800 billion tons more than there were 200 years ago. For centuries furtherback, the amount of CO2 in the atmos-phere was about constant: the forestsand oceans and atmosphere were in ap-proximate equilibrium. Disequilibriumis increasing with every passing year, ashuman beings bring carbon from deepunderground to the surface (in fossilfuel) and burn it.

The climate science and policy com-munities have positioned warning lightsbetween 3,500 and 4,000 billion tons ofCO2, levels that would be reached in 30 and 60 years, respectively, at today’s rate of growth. For such CO2 levels, althoughthe most favorable outcomes could bebenign, the worst outcomes could be cat-astrophic for human civilization, whichhas built many of its cities on coasts andhas matched its choices of crops to rel-atively predictable snowmelt, rainfall,and temperature patterns. We are con-fronted with a risk-management prob-lem of unprecedented complexity.

Everything about climate change isglobal. The global atmosphere is wellstirred and scarcely registers where CO2 is emitted. Demand for electricity and fuels is driven by middle-class con-sumption, which takes similar forms incountries with a wide range of per cap-ita CO2 emissions.2 Electricity servingair conditioner compressors, computercircuits, incandescent lights, and appli-ances arrives along wires that, world-wide, run from power plants of only a few kinds. To be sure, nations differ in their endowments of resources; but,even so, a good strategy for mitigatingclimate change in one country will be agood strategy in many other countries.

A “wedge model,” published in 2004,quanti½es the task of global climate

change mitigation.3 We human beingstoday emit 30 billion tons of CO2 peryear by burning fossil fuels. We wouldemit 60 billion tons per year in 2050 ifwe were oblivious to climate change (the so-called business-as-usual world),and we can congratulate ourselves if wecut the anticipated 2050 emissions ratein half, emitting CO2 at the same rate in 2050 as today. A stabilization wedge is a campaign or strategy motivated by cli-mate change (that is, not happening forother reasons) that results in 4 billiontons of CO2 per year not emitted in 2050.

Available options for wedges includeenergy ef½ciency wedges, wind wedges,nuclear wedges, and wedges from CO2capture and storage (ccs)–capturingthe CO2 produced at coal plants andburying it deep below ground. Abouteight wedges are needed to pat ourselveson the back, and we can choose a port-folio of them in many ways. A portfo-lio of wedges is needed because solv-ing climate change with only one or twokinds of wedges is close to impossible.Moreover, there are enough options for the portfolio that none is indispens-able. Thus, climate change mitigationcan succeed without nuclear power, or any other single option, at some in-creased overall cost for mitigation.4

A nuclear wedge is equivalent to 700large base load nuclear power plants on the scene in 2050 and 700 equallylarge base load coal plants not built.5The world has the equivalent of about350 large nuclear plants today, so phas-ing out nuclear power in favor of coalpower is minus half a wedge.

Arguments for giving priority to climate change mitigation are uncom-fortable bedfellows with arguments fornuclear power. The dissonance arisesamong a political constituency, particu-larly powerful in Europe, for which mit-igating climate change is seen as an op-

portunity for pursuing deep changes in social and economic structures and in values–away from consumerism and centralized authority. To meet this aspiration, climate policy often promotes wind power, solar thermal and solar photoelectric power, and other forms of renewables, relative tonuclear energy. This perspective alsounderpins the climate-policy focus onenergy ef½ciency as a way to reduceglobal energy demand.

On the other hand, putting a price on CO2 emissions as a way to mitigateclimate change helps nuclear power.Roughly, an emissions price of $20 perton of CO2 gives nuclear power a 2¢/kWh boost relative to power from coaland a 1¢/kWh boost relative to powerfrom natural gas–in both cases assum-ing that these fossil fuel plants ventrather than capture and store CO2.6Moreover, serious CO2 managementmay be accompanied by support foraccelerated electri½cation of the econ-omy to reduce dispersed emissions from transportation and space heat-ing, which would increase overalldemand for electric power.

In this paper we consider a nuclearfuture where 1,500 GW of base loadnuclear power is deployed in 2050. A nuclear fleet of this size would con-tribute about one wedge, if the pow-er plant that would have been built in-stead of the nuclear plant has the aver-age CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour of all operating plants, which might behalf of the value for a coal plant.7 Baseload power of 1,500 GWwould contrib-ute one fourth of total electric power in a business-as-usual world that pro-duced 50,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, two-and-a-halftimes the global power consumptiontoday.8 However, in a world focused onclimate change mitigation, one would

expect massive global investments inenergy ef½ciency–more ef½cient mo-tors, compressors, lighting, and cir-cuit boards–that by 2050 could cut total electricity demand in half, rela-tive to business as usual. In such a world, 1,500 GW of nuclear power would provide half of the power.

We can get a feel for the geopoliticaldimension of climate change mitigationfrom the widely cited scenarios by theInternational Energy Agency (iea) pre-sented annually in its World Energy Out-look (weo),9 even though these now goonly to 2030. The weo 2008 estimatesenergy, electricity, and CO2 emissions by region. Its 2030 world emits 40.5 bil-lion tons of CO2, 45 percent from elec-tric power plants. The countries of theOrganisation for Economic Co-opera-tion and Development (oecd) emit less than one third of total global fossilfuel emissions and less than one third of global emissions from electric powerproduction. By extrapolation, at mid-century the oecd could contribute onlyone quarter of the world’s greenhousegas emissions.

It is hard for Western analysts to grasp the importance of these numbers.The focus of climate change mitigationtoday is on leadership from the oecd

countries, which are wealthier and morerisk averse. But within a decade, the tar-gets under discussion today can be with-in reach only if mitigation is in full gearin those parts of the developing worldthat share production and consumptionpatterns with the industrialized world.

The map (see Figure 1) shows a hypo-thetical global distribution of nuclearpower in the year 2050 based on a high-nuclear scenario proposed in a widelycited mit report published in 2003.10

Three-½fths of the nuclear capacity in2050 as stated in the mit report is locat-


Nuclearenergy & climate change



ed in the oecd, and more nuclear pow-er is deployed in the United States in2050 than in the whole world today. The worldview underlying these resultsis pessimistic about electricity growthrates for key developing countries, rel-ative to many other sources. Notably, percapita electricity consumption in almostevery developing country remains be-low 4,000 kWh per year in 2050, whichis one-½fth of the assumed U.S. value for the same year. Such a ratio wouldstartle many analysts today–certainlymany in China.

It is well within limits of credulity that nuclear power in 2050 could benearly absent from the United States and the European Union and at the same time widely deployed in several of the countries rapidly industrializingtoday. Such a bifurcation could emerge,for example, if public opposition to nu-

clear power in the United States andEurope remains powerful enough to prevent nuclear expansion, while else-where, perhaps where modernizationand geopolitical considerations trumpother concerns, nuclear power proceedsvigorously. It may be that the UnitedStates and other countries of the oecd

will have substantial leverage over thedevelopment of nuclear power for only a decade or so.

Change will not happen overnight.Since 2006, almost 50 countries thattoday have no nuclear power plants have approached the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency (iaea) for as-sistance, and many of them have an-nounced plans to build one or morereactors by 2020. Most of these coun-tries, however, are not currently in agood position to do so. Many face im-portant technical and economic con-

Figure 1The Geography of a Hypothetical Nuclear Expansion to 1,500 GWe

In this scenario, 58 countries would be using nuclear energy, but only about 40 percent of the capacity wouldbe in non-oecd countries. Source: Based on information from The Future of Nuclear Power (mit, 2003).



straints, such as grid capacity, electric-ity demand, or gdp. Many have too few trained nuclear scientists and engi-neers, or lack an adequate regulatoryframework and related legislation, orhave not yet had a public debate aboutthe rationale for the project. Overall, the iaea has estimated that “for a Statewith little developed technical base theimplementation of the ½rst [nuclearpower plant] would, on average, takeabout 15 years.”11 This lead time con-strains rapid expansion of nuclear energy today.

A wedge of nuclear power is, neces-sarily, nuclear power deployed widely–including in regions that are politicallyunstable today. If nuclear power is suf-½ciently unattractive in such a deploy-ment scenario, nuclear power is not onthe list of solutions to climate change.

Nuclear power is not just anotherwedge. Briefly, here are some of themany distinctive attributes of nucle-ar power:

• Time-tested. Relative to competing wedges like renewable energy and ccs, nuclear power has been in place longer. Commercial nuclear power has been deployed for about 50 years and today is found in 30 countries. Deployment is highly concentrated, however; 10 countries operate more than 80 percent of all power reactors.

• Small physical flows. The thermal ener-gy required to produce 1,000 MW of power for a year is released from the ½ssion of only 1 ton of uranium in fuel produced from 200 tons of uranium, but from the burning of 3 million tons of coal. The flip side of compactness, of course, is that danger comes in very small packages: it takes only a few kilo-grams of ½ssile material to make a nu-clear weapon.

• Minimal CO2 emissions. About 90 per-cent of the CO2 is expected to be ex-cluded from the atmosphere if coal power and gas power are combined with CO2 capture and storage. (The economic optimum percent, to be sure,depends on the CO2 emissions price.) In that case, the CO2 emissions from ccs power, nuclear power, and most forms of renewable energy are likely to be comparably small–all emitting less than 100 grams of CO2/kWh, one-tenthof the value for today’s coal plants.

• Large, centralized plants with ½xed output.To be economic, nuclear plants are large and connected to extensive elec-tricity grids that distribute power over long distances. The power output of nu-clear power plants is not easily ramped up and down, rendering it an inflexiblecomponent of an electric power sys-tem. The inflexibility of base load nu-clear power and the intermittency of wind and solar energy share the featurethat neither of these low-CO2 emitters can meet a time-varying demand for electric power without assistance from complementary systems: load-follow-ing and peaking plants and storage.

• Safety makes all plants mutual hostages.The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents of 1979 and 1986, respective-ly, taught the world that a nuclear pow-er accident anywhere in the world af-fects the prospects for nuclear power everywhere. Nuclear energy is more “brittle” than other strategies to miti-gate climate change, as one major fu-ture accident could overnight nullify the resources and time invested in nu-clear power made up to that point.

• Nuclear power plants are potential military targets. It is all too likely that a commer-cial nuclear power plant in a country atwar would be attacked, with horren-



dous consequences. No taboo on such attacks exists today.12

• Storage of spent fuel remains a problem.At the advent of nuclear power, its ad-vocates promised that no future gen-eration would need to attend to our wastes. That goal of early ½nal dispos-al has proven to be overly ambitious. Today, the second best approach to the waste problem is interim dry-cask stor-age of nuclear spent fuel, now widely deployed, which provides a century-scale solution while the search for so-lutions that isolate nuclear wastes for millennia continues.

• Coupling to nuclear weapons. With a nu-clear power plant comes a fuel cycle, with a front-end that can require ura-nium isotope enrichment and a back-end that can entail the separation of plutonium and its insertion into com-merce. Both the front- and back-end present signi½cant and enduring chal-lenges.

For the rest of this paper, we focus onlyon the last of these aspects of nuclearpower. In our view, the fact that nuclearpower is coupled to nuclear weapons isthe most disabling attribute of global nu-clear power at the present time.

Separated plutonium and highly en-riched uranium are the key ingredientsfor making nuclear weapons. It is widelyaccepted that the production or acquisi-tion of these ½ssile materials is the mostdif½cult, visible, and time-consumingstep in the proliferation process. Repro-cessing and enrichment under nationalcontrol essentially removes this obstacleand offers–intended or not–importantlatent proliferation capabilities.

Regarding reprocessing and plutoni-um recycle, the world is now divided. Six countries reprocess their commer-

cial spent fuel today. France, India, Ja-pan, and Russia are deeply committed to reprocessing; China operates a pilotreprocessing plant and is contemplatingcommercial reprocessing today; and theUnited Kingdom is on the verge of aban-doning reprocessing. The United Statesdoes not reprocess civilian spent fuel nor does it introduce plutonium into itspower plants, policies established underPresidents Ford and Carter.

The principal arguments against plu-tonium recycling are that separation,stockpiling, transport, and use of pluto-nium create risks of diversion to milita-ry purposes and risks of theft, the latterbeing of particular concern in the con-text of efforts to prevent nuclear terror-ism. Compared to other types of nucle-ar facilities, reprocessing plants are ex-tremely dif½cult and costly to safeguard.

The bar graph (see Figure 2) shows the quantities of separated plutonium in the world today. Civilian-separatedplutonium and military-separated plu-tonium are both roughly equal at about 250 tons.13 Military plutonium is in two categories: material in the weapons com-plex and material declared “excess” as aresult of reductions from previous war-head levels. The bar graph also showsthe substantial further reductions in military plutonium associated withnuclear weapons if the world’s weap-ons stockpile is reduced ½rst to 15,000and then 4,000 warheads.14 In this pro-cess, additional military stocks wouldbecome excess and would need to be disposed of. Over time, unless repro-cessing of civilian spent fuel swiftlydraws to a close, the world can expect to become increasingly preoccupiedwith latent proliferation and “break-out”15 associated with civilian-sepa-rated plutonium–even if nuclear power does not expand signi½cantly. A global nuclear power expansion

with reprocessing makes matters muchworse.

So far, no country that decided to pur-sue commercial reprocessing has man-aged to balance the rates of separationand use of plutonium, which has led to a continuous increase of civilian pluto-nium inventories over the past decades–hypothetically enough for more than30,000 weapons.16 The flow of plutoni-um could be enormous in a world withmuch more nuclear energy. The 2003mit report works out the plutoniumflows for a scenario with 1,500 GW ofnuclear power where 40 percent of to-tal capacity is from breeder reactors.17

About 1,000 tons of plutonium would be separated from the spent fuel eachyear to fabricate new fuel for these reactors. The iaea cannot reduce the overall uncertainty of measurements for the annual material balance in repro-cessing plants much below 1 percent.18

Assuming that 20 large-scale reprocess-ing plants existed in this world, the un-certainty would be equivalent to 500 kgof plutonium every year for every plant–enough for 60 bombs per year fromeach of these plants. Within these mar-gins, the iaea would be unable to con-½rm with high con½dence that all ma-terial is accounted for. It is hard to see



Figure 2Military- and Civilian-Separated Plutonium Today, and Military Plutonium in Weapons in a Disarming World

We assume an average of 4 kg of plutonium per warhead and a working stock of 20 percent. Civilian stockpilesare based on the latest declarations for the beginning of 2008. The current military stockpile carries an errorbar of plus or minus 25 tons, largely because of the uncertainties in the estimate of Russia’s inventory. Source:Based on information from International Panel on Fissile Materials, Global Fissile Material Report 2009 (Prince-ton, N.J.: ipfm, forthcoming).

how these flows and levels of uncertain-ty could ever be acceptable, in particularwith fuel cycles under national control.

Many discussions of a potential glob-al nuclear expansion posit that uraniumresources will run short unless the worldmoves to the “closed” fuel cycle. In thecase of the once-through fuel cycle, asnoted above, about 200 tons of uraniumare mined and puri½ed for every ton ofmaterial ½ssioned each year in a 1 GWreactor. This “inef½ciency” has plaguednuclear engineers and reactor designersfrom the very beginning of the nuclearera. Already in 1944, a group of eminentscientists of the U.S. Manhattan Proj-ect devised the concept of the breeder re-actor, which would produce more fuel than it consumes, because they were con-cerned that uranium might be too scarceto build even a small number of bombs.19

And since the 1950s, several countrieshave launched plutonium breeder reac-tor programs, motivated in part by con-cern that deposits of high-grade naturaluranium ore might become scarce asnuclear power expanded.20

The argument for reprocessing basedon the scarcity of uranium, however, is a weak one. Plutonium fuels will remainnon-competitive compared to uraniumfuels until the price of uranium increas-es to more than $500/kg of uranium,about four times its price today.21 Theestimated global reserve is suf½cient tofuel thousands of reactors. Even with a major expansion of nuclear power,availability and price of uranium will not signi½cantly affect the viability orcompetitiveness of the once-throughfuel cycle through 2050 and probablyeven beyond.

Unlike reprocessing, uranium enrich-ment is an essential part of the nuclearfuel cycle today.22 As with reprocessing,however, even a relatively small enrich-

ment plant is suf½ciently large to sup-port a signi½cant military program. Astandard 1 GW reactor requires about 20 tons per year of low-enriched urani-um (leu), which in turn requires 200tons of natural uranium input to an en-richment plant. The same enrichmentplant (the size that Brazil and Iran arecurrently building) with the same nat-ural uranium input can be used to pro-duce about 600 kg per year of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (heu),enough for 25 to 50 weapons per year.

Centrifuge enrichment plants nowdominate the modern nuclear fuel cy-cle, even though it was always under-stood that the technology is highly pro-liferation prone.23 They can be convert-ed quickly from production of leu toproduction of heu.24 And they can bebuilt clandestinely, a primary concernwith Iran’s program today.

Even if we assume that the accumu-lation of separated plutonium can bestopped in a world with a greater role for nuclear power, we are left with theproblem of the spread of other sensitivenuclear-fuel-cycle technology (notably,centrifuge enrichment) to non-weaponsstates. Multinational ownership andcontrol of sensitive fuel-cycle facilitieswould therefore seem to be a necessaryelement of a world where nuclear pow-er is deployed widely but risks of nucle-ar war and nuclear terrorism are small-er than today.

Can nuclear power be decoupled from nuclear weapons? From the verybeginning of the nuclear age, it was un-derstood that allowing nuclear facilitiesto operate under national control, evenunder international monitoring, carriedserious risks. Nonetheless, civilian nu-clear energy use and related proliferationrisks received little attention for the ½rst25 years, while the nuclear arms race of



the two superpowers was unfolding andthe weapons programs in other coun-tries were largely unconstrained.

The debate over alternative, multilat-eral approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle½rst engaged the world in the mid-1970s,and is now with us again.25 The nuclearindustry, however, has traditionally beenreluctant to acknowledge the connectionbetween civilian and military use of nu-clear energy. The Director General of theWorld Nuclear Association, an industrylobby group, recently said, “[T]he globalnon-proliferation and safeguards systemeffectively curtails any link between civ-il and military programs.”26 He added,“[W]hatever proliferation risk we facewould be unaffected even by a 20-foldincrease in the global use of safeguard-ed nuclear reactors.”

What degree of decoupling of nucle-ar power from nuclear weapons could be accomplished with multilateral ap-proaches? To answer this question, onemust consider the points of view of bothproviders and recipients of nuclear tech-nology.27

Nuclear-supplier states and today’snuclear-weapons states emphasize the objectives of preventing the furtherspread of sensitive nuclear technologiesand of ensuring that they are used onlyfor peaceful purposes where they re-main. Many states, however–in partic-ular, recipient and non-weapons states–have different priorities. For them tosupport and participate in multilateralapproaches and to forgo research anddevelopment of certain elements of thefuel cycle, they require speci½c incen-tives. Increased energy security throughfuel assurances is often not one of them,because most states are already satis½edwith the current market structure char-acterized by several independent andreliable fuel suppliers. The interests ofmany recipient states lie elsewhere.

Among many non-weapons states,there is broad dissatisfaction with thestatus and prospects of the Non-Prolif-eration Treaty (npt). Their priority islimiting any differential nuclear weap-ons capability in their region, but theyare also unhappy about the implemen-tation of Articles IV and VI, which de-½ne rights and obligations with respect to peaceful use and disarmament.28 The current system of supplier states, whichis based in the nuclear-weapons statesand a few closely allied countries, is seenas a major expression of a distorted im-plementation of Article IV.

Some proposals for multilateral ap-proaches to the nuclear fuel cycle tend to increase this tension further by creat-ing a two-tier world of “suppliers” and“users.” But other approaches recognizethis dilemma. They envision a more ac-tive role for non-weapons states in thesupplier market, for example, featuringparticipation in multinational enrich-ment plants.

Fuel-cycle facilities under multina-tional ownership and control are not a silver bullet, but they offer severalimportant advantages vis-à-vis plantsunder national control. At a minimum,multinational plants can serve as a con-½dence-building measure through re-gional cooperation and make breakoutpolitically more costly. Moreover, if sensitive technologies are used on a“black-box” basis, as they often aretoday in the case of centrifuge enrich-ment plants even in weapons states, participants would not unnecessarilyacquire latent proliferation capabili-ties. Over time, multinational owner-ship and control could therefore alle-viate concerns about parallel clandes-tine programs.

In support of sustainable one-tierarrangements, multinational owner-ship of fuel-cycle facilities in the nucle-





ar weapons states and supplier states willbe a necessary complement to similararrangements in non-weapons statesand recipient states. Eventually, conver-sion of all existing national enrichmentplants to multinational ownership andcontrol will be required. Enrichmentproviders will not easily cede control oftheir existing facilities and place them in a new, and initially uncertain, institu-tional framework. However, if nucleardisarmament proceeds and deeper cutsin nuclear arsenals are agreed upon, theweapons states–all of which have builtor are building large-scale uranium en-richment plants–would themselves havestrong incentives to embrace multina-tional controls as a way to constrain na-tional breakout capabilities and reducethe risk of clandestine enrichment plants.

Nuclear power will confront two ma-jor tests in the coming decade. First,issues related to coupling to weaponsmust be resolved. Second, the cost ofnuclear electricity must be demonstrat-ed to be competitive. How should thisnext decade be used? We identify fourpriorities.

First, to address the coupling toweapons, the once-through fuel cyclemust become the norm. The trend ofaccumulating stockpiles of civilian plu-tonium must be stopped and reversed.Current reprocessing must be phasedout so that there are no additions to themassive overhangs of separated plutoni-um now in place in countries that havebeen reprocessing, and work toward thesafe disposal of existing separated plu-tonium stocks must begin. Moreover, all enrichment plants must be broughtunder effective multinational owner-ship and control.

Second, to improve the competitive-ness of nuclear power relative to othersources of energy supply, reductions in

construction and operating costs will be required. Broadly based sharing of in-formation about the construction of newnuclear power plants is in the interest ofthe industry; such sharing should resultin a ½rm understanding of the costs whenbest practices are pursued.29 Similarly,plant operation procedures for both newand existing plants (including operatortraining) could be coordinated interna-tionally beyond the levels today.

Not much new capacity is likely to beadded to the grid in this decade,30 butthe bottlenecks that today thwart expan-sion must be addressed. These includeproduction of pressure vessels and otherdistinctive high-technology components,trained people, and regulatory and legalframeworks. To promote innovation andreduce concerns about the safety of old-er plants worldwide, incentives that to-day strongly favor plant-life extensionshould be revised in favor of retirementand new construction.

Third, during the coming decade, the social contract between the nucle-ar industry and the public regarding burdening future generations with themanagement of nuclear waste must berenegotiated, so that interim storage ofnuclear waste can become the option ofchoice for at least several decades. Dry-cask storage can be widely implemented.Development and exploration of poten-tial sites for long-term geologic disposalof nuclear wastes can continue, but withreduced pressure to authorize long-termrepositories.31

Finally, research and developmentundertaken in the next one or two de-cades must support the transition to a nuclear fuel cycle compatible withnuclear energy on a larger scale and inmore countries.32 Some of this activitymust explore advanced safeguards tech-niques and further expand the idea ofsafeguards-by-design, which recognizes

that plant design can “facilitate or frus-trate” iaea safeguards efforts.33

We end with four questions that webelieve deserve much more discussion,and we provide tentative answers.

Will nuclear energy fare better in a worldwhere climate change is a priority? Not nec-essarily. Climate change policy couldhandicap fossil fuels but forcefully pro-mote renewable energy and ef½ciency.Nuclear power’s short-term fate dependsmore on other factors, notably capitaland operating costs, safety record, cou-pling to nuclear militarization, and theoverall sense of competence and respon-sibility that the industry projects.

Can we have much more nuclear energywithout nuclear disarmament? Only withgreat dif½culty. A multilateral nucleardisarmament process might be the most effective way–perhaps the onlyway–for states to move away from en-richment and reprocessing plants undernational control. Proposals for multilat-eral approaches to the nuclear fuel cycleneed to take the nuclear disarmamentprocess, rather than traditional nuclearnonproliferation efforts, as their mainframe of reference.

Can we have nuclear energy in a nuclear-weapons-free world? A nuclear-weapons-free world would be more stable andmore secure without nuclear energy. But a new framework for the nuclear fuel cycle could make nuclear energycompatible with a nuclear-weapons-free world.

Will the nuclear power cure for climatechange be worse than the disease? Every

“solution” to climate change can bedone badly or well. Done badly, it can be worse than the disease. Making cli-mate change the world’s exclusive pri-ority is therefore dangerous. It results in an overemphasis on speed of trans-formation of the current energy sys-tem and a dismissal of the very largerisks of going too fast. Looming overenergy ef½ciency is the shadow of ex-cessive regimentation; over renewables,land-use conflicts (with food, biodiversi-ty, and wilderness values); over carbondioxide capture and storage, the environ-mental abuses that continue to charac-terize the fossil fuel industries; and overgeoengineering, granting excessive au-thority to a technocracy. Looming overnuclear power is nuclear war.

The upper limits of climate change are terrifying, amounting to a loss ofcontrol of the climate system as posi-tive feedbacks of various kinds set in.Nonetheless, at this moment, and con-ceding that such calculations can onlyembody the most subjective of consid-erations, we judge the hazard of aggres-sively pursuing a global expansion ofnuclear power today to be worse thanthe hazard of slowing the attack on cli-mate change by whatever incrementsuch caution entails.

If over the next decade the world dem-onstrates that it can do nuclear powerwell, a global expansion of nuclear pow-er would have to be–indeed, should be–seriously reexamined.



ENDNOTES

1 The authors have bene½ted from numerous suggestions from Zia Mian. We are also in-debted to Jan Beyea, Harold Feiveson, Steven Fetter, José Goldemberg, Robert Goldston,Robert Keohane, Scott Sagan, Sharon Squassoni, and Frank von Hippel for close readingsof an earlier draft.



2 Shoibal Chakravarty, Ananth Chikkatur, Heleen de Coninck, Stephen Pacala, RobertSocolow, and Massimo Tavoni, “Sharing Global CO2 Emission Reductions among OneBillion High Emitters,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (29) (2009):11884–11888; www.pnas.org/content/106/29/11884.

3 Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Prob-lem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies,” Science 305 (2004): 968–972. Here,we slightly rede½ne a wedge to refer to 4 billion tons of CO2 per year not emitted in 2050,versus 1 billion tons of carbon not emitted in 50 years in the 2004 paper.

4 For the purposes of this paper it is a detail that the center of gravity of discussions sincewedges were introduced in 2004 has moved toward tougher targets. The “two-degrees”target widely discussed today–an average surface temperature rise limited to 2°C greaterthan its pre-industrial value–requires that global CO2 emissions fall to half of today’svalue by 2050. For such a tough target, less than 10 percent of the job is done by onewedge.

5 We de½ne a large plant to be one with a capacity of 1,000 MW, that is, 1 GWe, and baseload to mean operating 8,000 hours per year. Our reference base load coal plant, some-what more ef½cient than the coal plant one can build today, emits 800 grams of CO2for every kilowatt-hour of electricity, or 6.4 million tons of CO2 per year. The nuclearplant displacing the coal plant has life cycle emissions of about 50 grams of CO2/kWh; its carbon intensity is 16 times less than a coal plant. Rounding off, 700 nuclear plantsemit 4 billion tons less a year than 700 coal plants.

6 We assume today’s coal and natural gas plants emit 1,000 and 500 grams of CO2/kWh,respectively.

7 Think of a nuclear plant displacing a coal plant half the time and a carbon-free renewablepower plant the other half of the time, or, equivalently, a nuclear plant displacing a natu-ral gas plant. Con½rming this view, in 2006 the carbon intensity of average power was 56percent of the carbon intensity of coal power; International Energy Agency, World EnergyOutlook 2008 (Paris: oecd/iea, 2008), www.worldenergyoutlook.org.

8 One terawatt-hour is 1 billion kWh.9 World Energy Outlook 2008.

10 The Future of Nuclear Power (mit, 2003), web.mit.edu/nuclearpower. In mit’s high-nuclear scenario, 14,100 TWh of nuclear power are produced in 2050, which correspondsto 1,760 GW of base load power running 8,000 hours per year. The mit report calculates1,609 GW of “equivalent capacity” by assuming constant output throughout the 8,760hours of the year. The map rescales the mit totals to 1,500 GW of base load power tomatch the deployment scale chosen here.

11 International Atomic Energy Agency, Considerations to Launch a Nuclear Power Programme,gov/inf/2007/2 (Vienna, Austria: iaea, April 2007).

12 Several nuclear reactors were attacked and destroyed while under construction (that is,without risking radiological contamination): Iraq attacked Iran’s Busher reactors dur-ing the Iraq-Iran War; Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak research reactor in 1981 and per-haps another reactor in Syria in August 2007. Attacks on operational reactors were alsoconsidered. In 1991, Iraq ½red a Scud missile with a cement warhead at Israel, apparent-ly in an attempt to damage the Dimona reactor. The United States considered destruc-tion of North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor in the early 1990s to prevent plutonium recov-ery from the irradiated fuel in the core. India and Pakistan are a notable exception: theyhave signed an agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear installations in the case ofwar.

13 Separated means unaccompanied by large amounts of radioactivity, and therefore rela-tively easily accessed. Today, more than 1,500 tons of civilian plutonium have not beenseparated and are still in spent fuel.



14 Under the planned start Follow-on Treaty, the United States and Russia have agreed to reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to 1,500–1,675 by 2016. According to estimatesby the Federation of American Scientists, however, each country is expected to retain atotal of about 7,000 warheads since they will continue to have non-strategic warheads,weapons in reserve, and weapons awaiting dismantlement. The global stockpile of nucle-ar weapons could therefore be on the order of 15,000 warheads. In a subsequent reduc-tion, the United States and Russia might reduce to 1,000–1,500 total warheads on eachside, which could correspond to 4,000 nuclear weapons worldwide.

15 Breakout describes a scenario in which a host state begins production of ½ssile materialsfor weapons purposes (without concealing this effort) at a facility that was previously usedfor peaceful purposes.

16 International Panel on Fissile Materials, Global Fissile Material Report 2008 (Princeton, N.J.: ipfm, October 2008), Appendix 1A; www.ipfmlibrary.org/gfmr08.pdf. Germany isthe only country that managed to stabilize and gradually draw down its plutonium stock-pile after having stopped shipping spent fuel for reprocessing (in France and the UnitedKingdom) in 2005.

17 This is a balanced thermal and fast reactor system in which the plutonium generated in the spent fuel from the fleet of light water reactors is used to fuel a fleet of fast reactorsoperated in a burner mode. The Future of Nuclear Power, Appendix Chapter 4, 124–126.

18 Shirley Johnson, The Safeguards at Reprocessing Plants under a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty,ipfm Research Report 6 (ipfm, February 2009), www.ipfmlibrary.org/rr06.pdf.

19 Among others, the group included Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard. Catherine Westfall,“Vision and Reality: The ebr-II Story,” Nuclear News (February 2004): 25–32.

20 Thomas B. Cochran, Harold A. Feiveson, Frank von Hippel, Walt Patterson, GennadiPshakin, M. V. Ramana, Mycle Schneider, and Tatsujiro Suzuki, Fast Breeder Programs: History and Status, ipfm Research Report 8 (ipfm, forthcoming).

21 For this estimate, we assume typical transaction costs for the various steps of the fuel fab-rication process, in particular $1,000/kg and $1,500/kg for reprocessing and mox fuel fab-rication. For the methodology, see The Future of Nuclear Power, Appendix Chapter 5.D. Ourvalue for reprocessing is conservative. For example, the levelized cost of reprocessing atJapan’s new reprocessing plant is about $3,750/kg. In general, fuel costs of nuclear energyare small compared to capital costs. Costs of standard leu fuel add up to about 0.9¢/kWh,which is on the order of 10 to 20 percent of the levelized cost of electricity from nuclearenergy.

22 The most common reactor type requires leu (3 to 5 percent uranium-235, as compared to 0.7 percent of this isotope in naturally occurring uranium). leu is not usable for weap-ons, but the same enrichment facility can in principle produce weapons-grade heu (forinstance, 90 percent uranium-235). In principle, nuclear energy can be deployed and usedwithout relying on enrichment or reprocessing. For example, Canada’s original candu

reactor design, which is natural-uranium fueled and heavy-water moderated and cooled,requires about 25 percent less uranium than a typical light water reactor.

23 More than 25 years ago, Allan S. Krass and coauthors recommended a shift toward pro-liferation-resistant enrichment technology, with plants operated under the authority of an International Nuclear Fuel Agency (infa). With regard to centrifuge technology,they concluded: “Unfortunately . . . a number of operating facilities already exist. Prefer-ably, these facilities should be shut down and dismantled”; Allan Krass, Peter Boskma,Boelie Elzen, and Wim A. Smit, Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation(London and New York: Taylor & Francis/Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1983); free electronic access at books.sipri.org. Besides centrifuge enrichmenttechnology, there is now also renewed interest in laser isotope separation (lis), a tech-nology that has been explored off and on since the 1970s as a “next-generation” processfor uranium enrichment. In July 2009, Global Laser Enrichment, a joint venture, submit-



ted a license application for a large laser-enrichment plant in the United States; if it de-cides to move forward, it wishes to begin commercial operation in 2012. Little is knownabout the details of the lis process, and no dedicated iaea safeguards approach nowexists. It is likely that the technology will raise proliferation concerns similar to those of centrifuges.

24 Alexander Glaser, “Characteristics of the Gas Centrifuge for Uranium Enrichment andTheir Relevance for Nuclear Weapon Proliferation,” Science & Global Security 16 (1–2)(2008): 1–25.

25 The current debate gained momentum in October 2003 when The Economist published an article by iaea Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, in which he acknowledged the shortcomings of the current nonproliferation regime; “Towards a Safer World,” The Economist, October 16, 2003.

26 John Ritch, The Necessity of Nuclear Power: A Global Human and Environmental Imperative,World Nuclear University, “Key Issues in Today’s World Nuclear Industry,” Balseiro Institute, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, March 10, 2008, www.world-nuclear.org.

27 For detailed discussion, see: Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Expert GroupReport Submitted to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, infcirc/640 (Vienna, Austria: International Atomic Energy Agency, February 22, 2005); Alexan-der Glaser, Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, International Commission on Nu-clear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, icnnd Research Paper No. 9, February 2009;and Y. Yudin, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Assessing the Existing Proposals(New York and Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2009).

28 From this perspective, Article IV is particularly unbalanced. Besides guaranteeing the “in-alienable right . . . to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peacefulpurposes without discrimination,” Article IV also speci½es that states with advanced nu-clear technologies should cooperate in contributing to “the further development of theapplications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty.”

29 Broad international industry-government coordination is a prominent feature of effortstoday to accelerate the commercialization of CO2 capture and storage.

30 A new study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimates that “as many as ½ve to nine new nuclear plants could be built in the United States by 2020.” The NationalAcademy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, America’s Energy Future:Technology and Transformation, Summary Edition (Washington, D.C.: The National Aca-demies Press, 2009), 112; www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12710.

31 Richard L. Garwin, “Reprocessing Isn’t the Answer,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Au-gust 6, 2009); www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/reprocessing-isnt-the-answer.

32 For example, increasing the burn-up of standard leu fuel could improve overall eco-nomics of the once-through fuel cycle and also reduce uranium requirements to somedegree. Using thorium fuel in new light water reactor types as a partial substitute for standard leu fuel could be another productive ½eld of mid-term research. If implement-ed sensibly, thorium use would also reduce the total amount of plutonium embedded inspent fuel from light water reactors and perhaps reduce some proliferation concerns ofthe once-through fuel cycle.

33 Brian Boyer, “Facility Design Can Aid or Frustrate International Safeguards Efforts,”Nuclear Power International (June 2009).

In the last several years we have seenwhat appears to be revived global inter-est in continuing operation of existingnuclear power plants and constructing a new generation of plants.1 A recentInternational Atomic Energy Agency(iaea) report indicates that 24 coun-tries with nuclear power plants are con-sidering policies either to accommodateor encourage investments in new nucle-ar power plants, and that 20 countrieswithout nuclear power today are con-sidering supporting the use of nuclearpower to meet future electricity needs. It projects as much as a 100 percent in-crease in nuclear generating capacity by 2030.2 The United States has taken a number of steps to encourage invest-ment in a new fleet of nuclear powerplants. The federal safety review andlicensing process has been streamlined,and a variety of ½nancial incentives for new nuclear plants are included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As ofearly 2009, license applications for 26new plants have been ½led with the U.S.Nuclear Regulatory Commission (nrc),and additional applications are likely.3

This renewed interest appears to re-flect a variety of considerations, includ-

ing a shift toward sources of electricitythat do not produce CO2; the search forlower-cost sources of electricity, stimu-lated by dramatic increases in fossil fu-el prices prior to the current global eco-nomic contraction; and (often poorlyde½ned) energy security concerns asso-ciated with fossil fuels, especially natu-ral gas.

The potential revival of nuclear powerfaces a number of risks and challengesthat make the anticipated “renaissance”of nuclear power in the United Statesand other countries quite uncertain. The economics of maintaining the exist-ing fleet of nuclear power plants, invest-ment in new nuclear power plants, andthe economic impacts of constraints onCO2 emissions, not to mention consid-erations of safety, waste disposal, prolif-eration, and spent-fuel reprocessing: allimpact the feasibility of a nuclear powerrenaissance.

There are 436 nuclear power plants op-erating in 30 countries, with combinedgenerating capacity of about 370,000megawatts of electricity. These plantsaccounted for about 14 percent of globalelectricity generation in 2007. The con-tribution of nuclear power to meet elec-tricity demand varies widely from coun-try to country. For example, in France,


Paul L. Joskow & John E. Parsons

The economic future of nuclear power



Paul L.Joskow &John E.Parsonson the globalnuclearfuture

59 nuclear plants generate about 77 per-cent of the country’s electricity; in Ja-pan, 53 plants generate 27 percent of theelectricity; and in the United States, 104plants generate just under 20 percent of electricity. Together, these three coun-tries account for about 57 percent of glob-al nuclear power capacity. In China andIndia, nuclear power accounts, respec-tively, for 2 percent and 2.5 percent of the electricity generated there today.

The existing fleet of nuclear powerplants is fairly old. About 92 percent ofthis nuclear capacity is more than 10years old, and 78 percent is more than 20 years old. This age distribution re-flects the fact that almost 30 years ago,developed countries effectively stoppedmaking commitments to build newnuclear plants. (France and Japan areexceptions in this regard.) The mostrecent nuclear plant completed in theUnited States began generating electric-ity in 1996, though construction on itbegan in 1973. Sweden’s most recentoperating nuclear plant went into ser-vice in 1985, Germany’s in 1989, Cana-da’s in 1993, and the United Kingdom’sin 1995. Following the 1979 incident atThree Mile Island, Sweden passed a law in 1980 banning the construction of new nuclear plants and requiring a gradual closing of existing nuclearplants. After the Chernobyl incident in 1986, two reactors were closed, in 1999 and 2005. Italy had four commer-cial nuclear power plants, but shut them down after a referendum in 1987.In 2000, Germany of½cially announcedits intention to phase out nuclear pow-er gradually over time, and two reac-tors were subsequently closed as part of this process. Other countries, includ-ing Spain and the United Kingdom, im-plemented de facto bans on buildingnew nuclear plants. Most of the globalnuclear capacity completed in the last

decade is located in Japan, South Korea,China, and India.

The early history of the existing fleetof nuclear plants, especially in the Unit-ed States, is not a happy one. Manynuclear plants experienced signi½cantconstruction delays and cost overruns.Many plants planned during the 1970swere abandoned before constructionstarted; some were abandoned after construction began but before comple-tion. Nuclear plants are quite capitalintensive. If they are to be economical to build, they must be able to supplyelectricity for a large fraction of thehours of the year (85 to 90 percent).However, the early operating experi-ence of the existing fleet was poor. Forexample, in 1985, the capacity factor of nuclear power plants in the UnitedStates was only 58 percent.4 Even today,after a long, steady trend in improve-ment, the lifetime capacity factor of U.S.nuclear plants is only about 78 percent.Capacity factors vary widely from coun-try to country. The lifetime capacity fac-tor is 91 percent in Finland, 86 percent in Switzerland, 73 percent in the UnitedKingdom, and 75 percent in Canada.5Because non-fuel operation and mainte-nance costs of a nuclear plant are largely½xed, the low capacity factors drove upthe operating costs per unit of electricityproduced from nuclear plants. Despitebeing more capital intensive, for manyyears even the operating costs per unit of electricity produced were higher fornuclear plants in the United States thanfor coal plants.6

Other factors also played a role in the abandonment, since 1980, of com-mitments to build new nuclear plants in many countries. The price of fossilfuels fell dramatically after its peak inthe early 1980s and remained relativelylow until 2003. Abundant supplies ofcheap natural gas and improvements in

thermal ef½ciency associated with gascombined-cycle generating technolo-gy (ccgt) made construction of newccgt plants attractive alternatives inmany countries. In countries with low-cost coal reserves, the relatively lowprice of coal made coal-fueled generat-ing capacity more attractive than nucle-ar, despite tightening environmentalrequirements placed on coal plants.

A number of changes have taken place over the last few years that have led a growing number of countries andinvestors to view nuclear power morefavorably than was the case a decade ago. First, the performance of nuclearplants has improved markedly in the last two decades. These improvementshave probably been most dramatic in the United States, and we will focus on the U.S. experience here. Nuclearplant capacity factors in the UnitedStates have increased steadily over thelast two decades, and the average now hovers around 90 percent. The timerequired to reload fuel fell from about 100 days in 1990 to about 40 days today.Average nuclear plant operating costs,adjusted for inflation, have declinedslowly but continuously over the lasttwo decades. The average operating cost per unit of electricity produced is now signi½cantly lower for a typicalU.S. nuclear plant than for a typical coal plant, much lower than for a con-ventional gas- or oil-fueled steam tur-bine, and lower than for a modernccgt, with gas prices above about $4/MMBtu.7 Safety metrics in the UnitedStates have also improved signi½cantlyin the last two decades, and organiza-tions that review nuclear plant safetythrough a detailed peer review process(inpo, the Institute of Nuclear PowerOperations, and wano, the World As-sociation of Nuclear Operators) have

helped to identify and diffuse best safe-ty practices to the industry.8 While theglobal average capacity factor rose onlyslowly in the 1990s, to about 82 percent,Belgium, China, Finland, Korea, Mexi-co, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia,and Switzerland have achieved factorsexceeding 85 percent, with Germany,Sweden, and Hungary at 84 percent.

A second important consideration was the dramatic increase in fossil fuelprices since 2003 and prior to the col-lapse in prices that has accompanied the ongoing global economic contrac-tion. This increase made both existingnuclear plants and the construction ofnew nuclear plants appear much moreeconomically attractive than was thecase prior to 2003. The recent volatilityin fossil fuel prices is a related consid-eration. While the prices for uraniumhave also been quite volatile during thelast year, fuel costs are a much smallerfraction of the total costs for a nuclearplant than for a coal or gas plant. Con-sequently, the case for building and op-erating a nuclear plant is much less sen-sitive to variations in fuel prices than isthe case for fossil-fueled generatingplants.

A third important consideration re-lates to emerging climate change poli-cies. The generation of electricity fromnuclear plants does not produce CO2,while coal- and gas-fueled plants do.Coal plants in particular produce abouttwice as much CO2 per unit of electric-ity produced than a ccgt. In a climatechange regulatory regime that placesconstraints on CO2 emissions, nucle-ar power becomes more attractive eco-nomically compared to fossil-fueledalternatives. As a carbon free source of electricity, nuclear power is beinglooked at more favorably by some en-vironmental groups than was the case a few years ago.


Theeconomicfuture ofnuclearpower



A fourth consideration that thenuclear industry has promoted with policy-makers is “energy security,” a phrase used to justify many policy initiatives. Unfortunately, exactly whatis meant by energy security is rarely ar-ticulated very clearly. It typically refersto concerns about dependence on im-ports of oil from “unstable” areas of the world and the potential effects oflarge sudden supply disruptions on theeconomies of oil importing countries.Developed countries, though, use verylittle oil to generate electricity. In theUnited States, about 1.2 percent of theelectricity generated in 2007 was frompetroleum products, and even then, pri-marily only in relation to the use of ca-pacity to meet extreme peak demand, for which nuclear power plants are illsuited.9 Whatever energy security con-cerns there may be among oil-importingcountries, expanding nuclear generatingcapacity is not the path to a solution.

These energy security considerationsextend as well to natural gas, especiallyin Europe, with its dependence on sup-plies of natural gas from or through Rus-sia. These concerns have been height-ened by Russia’s cutoff of supplies toUkraine, which adversely affected gassupplies available to other Europeancountries. For most European countries,as well as for Japan, China, and India,additional nuclear capacity would dis-place the use of natural gas to generateelectricity, thereby reducing natural gasimports. In this regard, we note that Finland’s decision to build a third nu-clear plant at Olkiluoto was influenced,at least in part, by the consideration ofnatural gas-fueled plants as the bench-mark alternative. In contrast, natural gas supplies to U.S. consumers comealmost entirely from domestic and (re-liable) Canadian sources that sell into an integrated competitive North Ameri-

can market for gas and a fully integratedgas pipeline transportation system.

Finally, in the United States the pro-cess for obtaining licenses for buildingnuclear plants was changed, with thegoal of making the process more ef½-cient without sacri½cing its effective-ness in assuring safety.10 These reformsreflect a view that the process that gov-erned the licensing of the current fleet of nuclear plants led to unnecessary de-lays, uncertainty, and excessive increas-es in construction costs.

Three of the changes to the process are noteworthy. First, the nrc now cer-ti½es speci½c reactor designs. Once ap-proved, the reactor design can then beused at multiple sites without further de-sign review. The nrc has certi½ed fourreactor designs and has four more underreview. The nrc now also issues earlysite permits (esp) for new reactors. Byissuing an esp, the nrc approves one or more sites for a nuclear power facility,independent of an application for a con-struction license. The nrc has issuedthree esps and one is pending. Finally,the nrc has consolidated what used tobe two separate licensing processes–one to construct a plant and a second tooperate it–into a single, combined con-struction and operating license (col).By issuing a col, the nrc authorizes the licensee to construct and (with spe-ci½ed conditions) operate a nuclear pow-er plant at a speci½c site, in accordancewith established laws and regulations.The new col process is now being test-ed, as col applications for 26 new nucle-ar units have been submitted to the nrc.However, to date none has yet complet-ed the process, and so it is still uncertainwhether the new process is able to re-duce regulatory delays successfully.11

The changes in the nrc licensing pro-cess anticipated the relatively recent in-crease in interest in building new nucle-



ar power plants in the United States.Accordingly, there was a new licensingprocess already in place to accommo-date the sudden increase in applicationsfor licenses. Countries that do not havesuch a nuclear plant safety regulatory in-frastructure, or that have allowed theirregulatory infrastructures to decay as aresult of there being, for decades, no ap-plications to build new plants, will haveto build or rebuild these infrastructuresbefore new plants can safely move for-ward.

These changes have implications forboth the existing fleet of nuclear plantsand for the incentives to build new ones.During the 1990s, nuclear plants in op-eration began to close, as they were nolonger economical to operate on an in-cremental cost basis. Eleven plants were closed in the United States dur-ing this time, however none has closedsince 1998.12 Rather than closing, mostof the existing nuclear plants in theUnited States are expected to seek andreceive 20-year extensions on their ini-tial 40-year licenses. As of April 2009,half of the U.S. fleet has received life-extensions from the nrc. Another 20plants have applied for life-extensions,and 24 have indicated they will apply.13

In conjunction with preparing for thelife-extension review process, severalplants have also invested in new equip-ment to produce modest increases ingenerating capacity (“uprating”). In all of these cases, the owners of theseplants have justi½ed (to their regula-tors and their boards) the costs associ-ated with meeting operating and safetyrequirements to support a 20-year life-extension by demonstrating that thevalue of the additional electricity pro-duced is greater than the costs incurred.

While policies toward life-extensionof the existing fleet of nuclear plants will

differ from country to country, we ex-pect that economic and climate changeconsiderations are likely to lead a largefraction of the existing fleet of nuclearplants to continue to operate well be-yond the 30- to 40-year lives that wereanticipated when they were originallyconstructed. In France, it is reported, the nuclear operator edf is likely to continue to seek renewals for existingplants beyond the lives that were anti-cipated when they were built. Coun-tries like Germany and Sweden, whichhad planned to phase out nuclear pow-er completely, are now reevaluatingthose policies.

Of course, if nuclear power is limitedto the continued operation of the exist-ing fleet of plants, nuclear power’s shareof electricity generation will fall overtime, as electricity demand continues to grow and maximum capacity factorlimits are reached (as they have been inthe United States and some other coun-tries). Real growth in nuclear power,therefore, is necessarily dependent onthe prospects for building new nuclearpower plants.

There are 44 nuclear units under con-struction globally, with a combinedcapacity of about 38,000 megawatts, the equivalent of about 10 percent of the generating capacity of the existingglobal fleet of nuclear plants.14 Of the 44 plants under construction, 11 are inChina, 8 are in Russia, 6 are in India, and 5 are in South Korea. Taiwan, Ja-pan, Ukraine, and Bulgaria each has two plants under construction; Fin-land, France, and Iran each has one, with a second approved for construc-tion in France. Thus, at present, mostconstruction activity is in developingcountries, Russia, or Eastern Europe. As already noted, in the United States 26 applications for licenses for new



plants have been ½led with the nrc

and more are anticipated, though noneof these plants is close to commencingconstruction. The U.K. and Italian gov-ernments have indicated that they willadopt policies that will end de facto banson building new nuclear plants, and in-terest in acquiring nuclear plants hasbeen expressed by countries in NorthAfrica and the Middle East that current-ly have no nuclear plants. The iaea re-ports that 24 of the 30 countries withnuclear power plants are consideringinvestments in new capacity, and 20countries that do not now have nucle-ar power plants are actively consider-ing developing plants in the future tohelp to meet their energy needs.

How do the costs of building and op-erating new nuclear power plants com-pare to alternative generating technol-ogies, with and without a price on CO2?How do the primary economic and CO2-mitigation motivations for build-ing new nuclear power plants weighagainst other considerations–safety,energy security, access to nuclear tech-nology to obtain weapons capabili-ties–that may play a role as well? Inattempting to answer these questions,we rely heavily on the 2003 mit studyThe Future of Nuclear Power, which ana-lyzes the cost of generating electricityfrom nuclear, coal, and ccgt technol-ogies, as well as other issues associatedwith commercial nuclear power.15 Thecost analysis has since been updated by Yangbo Du and John Parsons to re-flect new construction cost and fuel cost information and to adjust for infla-tion, and we rely here on this update.16

While the range of values for some of the input variables is likely to vary fromcountry to country, we believe that thesenumbers provide a good picture of therelative costs of alternative base-loadgenerating technologies.17

Because nuclear power plants aremuch more capital intensive than al-ternative base-load electric-generatingtechnologies, their economic attractive-ness depends heavily on the construc-tion costs of the plants, the cost of cap-ital (or hurdle rate) used by investors to value the cash flow generated by theplants over time, and the lifetime capac-ity factor of the plant, since this de½nesthe amount of electricity produced perunit of generating capacity that will earn revenues to cover both the operat-ing and the capital costs of a new nucle-ar plant. In addition, because nuclearplants do not produce CO2 emissions, policies that place an explicit or shadow price on CO2 emissions also affect theireconomic attractiveness compared tofossil-fueled alternatives.

There has been much confusion anddebate about the costs of building newnuclear plants. This situation is large-ly a consequence of the lack of reliablecontemporary data for the actual con-struction costs of real nuclear plants.Few nuclear plants have been built in the last two decades, and reliable costinformation is not typically publiclyavailable. Therefore, any estimate offuture construction costs is necessarilyuncertain. This is evident from the ex-perience with Olkiluoto Unit 3 in Fin-land, where construction is runningmore than two years behind scheduleand about 40 percent over initial costestimates. Much more actual cost in-formation is available for coal-fueledand ccgt plants because there is a sig-ni½cant amount of contemporary ex-perience with building new plants in the United States and Europe. Accord-ingly, construction cost estimates fornew coal and new gas plants are likely to be more reliable.

In addition, construction cost infor-mation is also quoted in a number of dif-

ferent ways, making meaningful com-parisons both dif½cult and potentiallyconfusing. Reactor vendors also initial-ly quoted extremely optimistic construc-tion cost numbers for the new genera-tion of nuclear plants that were based on engineering cost estimates ratherthan real construction experience, andexcluded some costs that investors musttake into account. Construction cost es-timates should include all costs that arerelevant to the potential investor, includ-ing not only the costs incurred to buildthe plant itself, but also the costs of cool-ing facilities, land acquisition, insurance,fuel inventories, engineering, permitting,and training.

For cost comparisons to be meaning-ful they must be based on a commoncomputational format. The standardcost metric used for evaluating the costsof electric-generating plant alternativesis the “overnight cost” of building theplant. This is the cost of building theplant as if it could be built “instantly,”that is, using current prices and with-out the addition of ½nance charges re-lated to the time required for construc-tion. These costs, as well as differencesin cash flow pro½les during construc-tion and plant life, are not ignored, butare handled separately in the evaluationof the cash flows required to pay backthe total costs of alternative generatingtechnologies once the overnight con-struction cost estimates are determined.The reason for working with overnightcosts rather than just adding up the con-struction cost dollars expended is to beable to account for different construc-tion periods, rates of inflation, and costsof capital that may be attributed to dif-ferent technologies, and to express costcomparisons at the same general pricelevels.

The capacity factor assumed also hasimportant implications for the unit cost

that is derived. If the capacity factor islow, then the total cost per unit of elec-tricity produced will be high, since thecapital and ½xed operating costs must be covered by fewer units of produc-tion, and vice versa. The capacity fac-tor of U.S. nuclear power plants today is about 90 percent, and some analy-ses of nuclear power costs assume thatnew plants will immediately operate at90 percent or higher capacity factors.However, while the capacity factors ofthe existing fleet of U.S. plants today isabout 90 percent, their lifetime capac-ity factor is less than 80 percent. And it is the lifetime capacity factor that is relevant for evaluating the costs of aninvestment in a new plant, since theymust recover their investment from theoutput produced by the plant over itseconomic lifetime. Globally, lifetimecapacity factors were about 82 percent as of 2007, remaining roughly constantsince 2000. Only Finland has a fleet ofnuclear plants with lifetime capacity factors greater than 90 percent, and only four other countries have fleetswith lifetime capacity factors greaterthan 85 percent. Two recently complet-ed plants in South Korea reached 90 percent capacity factors quickly, butanother two had not achieved lifetimecapacity factors of 90 percent after sixyears of operation. Three of the fourmost recently completed plants in Ja-pan have a lifetime capacity factor of less than 70 percent, and the fourth has a factor less than 80 percent. Lowcapacity factors in the early years ofplant operation are especially burden-some to the economic attractiveness of investment in a nuclear plant sincethe revenue stream is present valued to evaluate the investment, and weightsare larger on early years than on distantyears. Overall, we consider the assump-tion that new plants will operate at 90



percent capacity factors almost as soonas they are completed to be very opti-mistic.

Table 1 displays our estimates of thecosts of generating a kWh of electricityfor base-load nuclear, coal, and ccgt

generating technologies. These cost estimates are updates of the ones con-tained in the mit study The Future ofNuclear Power, to reflect more recent in-formation, real changes in constructioncosts, and general inflation. The tableshows the capital cost for the three tech-nologies, expressed as an overnight costper unit of capacity. The overnight costfor construction of a new nuclear pow-er plant is $4,000 per kilowatt of capac-ity, measured in 2007 dollars. The over-night cost for a coal plant is $2,300/kW,and $850/kW for a ccgt plant. The ta-ble also shows the fuel cost for each ofthe three technologies. The cost of ura-nium, together with all of the costs forenrichment and fabrication, yields a to-tal fuel cost for nuclear power of $0.67/MMBtu. Because the prices of coal andnatural gas are so volatile, and becausethese can represent a substantial frac-tion of the cost of producing electricity,

we show the cost of electricity underthree scenarios for the prices of coal and gas. The moderate coal-price sce-nario assumes a delivered price of coal of $65/ton, which translates to $2.60/MMBtu, assuming that this is a CentralAppalachian coal with 12,500 Btu. Thelow coal-price scenario is $40/ton, or$1.60/MMBtu, and the high scenario is$90/ton, or $3.60/MMBtu. The moder-ate natural gas-price scenario is $7.00/MMBtu; the low scenario is $4.00/MMBtu; and the high scenario is$10.00/MMBtu.

The last column of Table 1 shows the calculated cost of electricity for each of the three technologies. This isthe price that a generator would have to charge, escalated with inflation, inorder to cover its fuel and other oper-ating costs, and to earn a return on itscapital equal to the opportunity cost of capital invested in the plant. The re-quired return on capital will dependupon the many institutional arrange-ments of the electric power industry.Plants may be built either by publicauthorities or by private companies, and private companies may operate



Table 1Costs of Electric Generation Alternatives

Overnight Cost Fuel Cost Levelized Cost of$/kW $/MMBtu Electricity, ¢/kWh

Nuclear 4,000 0.67 8.4

Coal (low) 2,300 1.60 5.2

Coal (moderate) 2,300 2.60 6.2

Coal (high) 2,300 3.60 7.2

Gas (low) 850 4.00 4.2

Gas (moderate) 850 7.00 6.5

Gas (high) 850 10.00 8.7

The low, moderate, and high fuel costs for coal correspond to a $40, $65, and $90/short ton delivered price ofCentral Appalachian coal (12,500 Btu), respectively. Costs are measured in 2007 dollars.

as public utilities under rate-of-returnregulation, or may operate under the“merchant model” in which they con-struct plants at their own risk, earningpro½ts from the sale of the power intocompetitive wholesale markets. Thecosts of electricity we show in Table 1 are based on the cost of capital requiredby private investors operating withinthis “merchant model.” Because of the past poor record of construction of nuclear power plants, because of theenormous uncertainty surrounding theestimated cost of construction of a newnuclear power plant, and because of theuncertainty surrounding the success ofthe new combined construction and op-erating license process, The Future of Nu-clear Power applied a slightly higher costof capital to nuclear power than to coal-or gas-½red power; the cost update doesso as well. A major task facing the U.S.nuclear industry, including the nrc, isproving that construction costs and therisk of delays and overruns have beenreduced. Doing so would reduce the re-quired cost of capital and bring downthe cost of electricity from nuclear pow-er. The costs shown in Table 1 do notincorporate the bene½ts of loan guaran-tees or production tax credits offeredunder the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The updated cost of electricity fromnuclear power is 8.4¢/kWh. This is high-er than the 6.2¢/kWh for coal and the6.5¢/kWh for gas under our moderatecoal- and gas-price scenarios. Under our high coal- and gas-price scenarios,the cost of electricity from coal is 7.2¢/kWh, which remains below that fromnuclear, while the cost of electricityfrom natural gas is 8.7¢/kWh, which is above that from nuclear. The capital cost represents nearly 80 percent of thecost of electricity produced by nuclearpower, but only 15 percent of the cost ofelectricity produced by gas, with coal

being an intermediate case. Fuel costrepresents approximately 80 percent of the cost of electricity produced by gas, but only 10 percent of the cost ofelectricity produced by nuclear, withcoal again being an intermediate case.

Table 2 displays the same updatednumbers but adds a charge for CO2emissions. Two levels are considered:$25/metric ton of CO2 and $50/met-ric ton of CO2. It is unlikely that large-scale carbon capture and sequestration(ccs) investments would be econom-ical at these levels, so investment in coal with ccs is not an economical sub-stitute at these CO2 price levels. Even at the lower charge of $25/metric ton of CO2, the cost of power from coal inour moderate coal-price scenario is up to 8.3¢/kWh so that nuclear would becompetitive with coal. At the highercharge of $50/metric ton of CO2, nu-clear power is cheaper than coal even at the low coal-price scenario. At thelower charge of $25/metric ton of CO2,the cost of power from gas is still lessthan the cost from nuclear in both thelow and the moderate gas-price scenar-ios. At the higher charge of $50/metricton of CO2, nuclear power is cheaperthan gas in both the moderate and highgas-price scenarios, although not in thelow gas-price scenario.

These numbers illustrate the tradeoffsfacing an investor making a choice onwhich type of capacity to install. For nu-clear power, the main source of uncer-tainty is at the point of construction. Forcoal-½red power, the price of coal mat-ters; but the choice society makes aboutthe penalty for carbon emissions is thecentral driver and risk. For gas-½red pow-er, both the price of natural gas and thecharge for carbon are major risks.

Of course, the future of nuclear powerwill depend on more than conventional





economic considerations. In this sec-tion, we briefly discuss the most im-portant of those other considerations,though we do not think that the pas-sage of time since its publication in 2003 has changed the conclusions re-garding these considerations that can be found in The Future of Nuclear Power.

It is imperative that all nuclear facili-ties–reactors as well as enrichment, fuelstorage, and reprocessing facilities–beoperated with high levels of safety. Whilemany of the safety metrics for existingreactors have improved signi½cantly inrecent years, The Future of Nuclear Powerargues that the probability of a seriousaccident remains too high to support alarge expansion in the fleet of nuclearplants. We subscribe to that study’s rec-ommendations for improving safety inboth the short run and the long run. Un-less nuclear reactors and the nuclear fu-el cycle are perceived virtually to guar-antee that there will not be a major ac-cidental release of radioactive materials

that would have signi½cant adverseeffects on human health and welfare,public support for nuclear power willerode quickly, as it did after the inci-dents at Three Mile Island and Cher-nobyl. Moreover, it is important thathigh safety standards be established and enforced internationally, as an ac-cident in one country can have bothdirect adverse health and welfare ef-fects on neighboring countries and indirect adverse effects on public acceptance of nuclear power in all countries.

A continuing challenge is the deploy-ment of long-term storage or disposalfacilities for the high-level radioactivewaste produced by nuclear power plantsand fuel-cycle facilities. No long-termspent-fuel storage or disposal facilitiesare yet in operation. The programs inFinland, Sweden, France, and the Unit-ed States are the most advanced, thoughfunding for the waste disposal facilityplanned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada

Table 2Costs of Electric Generation Alternatives, Inclusive of Carbon Charge

Levelized Cost ofElectricity, ¢/kWh

with carbon with carbonOvernight Cost Fuel Cost charge charge

$/kW $/MMBtu $25/tCO2 $50/tCO2Nuclear 4,000 0.67 8.4 8.4

Coal (low) 2,300 1.60 7.3 9.4

Coal (moderate) 2,300 2.60 8.3 10.4

Coal (high) 2,300 3.60 9.3 11.4

Gas (low) 850 4.00 5.1 6.0

Gas (moderate) 850 7.00 7.4 8.3

Gas (high) 850 10.00 9.6 10.5

The low, moderate, and high fuel costs for coal correspond to a $40, $65, and $90/short ton delivered price ofCentral Appalachian coal (12,500 Btu), respectively. Costs are measured in 2007 dollars.

was recently canceled. From a safety per-spective, it is not necessary to solve thelong-term problem now. Waste fuel canbe stored in dry casks in secure facilitiesfor 50 years or more and await furthertechnological, economic, and politicaldevelopments. However, the absence of a long-term strategy for waste doescreate potential political problems, andsome countries may not proceed withnuclear power until this challenge isresolved.

The expansion of nuclear power mustbe accompanied by safeguards to assurethat it does not lead to the proliferationof traditional nuclear weapons or in-crease access to highly radioactive mate-rials that could be used in so-called dirtybombs, which use conventional explo-sives to diffuse these materials widely in an urban area, with potential adverseeffects on human health as well as caus-ing costly disruptions in normal com-mercial and other human activity. Thepathways to weapons proliferation aris-ing from the expansion of nuclear pow-er are access to enrichment and repro-cessing technology, and ready access to or theft of stocks of reprocessed plu-tonium or highly enriched uranium. The risks related to diversion of pluto-nium are potentially higher if reprocess-ing and recycling of spent fuel is widelyadopted. Reactor and fuel-cycle securityprotocols that can reduce unauthorizedaccess to materials that could be used tocreate dirty bombs, and the detection ofsuch devices, need more attention at aninternational level.

The Future of Nuclear Power makes sev-eral useful recommendations regardingweapons proliferation. (It does not makepolicy recommendations related to dirtybombs.) They include (a) strengtheningthe iaea’s safeguard functions and ex-panding its authority to inspect suspect-ed illicit facilities; (b) giving greater at-

tention to proliferation risks fromenrichment technologies; (c) movingiaea safeguards to a model built aroundcontinuous material protection, control,and accounting, both in facilities and inthe transportation of nuclear materials;(d) focusing fuel-cycle research and de-velopment on minimizing proliferationrisks; and (e) moving forward quicklywith agreements to create secure inter-national spent-fuel storage facilities.These continue to be wise recommen-dations. In addition, efforts to dissuadecountries from acquiring enrichment,fuel fabrication, and reprocessing facil-ities, by creating and providing crediblelong-term commercial access to interna-tional stockpiles of low-enriched urani-um nuclear fuel, are also worthy of con-tinuing support.

Our analysis so far has focused on the economic attributes of continuedoperation and investment in the cur-rently available generation of existingand new light water reactors using anopen fuel cycle with low-enriched ura-nium fuel. We have focused on this re-actor/fuel-cycle combination because it continues to appear to represent thelowest cost option for existing and newnuclear power plants at present. Today,the primary alternative to an open fuelcycle using low-enriched uranium is aclosed fuel cycle that reprocesses spentfuel by chemically separating the pluto-nium and depleted uranium from the½ssion products and minor transuranicelements in the spent fuel (the purex–Plutonium-Uranium Extraction–pro-cess) and then fabricating a Mixed Ox-ide (mox) fuel composed of both plu-tonium and uranium for “recycling” as reactor fuel in light water reactors.Although the United States originallydeveloped the purex process to recov-er plutonium for use in nuclear weap-ons, U.S. policy for over three decades



has banned exports of reprocessing technology and the use of recycled plutonium in civilian reactors. How-ever, the United States has continuedresearch and development on repro-cessing technology, and there contin-ues to be some political and commer-cial support for lifting the ban on repro-cessing and the use of recycled plutoni-um in reactor fuel used in U.S. reactors.France, Japan, the United Kingdom, Rus-sia, India, and China have and use repro-cessing technology, or use mox fuel pro-duced in other countries.

Most studies conclude that reprocess-ing spent fuel and fabricating mox fuelis more costly than using fresh low-en-riched uranium.18 At best, the costs ofthe open and closed fuel cycles are closeto a wash today and over the next fewdecades. The economic calculus couldchange if uranium prices were to in-crease signi½cantly and/or the costs ofreprocessing and fuel fabrication were to fall signi½cantly. As we have alreadyindicated, fuel costs are a relatively small fraction of the total costs of newnuclear power plants. Accordingly, thebasic economics of nuclear power vis-à-vis alternative fossil-fuel technologiesare unlikely to turn on a decision to re-process and recycle spent reactor fuel or not. Rather, the decision to reprocessand recycle is more likely to be driven by other concerns. Recycling via mox

has no obvious waste disposal bene½ts,and there is signi½cant concern aboutthe danger of the potential diversion of separated plutonium to make nu-clear weapons.

In those countries that have been ableto improve the performance of their ex-isting fleet of nuclear plants it will typi-cally be economical to extend their op-erating lives well beyond 40 years givenreasonable forecasts of fossil fuel prices.

Imposing explicit or implicit prices onCO2 emissions makes the economics oflife extensions even more compelling.The primary barriers to life-extension of the existing fleet of light water reac-tors are managerial capabilities to oper-ate the plants safely and at high capac-ity factors, political pressures to closenuclear plants quickly for reasons oth-er than economics, and regulatory con-straints that increase the costs of meet-ing life-extension criteria.

Of course, merely extending the livesof existing nuclear plants will not con-stitute a nuclear “renaissance.” In thiscase, nuclear’s contribution to the elec-tricity supply will simply shrink over alonger period of time. To stimulate atrue nuclear renaissance that leads tosigni½cant investments in new nuclearplants, several changes from the statusquo will need to take place: (a) a signi½-cant price must be placed on CO2 emis-sions, (b) construction and ½nancingcosts for nuclear plants must be reducedor at least stabilized, and the credibilityof current cost estimates veri½ed withactual construction experience, (c) thelicensing and safety regulatory frame-works must demonstrate that they areboth effective and ef½cient, (d) fossilfuel prices need to stabilize at levels in the moderate to high ranges used in Tables 1 and 2, and (e) progress mustbe made on safety and long-term wastedisposal to gain suf½cient public accept-ance to reduce political barriers to newplant investments.

Absent the imposition of explicit or implicit prices on CO2 emissions, and given the current expected costs of building and operating alternativegenerating technologies, it does notappear that a large nuclear renaissancewill occur based primarily on the eco-nomic competitiveness of new nuclearpower plants compared to alternative



fossil-fueled base-load generating tech-nologies. It does not appear that newnuclear power plants would be a com-petitive base-load generating alterna-tive to conventional supercritical coal-fueled technology, even with high coalprices. New nuclear plants are competi-tive with natural gas-fueled ccgt tech-nology only at very high gas prices. Theimposition of signi½cant prices on CO2emissions makes nuclear competitivewith coal-fueled generating technologyunder all fuel price scenarios, and withgas-fueled ccgt technology when gasprices are at moderate or high levels. A high CO2 price makes ccgt technol-ogy very competitive with coal-fueledgenerating technology at all fossil-fuelprice levels. Thus, with signi½cant CO2prices, economic considerations would lead to a shift to gas from coal for newfossil plants, increasing the demand forand price of natural gas to the moderateto high levels. This suggests that withsigni½cant CO2 prices, economic con-siderations alone would lead to a mix of new nuclear and new ccgt plantswith gas prices at moderate to high levels. The higher is the equilibrium gas-price trajectory, the larger would be the share of new nuclear plants.

The economic attractiveness of nu-clear power could also be improved ifthe costs of building and ½nancing nu-clear plants could be reduced from thelevels indicated by the available infor-mation on construction and ½nancingcosts that we have relied upon here. It is possible that as new nuclear plants are built around the world, their con-struction costs will decline signi½cant-ly as construction experience accumu-lates. This possibility is one of the ra-tionales for the ½nancial incentives contained in the Energy Policy Act of2005. Construction costs would have to decline on the order of 20 percent

to make nuclear competitive with coal, in the absence of signi½cant CO2charges. Financing costs could also bereduced below those assumed here forplants built under supportive cost-of-service regulatory regimes (as in Flor-ida) or as a result of government poli-cies, such as the government loan guar-antees provided for in the Energy Pol-icy Act of 2005.

Another consideration is uncertaintyabout construction costs and capacityfactors. We have reasonably good infor-mation about the actual costs of build-ing and operating new coal and ccgt

plants since many have been built andplaced into operation around the worldin the last decade. The quality of the con-struction cost information for new nu-clear plants is not nearly as good sincethere are so few recently constructedplants for which credible constructioncost data are available. Du and Parsons’estimates rely on a mix of actual con-struction cost data and estimates of con-struction costs found in recent regulato-ry ½lings. In addition, the human andmanufacturing infrastructure requiredto produce major nuclear plant compo-nents, perform detailed engineering, and construct new nuclear plants hasdeteriorated signi½cantly in the pastdecades. This means that a surge in nu-clear plant orders will run up againstcapacity constraints on the supply of key components and labor, leading tohigher component manufacturing costsand higher construction costs, untilthese infrastructures can be rebuilt tosupport renewed investment in new nu-clear generating capacity. The early-lifecapacity factors of new nuclear plantsalso vary fairly widely, and the expectedcapacity factor for a new plant during a“break-in” period may be signi½cantlyless than the more than 90 percent as-sumed in more optimistic assessments.



There are other, more dif½cult-to-quan-tify barriers to a large deployment of newnuclear power plants. The new licensingsystem in the United States is untested,and licensing systems in many countrieswith nuclear plants have not yet beenrecon½gured to accommodate applica-tions for new plants. Countries withoutnuclear power must develop and imple-ment regulatory frameworks to licensenew plants and to ensure that they oper-ate safely. The challenges of developingan effective licensing and safety regula-tory framework from scratch have notbeen fully recognized by those countriesconsidering nuclear power plants for the½rst time. The Energy Policy Act of 2005provides ½nancial incentives (in the formof insurance against the costs of regula-tory delays) for the ½rst few plants to gothrough the new U.S. regulatory system,in recognition of the costs that may be

imposed on the ½rst few license appli-cants as the new regulatory framework is fully road tested. We are not aware ofsimilar policies in other countries.

Finally, political constraints driven byconcerns about safety, long-term wastedisposal, and proliferation may furtherdeter some countries from launching ma-jor new nuclear power programs. Anoth-er signi½cant accident at an existing nu-clear plant anywhere in the world couldhave very negative consequences for anyhope of a nuclear renaissance.

All things considered, the best econom-ic case supporting a signi½cant expan-sion in nuclear power capacity involvessigni½cant CO2 emissions charges, mod-erate to high fossil fuel prices (includingimplicit prices reflecting energy securityconsiderations), declining nuclear plantconstruction costs, and an ef½cient li-censing regulatory framework.



ENDNOTES

1 The views expressed here are those of the authors and not of the Alfred P. Sloan Founda-tion or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

2 International Status and Prospects of Nuclear Power (Vienna, Austria: International AtomicEnergy Agency, 2008). Unless otherwise referenced, the information in this paper aboutthe status of nuclear power in various countries is from this report or from the iaea’sonline pris data sets, www.iaea.or.at/programmes/a2/.

3 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col.html.4 U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2007, Table 9.1.5 We rely on data for both capacity factors and energy availability factors depending on

the data available for different countries. A nuclear plant’s capacity factor is the ratio of the actual electricity generated divided by the maximum quantity of electricity thatcould be produced if the plant ran at its capacity for every hour of the year. A plant’s energy availability factor is the amount of electricity that a plant is “available” to pro-duce (that is, it is not out of operation due to maintenance or refueling outages) divided by the amount of electricity a plant could produce if it operated at full capacity to pro-duce electricity every hour of the year. Because nuclear plants have low marginal produc-tion costs, they are typically producing electricity whenever they are available. Accord-ingly, the capacity factor and the energy availability factor for a plant are generally veryclose to one another. We use the term “capacity factor” to refer to data for both capac-ity factors and energy availability factors.

6 Nuclear Energy Institute, www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/reliableandaffordableenergy/graphicsandcharts/uselectricityproductioncosts/.



7 During 2008, spot natural gas prices at Henry Hub, a major gas trading hub, fluctuatedbetween about $4/MMBtu and about $14/MMBtu.

8 Annual Energy Review 2007, Table 9.1; Nuclear Energy Institute, www.nei.org/keyissues/safetyandsecurity/.

9 Annual Energy Review 2007, Table 2.1F.10 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/

col.html.11 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-

cert.html; www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col.html; and www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/esp.html.

12 Annual Energy Review 2007, Table 9.1.13 Nuclear Energy Institute, http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/

licenserenewal/.14 One of these plants is tva’s Watts Bar-2 plant. Construction of the plant began in 1972,

was subsequently suspended, and was recently restarted after tva’s apparently success-ful repowering of Browns Ferry-1.

15 The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary Study (mit, 2003). A short update wasrecently published, Update of the mit 2003 Future of Nuclear Power Study (mit, 2009).

16 Yangbo Du and John E. Parsons, “Update on the Cost of Nuclear Power,” Working Paper 09-004 (mit Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, 2009).

17 Electricity demand varies widely from hour to hour, day to day, and season to season. The difference between the peak and the trough can be a factor of three. Since large vol-umes of electricity cannot be economically stored, suf½cient generating capacity must be built to meet peak demands reliably. Matching supply and demand economically re-quires a generation portfolio consisting of base load, cycling, and peaking capacity. Baseload capacity is designed to operate during the entire year to meet at least the minimumlevel of demand sustained for a large fraction of the hours of the year. Cycling capacity is designed to meet the incremental demand that is sustained for a smaller fraction of the hours of the year: the additional demand during the day compared to the demand at night. Peaking capacity is designed to operate for a small number of hours each yearwhen demand is at its peak (for example, on the hottest days in the summer). Wind gen-erators, which are even more capital intensive than nuclear plants, do not fall neatly into either of these traditional categories since the quantity of electricity they producedepends on the speed of the wind rather than on the level of demand or the spot price of electricity.

18 The Future of Nuclear Power; Matthew Bunn, Steven Fetter, John P. Holdren, and Bob vander Zwaan, “The Economics of Reprocessing vs. Direct Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel,”Report DE-FG26-99FT4028 (Harvard Kennedy School, Project on Managing the Atom,2003); Steven Fetter and Frank N. von Hippel, “Is U.S. Reprocessing Worth the Risk?”Arms Control Today (September 2005); Guillaume De Roo and John E. Parsons, “NuclearFuel Recycling, the Value of the Separated Transuranics and the Levelized Cost of Elec-tricity,” Working Paper 09-008 (mit Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Re-search, 2009).


This paper, while skeptical of the ro-bust nuclear renaissance many in thenuclear industry now predict, is not anti-nuclear. Indeed, nuclear power has many attractions. It is a mature and well-established technology, un-like, for example, carbon capture andstorage. Improvements in its opera-tion and reliability in recent years havebeen striking. It produces little carbondioxide and can clearly, in principle, play a signi½cant role in combating global warming. Compared to coal-generated electricity in particular, it isrelatively clean, producing almost noemissions. Its energy output is not in-termittent, as is the case with wind and solar. And though the overall costsof nuclear are rising, they are arguablycompetitive with other low-greenhouse-gas electric-generation alternatives.1

However, despite these many attrac-tions, nuclear power seems to go for-ward only where governments heav-ily subsidize its operation, such as inChina and India today. As Henry So-kolski has pointed out, “No private bank has yet chosen to fully ½nance anew nuclear reactor build; no privateinsurer has yet chosen to insure a nu-

clear plant against third party off-sitedamages.”2 In the United States, almostall of the several nuclear plants that are now being considered for future de-ployment are in states with regulatedutilities, where nuclear does not have to compete directly with other genera-tion sources and where rate payers in the state assume much of any risk. Nu-clear power growth is stagnant or nega-tive in most of the industrialized coun-tries, and there is still today, outside of China and India, almost no nuclearpower in the developing countries. In2007, world nuclear electricity genera-tion dropped by 2 percent; in 2008, forthe ½rst time in nuclear power’s histo-ry, no new reactor was connected to thegrid anywhere. This should all give onepause in dreaming of a nuclear renais-sance.

Several factors are pulling back on ef-forts to expand nuclear power: the veryhigh capital costs inherent in nuclearpower, especially given the large size ofreactors driven by economies of scale; a continuing strong aversion to nuclearpower by skeptical publics concernedwith safety, with unresolved questionson how to handle radioactive wastes,and with the risks of nuclear prolifera-tion, despite some recent improvementsin favorability ratings; and the rise of

Harold A. Feiveson

A skeptic’s view of nuclear energy


renewable energy and other competitorsfor low-carbon electric generation.

The most striking aspect of nuclearpower projections is the tremendousuncertainty about how rapidly or notnuclear capacity will grow worldwideover the next four decades. For exam-ple, the Nuclear Energy Outlook 2008 bythe Nuclear Energy Agency of the Or-ganisation for Economic Co-opera-tion and Development (oecd) showslow and high scenarios as follows: thehigh scenario grows to about 600 GWby 2030 and then rapidly grows to al-most 1,500 GW by 2050; the low scenar-io shows no growth to 2030 and thenmodest growth to 600 GW by 2050. The regional uncertainties are even more marked. For example, for oecd

countries in North America, the range of change from 2004 to 2050 is 20 to 275 GW; for oecd countries in Europe, it is -10 to 200 GW; and even for Chinathe range is considerable: roughly 60 to120 GW.3 As noted below, the NuclearEnergy Agency’s projections for China,even to 2030, may understate the realrange of uncertainty.

The high scenario assumes that carboncapture and storage proves not to be verysuccessful; that energy from renewablesources is at the lower end of expecta-tions; that there is early good experiencewith construction of new nuclear powerplants; that carbon trading schemes arewidely introduced; and that there is anincreased level of public and political ac-ceptance of nuclear power. The low sce-nario assumes mostly the opposite.4

On these points, the trends are mixed.Though there are some beginnings, thereare still few substantial efforts underwayto demonstrate carbon capture and stor-age. And while so far there has been noadoption of carbon trading systems out-side of Europe, there is a growing expec-

tation that some kind of cap-and-tradeor carbon taxing system will eventual-ly be imposed in the United States andelsewhere. On the other hand, renew-ables are expanding rapidly everywhere;the experience with new nuclear con-struction has not been good; and publicacceptance of growth in nuclear powerstill appears low. In addition, the pricetag for nuclear reactors is high and get-ting more marked.

The World Energy Outlook 2008 refer-ence scenario shows global nuclear ca-pacity growing from 368 GW in 2006 to433 GW in 2030, with a preponderance of this growth in India and China. Rus-sia also had ambitious plans for expan-sion, but recently announced a sharpadjustment downward.5 Growth in theUnited States, oecd countries in Eu-rope, and in the developing countries is projected to be flat at best.

In the United States, despite manyrecent government incentives and re-forms to speed up the regulatory pro-cess, there have been no ½rm orders for new nuclear plants. However, sev-eral utilities have ½led combined con-struction and operating license appli-cations with the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission (nrc), which is now re-viewing the applications; and four of the utilities have signed Engineering,Procurement, and Construction (epc)contracts in anticipation of nrc ap-proval. Most of the license applica-tions have come from utilities in reg-ulated markets, where risks are borne by rate and tax payers, though at leasttwo have been submitted by merchantutilities.6 The lesser interest in nucle-ar in unregulated markets, where therisks are borne by competing marketplayers, is not hard to understand. In a competitive market, the constructionof a new nuclear power plant could rep-resent a tremendous risk, as noted, for


A skeptic’sview ofnuclearenergy


example, in the May 2008 report fromMoody Investors Service.7

Nuclear capacity in the European-oecd countries has been on a plateaufor a decade, although construction re-cently began on two reactor projects, the Olkiluoto-3 plant in Finland and theFlamanville-3 reactor in France, both fea-turing the areva Evolutionary PowerReactor. The Olkiluoto-3 project startedin 2005 and is now, by all accounts, threeyears behind schedule and already morethan $2 billion over budget.8 Construc-tion of the Flamanville-3 reactor startedin December 2007, and it is too early tosee if it will improve on the Olkiluotoperformance.

José Goldemberg’s essay in this issuepoints to the several factors that mili-tate against nuclear power in develop-ing countries. For one, nuclear powerplants, unlike dams and other infra-structure, are not underwritten by theWorld Bank or most other internation-al lending organizations. The large in-vestments required for nuclear pow-er therefore compete with the press-ing needs for health, education, andpoverty reduction. Nuclear energy is also not included in the Kyoto Proto-col mechanisms under which the indus-trialized (Annex 1) states can obtaincredits against their own greenhouse gas emissions by investing in reducing emissions from developing countries.9Second, with economies of nuclear scale continuing to push reactors to 1 GW size or larger, the grids in manydeveloping countries simply cannotaccommodate the reactors. And third,while the largest and more advanced of the developing countries do haveeconomies and grids that could accom-modate nuclear power, several, perhapsmost, of these countries, Goldembergemphasizes, have more attractive al-ternatives, including still largely un-

tapped resources of hydropower andnatural gas.

The striking exceptions to the tepidprojected growth of nuclear power andthe great range of uncertainty are the re-markable projections for India and espe-cially China. In its reference scenario,the World Energy Outlook 2008 projectsthat by 2030 China will install an addi-tional 30 GW of nuclear–substantial to be sure, but not unprecedented com-pared to past nuclear growth in othercountries. Some recent statements byChinese authorities, however, indicatemuch greater growth. In May 2007,China’s National Development andReform Commission announced that its target nuclear generation capacity for 2030 is 120 to 160 GW! In June 2008, the China Electrical Council projected 60 GW of nuclear capacity by 2020!10 I do not know how realis-tic these recent projections are; but it is important to note also that the refer-ence scenario of the World Energy Out-look 2008, while projecting an addition-al 30 GW nuclear capacity in China by2030, also projects an additional 800 GW of coal capacity for the same peri-od, which I will say more about later.

In some respects, the grand Chineseprojections mirror those made in theUnited States in the 1970s (see Figure 1).There are differences to be sure: the U.S. projections were based on very highrates of growth of electricity–roughlytwice the rate of gdp growth–while theChinese electric growth rates assumedare closer to the gdp rates. Neverthe-less, the 1970s projections by the UnitedStates do represent a cautionary tale ofover exuberance, and it may be worth-while to keep them in mind when eval-uating China’s plans.

The fairly tepid projections for nuclearpower outside of Asia are due to several

Harold A.Feivesonon the globalnuclearfuture

factors, but two are particularly signi½-cant: the extraordinarily high capital in-vestment required, and the continuedpublic wariness about nuclear power,driven by an amalgam of concerns oversafety, radioactive waste disposal, andnuclear proliferation.

The recent literature shows a range of costs both for nuclear and its compet-itors. For nuclear, overnight capital costsprojected for new plants range roughlyfrom $3,000 to $5,000/kW, with costs in the United States somewhat on the

higher side.11 When total bus-bar costsare considered, nuclear appears at leastarguably competitive with integratedgasi½cation combined cycle coal (igcc)and combined cycle gas turbine (ccgt)plants, if there is a carbon charge rough-ly in the range of $30 to $50 per ton ofCO2 emitted. Nuclear also appears rea-sonably competitive with wind in manyregions where the wind is supplementedby compressed air storage to make thewind resource more resemblant of baseload.12

Figure 1The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Projection of the Growth of Nuclear Power in the United States, 1974

lwr stands for light water reactor, and Breeder refers to liquid metal fast [neutron] breeder reactor (lmfbr).Source: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Proposed Environmental Impact Statement on the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (wash-1535), 1974.




For the United States, the Energy In-formation Administration estimates theovernight cost of an advanced nuclearplant to be $3,300/kW,13 which wouldimply a capital cost, including interestpaid during construction, of somethinglike $4,200/kW. This, however, could be on the low side for plants construct-ed in the United States, at least as notedbelow.

Overnight costs for all forms of elec-tric generation have grown over the past few years; but the rise in costs isespecially signi½cant for nuclear bothbecause of the large sizes of new nu-clear reactors and because the con-struction period for nuclear is marked-ly longer than for its principal compet-itors, thus adding to the total capitalcost. Although there have been somepaper studies of smaller reactors in the range of 50 to 100 MW, there are few plans to build and widely deploysuch reactors. Also, while China andIndia are deploying small reactors, on the order of 300 GW, and some ofthese could, in principle, be exported to other countries, the market niches for such reactors appear limited. Stud-ies of high-temperature gas-cooled re-actors also contemplate a 100 to 300 MW scale; but none of these reactors is ready to go through the licensingprocess. Therefore, the new proposedreactors are, for the most part, 1 GWor considerably larger. Also, the prin-cipal reactors that are ready to deployare all light water reactors.14

Thus, for example, in a March 2008½ling by Progress Energy with the Flori-da Public Service Commission, the com-pany estimated the overnight costs fortwo proposed Westinghouse ap-1000Reactors (about 1,100 MW each) to bemore than $5,000/kW for the ½rst and$3,300/kW for the second. Includingproject escalation, escalated costs be-

fore afudc (Allowance for Funds UsedDuring Construction), and afudc, thetotals came to $8.3 billion and $5.8 bil-lion, respectively, for the two reactors15

–a tremendous risk for any company orutility. In light of this risk, the credit rat-ing company Standard & Poor’s pointsout that “no utility will commit to aproject as large and risky as a new nu-clear plant without assurance of costrecovery.”16 The World Energy Outlook2008 makes a similar point:

In the traditional, vertically integratedpublic service model, the supply com-pany was often a monopoly and couldcount on recovering the investment andthe target return. . . . In the competitive situation now existing in most oecd

countries and several non-oecd coun-tries, risks have, to some extent, movedfrom rate and tax payers to competingmarket players. This perception of in-creased risk drives up the investor’srequired rate of return.17

The risks evident in new nuclear con-struction are compounded by the pros-pect that the already longer constructionperiod needed for nuclear compared toits competitors could be extended fur-ther still, both by public interventionsand also by another problem associatedwith nuclear, if not unique to it: an ero-sion of construction and operating com-petence and lack of manufacturing infra-structure due to the almost complete ab-sence of new builds in the United Statesand Europe over the past many years. Ifthere were a real renaissance, these de½-ciencies would right themselves overtime, with students again going into nu-clear engineering, workers again beingtrained, and so on; but the current lackis certainly one reason for caution in as-suming that such a renaissance will hap-pen in the ½rst place.18


Simply to replace retired nuclear capac-ity will require building a large numberof new nuclear plants in the coming de-cades–a challenge given the continuingpublic skepticism about nuclear power.An opinion poll of 18 countries in 2005,sponsored by the International AtomicEnergy Agency (iaea), found that lessthan one-third of the public support-ed building new reactors. Even whenprompted speci½cally about the possi-ble use of nuclear energy to combat cli-mate change, only 38 percent expressedsupport for an expanded reliance on nu-clear power. It should also be noted, how-ever, that more than two-thirds of thosepolled opposed shutting down nuclearaltogether.19 Also, in some countries,including the United States, the Unit-ed Kingdom, and Sweden, public ac-ceptance of nuclear appears to be ris-ing, though there are still sizable mi-norities strongly opposed.20

Public skepticism has been drivenlargely by worries about safety and ra-dioactive waste disposal. Modern nu-clear reactors have impressive safety features, and the new designs incorpo-rate still further re½nements. Never-theless, the potential of a catastrophicevent (either an accident or some kind of terrorist incident) is always present,and lingering concerns over safety cer-tainly color public views of nuclearpower. Aside from the immediate dev-astation that would be caused by a se-vere event, it is also widely recognizedthat were such an event to occur, theentire nuclear enterprise worldwidewould be called into question.

Even if the chance of a severe acci-dent were, say, one in a million per re-actor year, a future nuclear capacity of 1,000 reactors worldwide would befaced with a 1 percent chance of such an accident each 10-year period–lowperhaps, but not negligible consider-

ing the consequences.21 And it is worthemphasizing that while accident proba-bilities can perhaps be estimated, thereis no real or persuasive way to gauge therisk of terrorist attacks on reactors. Un-til reactors are inherently safe–that is,until there is no credible way in whichlarge amounts of radioactivity could everbe released–the specter of a catastroph-ic event will hang over the nuclear enter-prise.

It is clear also that the unsettled stateof radioactive waste disposal remains a component in public worry about nu-clear power. Technically, waste dispos-al might not be an unsolvable problem.In the short term, dry cask storage ap-pears relatively inexpensive and safe; in the long term, geological storage in a repository appears doable and safe.However, politically, solutions are not so easily come by. In the United States,this has been recently highlighted by the apparent demise of the Yucca Moun-tain repository.22 While Finland andSweden (at the moment at least) appearto have found a political path to siting a repository, there has been little prog-ress elsewhere in locating and develop-ing repositories.

One ½nal shadow over a nuclear ren-aissance is the growing internationalconcern about nuclear proliferation. It is well understood that one of the fac-tors leading several countries now with-out nuclear power programs to expressinterest in nuclear power is the founda-tion that such programs could give themto develop weapons. In this sense, theconnection between nuclear power andnuclear weapons could lead to some ex-pansion of nuclear power. But this mo-tive would likely lead, at most, to verymodest programs. The nuclear prolif-eration risk is instead more likely to in-hibit nuclear expansion. For one, prolif-eration worries will surely restrict the




amount of encouragement and subsi-dies that the large industrialized coun-tries will be willing to extend to coun-tries to develop nuclear power.

Certainly if a nuclear renaissancemeans spreading nuclear power to ascore or more of new countries as well as expanding existing programs, thenthe current governance of the nuclearfuel cycle internationally would have tobe much altered, with limits, for exam-ple, on national enrichment and repro-cessing plants, were there a serious at-tempt to make nuclear expansion pro-liferation resistant. Such changes arepossible but so far have garnered littlesupport from countries that do not al-ready have national fuel-cycle facilitiesin operation.

The strongest impulse to a nuclear ren-aissance is the view that nuclear repre-sents the most developed and econom-ic low-carbon electricity alternative.23

Other articles in this issue examine nu-clear economics in more detail, but let it be granted that nuclear power will beroughly competitive with igcc coal andccgt gas if a carbon charge of some-thing like $30 to $50 per ton CO2-equiv-alent is imposed. Though perhaps morecontroversial, let it also be granted thatwind, combined with compressed airenergy storage, will also be roughly com-petitive with nuclear. Leaving out oth-er possibilities, such as solar and geo-thermal, among renewables, and end-use ef½ciency advances, the principallow-carbon alternatives to nuclear arelikely to be carbon capture and storageat coal plants; natural gas combinedcycle plants (even without carbon cap-ture and storage); wind, both with ac-companying storage and as a stand-alone intermittent source of electric-ity; and ef½ciencies in electricity gen-eration.24 If we then ask which of

these alternatives can give the world the biggest greenhouse-gas abatementfor the buck, it is not at all clear that nu-clear will look as indispensable to cli-mate change policy as its proponentsinsist. Considering the limited amountof capital available for investment inelectric generation overall, investmentin nuclear plants could hurt the growthof potentially more effective alternatives.

The World Energy Outlook 2008 reportsthat carbon capture and storage (ccs) is “a promising technology for carbonabatement, even though it has not yetbeen applied to large-scale power gen-eration.” A few ccs projects are underway and several full-scale ccs projectshave been announced, varying in scalefrom industrial prototypes to projects on a 1,200 MW scale, with target datesfor deployment between 2010 and 2017.25

Scientists appear reasonably con½dentthat these projects will con½rm that ccs

could be competitive with other majorcarbon mitigation strategies, and thatthe geological CO2 storage capacity worldwide would be vast–suf½cient to handle CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel plants for a century or longer.26

The U.S. Energy Information Agency, for example, estimates that, for an inte-grated coal-gasi½cation combined cycleplant (igcc) with ccs, the overnightcost is just over $3,000/kW, about thesame as an advanced nuclear plant, as-suming both come on line by 2016 andthat the igcc plant has a constructiontime two years shorter than the nucle-ar plant.27 It is too soon to rely con½-dently on ccs, but if it does develop as projected, it will be a close compet-itor to nuclear, probably with similarlife-cycle costs and carbon abatementpotential.

ccgt natural gas plants, of course, are not carbon free. However, even without carbon capture and storage,


if they are replacing coal plants, they will save carbon emissions. A nuclearplant replacing a modern coal plant of1,000 MW capacity would save about 1.5 million tons of carbon per year; a gas plant replacing the same coal plantwould save about half of this, or 0.75million tons of carbon per year.28 So the nuclear plant would double the sav-ings. However, a modern gas plant has a capital cost about one-fourth that of a nuclear plant,29 meaning that for thesame capital cost, natural gas could savemore than two times the carbon emis-sions than nuclear! And it could do thisfar more quickly than possible with anuclear expansion. Cumulative carbonsaved over decades could be far greaterthan with nuclear.

If a large expansion in gas-generatedelectricity led to a more rapid rise in the price of natural gas, the greenhousegas savings might not be worth the cost.But there have been many recent discov-eries of natural gas in the United Statesand elsewhere; in fact, the natural gasresource worldwide appears to be muchgreater than had been estimated. In ad-dition, a large expansion of wind, as de-scribed in further detail below, could re-lease a considerable quantity of gas nowbeing used for base-load generation–aswell as substitute more directly for nu-clear generation.

While installed capacity of nuclear has been roughly constant worldwideover the past decade, wind capacity has grown dramatically. At the end of2007, cumulative world wind capacitywas more than 94 GW, having grown atan average of more than 25 percent per year for the preceding eight years. In the United States, there have been nonew orders of nuclear plants for morethan 30 years. By contrast, in 2007, about 8 GW of new wind capacity wereinstalled, with a cumulative capacity

at the end of the year of about 17 GW.30

It appears that another 8 GW or morewere installed in 2008. In 2008, the United States Department of Energycompleted a study showing the feasi-bility of a scenario in which wind would contribute 20 percent of total U.S. electricity by 2030; such a contri-bution would require a wind capacity of about 300 GW.31 Wind of course is an intermittent source of electricity generation, and its full exploitation will require more new transmission lines than would nuclear, because thestrongest wind resources in many partsof the world (including in the UnitedStates) are far from demand centers.Nevertheless, wind economics lookattractive.

On a capital cost comparison, windturbines cost about one-half that of nu-clear per installed kilowatt;32 since thecapacity factor for wind might be one-half that of nuclear, the carbon savingsper capital cost for wind and nuclearmight be roughly comparable. But,again, because wind turbines can be in-stalled much faster than could nuclear,the cumulative greenhouse gas savingsper capital invested appear likely to begreater for wind.

The wind projections heretofore havebeen mainly for stand-alone wind tur-bines without any signi½cant storage. If recent estimates of the potential ofcompressed air storage prove on target,wind could eventually become a base-load resource, with a still greater upsidecapacity.

One other potent competitor to nu-clear (and to ccs and renewable, too)will be ef½ciency improvements, bothend-state and in the power sector itself.Here I look briefly only at the power sector. Today the world average fuel-to-electricity conversion ef½ciency ofcoal-½red power plants is below 35 per-




cent.33 New coal-½red plants have ef-½ciencies up to 46 percent, and by 2030the ef½ciencies of a modern coal plantcould reach 50 percent or higher. In its “business as usual” scenario, theWorld Energy Outlook 2008 estimated that worldwide coal generating ca-pacity will roughly double from 2006 to 2030, with an overall average ef½cien-cy in 2030 of about 37 to 38 percent (41percent in oecd countries).34 Invest-ments that would drive the average ef½-ciency of world coal-½red plants in 2030from, say, 37 percent to 42 percent wouldsave roughly the same amount of carbonemissions as would replacing 50 percent-ef½cient coal-½red power plants with300 GW of nuclear power plants oper-ating at a 90 percent capacity factor.35

At a national level, the average ef½-ciency, in 2004, of China’s 307 GW ofcoal-½red plants was 23 percent.36 By2030, the World Energy Outlook 2008 pro-jects an overall ef½ciency of roughly 35.6percent. If this could be raised to 41 per-

cent for the 1,332 GW of coal-½red ca-pacity that China is expected to have on line by 2030, that would save morethan four times as much carbon emis-sion on the same basis as would the 36GW of nuclear capacity that the Inter-national Energy Agency expects Chinato deploy by 2030.37

As I initially noted, my analysis is notintended to make a case against nuclearpower. The balance of arguments forand against nuclear–on economic, safe-ty, environmental, and other grounds–is examined in the companion articles inthis issue. What I have wanted to expressis a strong cautionary note to the con½-dent projections of an inevitable nuclearrenaissance. In particular, it is importantto realize the reasons why nuclear pow-er is largely level or declining in most ofthe world, outside of Asia, and to under-score that this situation may not reverse,even in the face of the climate changechallenge.

ENDNOTES

1 A strong pro-nuclear analysis is provided by Climate Change and Nuclear Power 2008 (Vienna, Austria: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2008).

2 Henry Sokolski, “Toward Nuclear Weapons Capability for All?” (Washington, D.C.: New Nuclear Age Foundation, 2008).

3 Nuclear Energy Outlook 2008 (Nuclear Energy Agency, 2008), 105.4 Ibid., 103–109.5 Uranium Intelligence Weekly, March 9, 2009, 5. 6 Nuclear Energy Institute, Status and Outlook for Nuclear Energy in the United States, August

2009. In summary, this report notes that “given this business environment, a reasonedperspective on the ‘renaissance’ of nuclear power suggests that it will unfold slowly overtime. A successful nuclear renaissance will see, at best, four to eight new plants in com-mercial operation by 2016 or so.”

7 Reported in “Nuclear Renaissance: U.S.A.” (nukem, June 2008).8 “Olkiluoto-3 losses to reach 1.7 billion Euros,” World Nuclear News, February 26, 2009.9 Nuclear energy is not an option for projects implemented jointly or for the clean devel-

opment mechanism (cdm); Kyoto Protocol, Articles 6 and 12.10 Frank von Hippel, The Uncertain Future of Fission Power, International Panel on Fissile

Materials (ipfm) Research Report 7, 2009 (in preparation); von Hippel’s sources


include State Mid-Long Term Development Plan for Nuclear Power Plants (2005–2020)(China National Development and Reform Commission, October 2007), and China Nuclear Power 1 (1–4) (2008).

11 “Uncertainties and Variations in Nuclear Power Investment Costs,” Nuclear TechnologyReview 2009 (draft) (Vienna, Austria: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2009).

12 Robert H. Williams, “Nuclear Power and its Competitors in a Carbon-ConstrainedWorld,” Program on Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 23, 2008.

13 Electricity Market Module, Table 8.2, Report doe/eia-0554 (Energy Information Ad-ministration, March 2009).

14 Jacobo Buongiorno, “Near-Term Advanced Reactors for the U.S. Nuclear Industry,”Princeton University, February 26, 2009. The reactors discussed included the AdvancedPressurized Water Reactor (ap-1000, 1,100 MW); the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor(abwr, 1,350 MW); the Advanced Passive bwr (esbwr, 1,550 MW); the EvolutionaryPressurized Reactor (epr, 1,600 MW); and the Advanced pwr (apwr, 1,700 MW).

15 “Nuclear Renaissance U.S.A.,” in Market Report (nukem, April 2008), Progress EnergySidebar. The overnight cost of the second unit is close to that estimated for the areva

Evolutionary Power Reactor.16 Swami Venkataraman, “Which Power Generation Technologies Will Take the Lead in

Response to Carbon Controls?” (Standard & Poor’s, May 11, 2007); quoted in MycleSchneider and Antony Froggatt, World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2007 (The Greens-European Free Alliance Group in the European Parliament, 2008), 11.

17 World Energy Outlook 2008 (International Energy Agency, 2008), 155.18 See, for example, Schneider and Froggatt, World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2007, 12–13.19 “Global Public Opinion on Nuclear Issues and the iaea,” prepared by Globescan for

the iaea, October 2005. The poll presented three choices: nuclear is safe, build moreplants; use what’s there, don’t build more; nuclear is dangerous, close down all plants.The fractions of support for these three options were 28 percent, 34 percent, and 25 per-cent, respectively. So about two-thirds of those expressing an opinion opposed shuttingdown nuclear power, and the same fraction opposed building additional reactors. Thecountries polled were Argentina, Australia, Cameroon, Canada, France, Germany, GreatBritain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Ara-bia, South Korea, and the United States.

20 See Climate Change and Nuclear Power 2008, 39.21 The nrc goal for a large early-release frequency for an advanced (evolutionary) lwr is

one in a million per year; Donald Dube, Division of Safety Systems and Risk Assessment,Of½ce of New Reactors, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, memorandum, White Paper onImplementation of Risk Metrics for New Reactors, February 12, 2009. See also, Edwin Lyman,“Can Nuclear Plants be Safer?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (September/October 2008).

22 The Obama administration’s budget policy statement from March 10, 2009 (available at www.whitehouse.gov/omb) noted that “the Yucca Mountain program will be scaledback to those costs necessary to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commis-sion, while the Administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal.” Itmight be worth pointing out that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (wipp) in New Mexicowas sited without the political furor that has surrounded Yucca Mountain; possibly thiswas due in part to the fact that this plant is devoted to transuranic wastes and does notcontain high-level radioactive wastes.

23 See Climate Change and Nuclear Power 2008.24 The carbon emissions in grams CO2 per kilowatt-hour of the generation alternative have

been estimated as follows considering the full life cycle involved: wind, 9; hydroelectric,




10–13; nuclear, 66; natural gas, 440; coal, 960–1,050. From B. K. Sovacool, “Valuing theGreenhouse Gas Emissions from Nuclear Power: A Critical Survey,” Energy Policy 36(2008): 2950–2963.

25 World Energy Outlook 2008, 150.26 R. H. Williams, “Proposed ccs Early Action Initiative for the United States,” Discussion

Draft v. 10, March 18, 2009.27 Electricity Market Module, Table 8.2.28 Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem

for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies,” Science 305 (2004): 11, 16, and support-ing online material. Assuming a lower heating value conversion ef½ciency to electric ener-gy for coal of 50 percent and gas of 60 percent–both numbers much higher than at pres-ent, but possible in modern plants–the authors show that a coal plant will emit about 186 g C/kWh, and a gas plant about half that. A 1 GW electric plant at 90 percent capac-ity factor produces about 8 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year. Therefore, a coal plant emitting 186 g C/kWh would emit about 1.5 million metric tons of carbon per year, and a gas plant half as much.

29 Electricity Market Module, Table 8.2. The estimates for overnight costs are advanced nu-clear, $2,773/kW; advanced gas combined cycle, $877/kW; advanced combustion turbine,$604/kW (with the gas alternatives requiring construction time of two to three years, and advanced nuclear requiring six years).

30 Annual Report on U.S. Wind Power Installation, Cost, and Performance Trends: 2007(U.S. Department of Energy, May 2008).

31 20% Wind Energy by 2030 (U.S. Department of Energy, July 2008).32 Electricity Market Module, Table 8.2.33 World Energy Outlook 2008, 145–146. 34 Ibid., 145.35 Ibid., 507. The coal electricity generated in 2030 is estimated to be 14,596 TWh, and the

emissions from all coal power generation and heat plants to be 13,507 million metric tonsof carbon dioxide containing 3,690 million metric tons of carbon. This implies an overallef½ciency of about 37 percent. Were the overall ef½ciency instead raised to 42 percent, thetotal carbon savings effected by that rise in ef½ciency would be approximately 437 millionmetric tons per year. If a 1 GWe nuclear plant at a 90 percent capacity factor replacing amodern coal plant could save 1.5 million metric tons per year, a savings of 437 million metric tons could be effected by the deployment of about 290 nuclear plants.

36 World Energy Outlook 2006 (International Energy Agency, 2006), 517. See also Wang Jon,Energy for Sustainable Development 7 (4) (2003). In 2004, coal plants in China, operating at a 65 percent capacity factor, generated 1,739 TWh out of a total electricity generation of 2,237 TWh. In 2003, the average coal consumption per kWh was reported as 391 g inChina, compared to about 320 g in advanced foreign countries, translating into an elec-tricity ef½ciency of about 23 percent in China, compared to nearly 30 percent in indus-trialized countries.

37 World Energy Outlook 2008, 531. China’s coal electric generation in 2030 is estimated to be 6,335 TWh, and total carbon emitted by coal power generation is estimated to be 6,055million metric tons of CO2 (1,654 million metric tons carbon). This implies an ef½ciencyof 35.6 percent. Raising the ef½ciency to 41 percent, the projection for the average ef½cien-cy of coal plants in oecd countries in 2030 would save about 223 million metric tons ofcarbon per year, which could alternatively be effected by the deployment of 150 GW nu-clear, using the rule of thumb that a 1 GW nuclear plant replacing a modern coal plantsaves roughly 1.5 million metric tons of carbon.


After 20 years of stagnation, plans touse nuclear power for electricity genera-tion are being revived around the world,usually for the following reasons:

• Nuclear-generated electricity con-tributes little, on a life-cycle basis, to greenhouse gas emissions and could therefore help in solving global warm-ing problems.

• The eventual introduction of a car-bon tax on fossil fuel use, as one in-strument to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from thermoelectric sta-tions, would make nuclear-generated electricity more competitive vis-à-vis the use of natural gas and other fossil fuels for that purpose.

• Nuclear energy can contribute to en-ergy security, reducing or eliminating the need for natural gas or other fossil fuels now used frequently for electric-ity generation.

These are sensible reasons for countriesto examine the nuclear option seriously.There are, however, other factors thatare much more dif½cult to analyze be-cause of their political nature, namelythe “status” and prestige associated

with mastering nuclear technologies.This factor certainly played a role in the efforts of the United Kingdom andFrance to develop nuclear weapons as an instrument to gain a place at the ta-ble among the great powers. In develop-ing countries, nuclear technology hasoften been viewed as a passport to the½rst world and to the bureaucratic self-aggrandizement of the nuclear estab-lishment, factors evident in the devel-opment of the nuclear capacity of India, for example. It is widely believed thatelements of the Indian scienti½c com-munity, rather than the Indian milita-ry, have led the push for India’s nuclearweapons program.1 This is not surpris-ing considering the influence the U.S.Department of Energy’s national labo-ratories have had in decisions to expandresearch, development, and deploymentof new generations of nuclear reactors,despite lack of enthusiasm from the nu-clear industry. This was also the case inBrazil, where scientists in the 1950s notonly considered building a nuclear reac-tor with natural uranium and graphite–capable thus of producing plutonium–but also started work on ultracentri-fuges to enrich uranium.2

To promote a nuclear energy “renais-sance,” the U.S. government included, inthe Energy Policy Act of 2005, signi½cant


José Goldemberg

Nuclear energy in developing countries



JoséGoldembergon the globalnuclearfuture

incentives to encourage the private sec-tor to build new power reactors. For the½rst reactors built, such incentives (inthe form of subsidies and guarantees)are estimated to have the potential to re-duce the cost of electricity produced by30 percent. Although such policies led toa flurry of applications to build new reac-tors, none has so far been constructed.

Despite the U.S. government’s effortsto revive nuclear energy, the prospectsfor nuclear are not considered very brightin those countries that are part of the Or-ganisation for Economic Co-operationand Development (oecd): the world-wide projections for 2030 by the Inter-national Atomic Energy Agency (iaea)predict, essentially, zero growth in nucle-ar power generated in the period 2003–2030 from oecd countries.3 The hopesof a nuclear industry renaissance, there-fore, lie almost exclusively in the non-oecd countries, where the installedpower is expected to grow from 57 to 132 gigawatts (a net addition of some 75large nuclear reactors). The French com-pany areva, with the active support ofthe French government, has been en-gaged in lobbying to sell reactors to alarge number of developing countriesaround the world, at least 13 of which are in the Middle East. Presently only 7.5 percent of existing reactors are innon-oecd countries (mainly in Chinaand India), and since most of them aresmall, the power generated by them represents only 4.3 percent of total nu-clear-generated electricity. According to iaea projections, this fraction willgrow to 15 percent by 2030.

Recently, 50 developing countries4

that do not have nuclear reactors forelectricity production expressed to theiaea interest in acquiring their ½rstnuclear power plant. Such countrieshave a gross domestic product (gdp)ranging from us$6 billion (Haiti) to

us$657 billion (Turkey) and electricgrids ranging from 0.1 gigawatt (Haiti)to 31 gigawatts (Turkey). It is unlikelythat countries with a gdp smaller thanus$50 billion would be able to purchasea nuclear reactor worth at least a few bil-lion dollars. In addition, electric grids,for technical reasons, must have a min-imum of 10 gigawatts to accommodate a large nuclear reactor. Eliminating thecountries that do not ½t these criteria,we are left with a short list of 16 coun-tries that could be considered seriouscandidates for purchasing large nuclearreactors: Algeria, Belarus, Chile, Egypt,Greece, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya,Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, SaudiArabia, Thailand, Turkey, United ArabEmirates, and Venezuela.

What are the real motivations forthese countries in introducing nuclearreactors to their energy system?5 Con-cerns about greenhouse gas emissions do not have a high priority in developingnations: neither the Kyoto Protocol norany other international agreement con-strains those emissions for them (theywere exempted to assist their develop-ment). Additionally, experience showsthat in industrialized countries, ½nanc-ing the up-front investments needed for nuclear plants is a major challenge.In most of these countries, nuclear pow-er expanded only when governments fa-cilitated private investment, a practicethat is at odds with present strong mar-ket liberalization policies. For develop-ing countries, the pivotal problem is the allocation of scarce governmentalresources; ½nancial authorities cannoteasily justify subsidizing nuclear energyat the expense of more pressing needs in health, education, and poverty reduc-tion.

Nor is the need for energy a suf½-cient compulsion. Most of the antici-

pated growth in nuclear energy in thedeveloping world is commonly ascribedto China and India. In recent years, theyhave become prime markets for nucleartechnology imports because their indig-enous nuclear programs have been, atbest, quali½ed successes. Yet those coun-tries, and indeed the rest of the develop-ing world, have abundant non-nuclearenergy alternatives, too. Cleaner andmore ef½cient coal-burning technolo-gies would reduce emissions not only of greenhouse gases, but also of soot and other by-products that cause localand regional pollution–and they couldprove to be easier or less expensive toimplement. The average ef½ciency ofcoal-burning thermoelectric generationstations is around 30 percent now andcould be improved with current tech-nology to reach the signi½cantly higheraverage ef½ciency of such plants in theUnited States or Japan,6 to say nothingof carbon capture and storage (ccs),which could be available in a few years.Also, many developing nations have un-derexploited hydroelectric power op-tions: worldwide only around one-thirdof economically viable hydroelectricpotential has been tapped so far, and in sub-Saharan Africa that ½gure is farsmaller. Other renewable energy sourc-es, particularly biofuels for transporta-tion, also have good prospects.7

Therefore, excluding the intention todevelop nuclear weapons for reasons ofnational security, the only sensible justi-½cation for developing countries to gonuclear is to enhance security of supply.This was an important considerationsome 30 years ago in France and Japan,both of which installed large parks ofnuclear reactors. Today nuclear electric-ity accounts for 78 percent of the totalelectricity produced in France, and 30percent in Japan. However, there is afundamental difference between the

problems of these countries decades ago and the developing countries today.France and Japan didn’t have other op-tions, having exhausted at that time in-digenous fuels (or hydro) to generateelectricity. The choice was to import fossil fuels (gas and oil, and even coal) or set up nuclear reactors. That’s not the case today for many developingcountries, including the 16 in Table 1.

The meaning of energy security whennuclear energy is involved, however, is a double-edged sword: there is no cleardistinction between the technologyneeded for the peaceful uses of nuclearenergy (such as the production of elec-tricity) and the manufacture of nucle-ar weapons. Nuclear reactors need en-riched uranium to function, and if theenrichment plants producing the fuel for reactors are devoted to producinguranium with a high degree of enrich-ment (above 80 percent), that productcan be used for weapons. Pakistan fol-lowed this route, using information ob-tained about centrifuges enrichment bya Pakistani technician from a urenco

enrichment plant. Even if a reactor op-erates with a low degree of enrichment(3 or 5 percent), which is the case formost commercial nuclear reactors, plu-tonium that can be separated chemical-ly and used for weapons is produced inthe fuel elements. India did this as earlyas 1974, using an imported research re-actor from Canada, and North Korea did the same more recently, in a smallpower plant.

Presently, Brazil, Germany, Iran,Japan, The Netherlands, the UnitedStates, China, Russia, India, and Paki-stan have enrichment facilities. Russiahas an enrichment capacity of approxi-mately 35,000 ton separative work unit(swu)8/year, and all other countries to-gether have another 30,000 ton swu/


Nuclearenergy in developing countries



year. About 100 to 120 ton swu/year isrequired as the fuel loading of a typical1,000 MW reactor. The existing enrich-ment capacity therefore is enough to sup-ply the fuel needs to approximately 600reactors of 1,000 MW, almost double the existing units in operation.

Although vendors are keen to sell nu-clear reactors to developing countries,that by itself does not guarantee energysecurity since enriched uranium nucle-ar fuel has to be imported to keep the re-actors operating. For that reason, manycountries will certainly contemplate the

desirability of enriching uranium do-mestically to avoid dependence on ex-ternal supplies, which they may fear will come associated with political pres-sures and demands unrelated to nucle-ar issues. Two outstanding examples arethe cases of Iran and Brazil. In the 1970s,both countries signed agreements withthe Federal Republic of Germany to in-stall enrichment plants; the agreementswere blocked by the United States. Inboth cases it became clear that the Unit-ed States was denying access to nuclearfuels if political conditions were not

Country Potential source(s), with ratio(s) of reserves to production (R/P) in years

Algeria Abundant natural gas (R/P=43)

Belarus Natural gas from Russia

Chile Abundant hydro and good geothermal potentials

Egypt Abundant natural gas (R/P=43)

Greece Abundant coal (R/P=55) and peat, good geothermal and wind potentials

Abundant biomass, geothermal energy, natural gas (R/P=33), oil (R/P=10), Indonesia hydro

Kazakhstan Very abundant natural gas (R/P>100) and oil (R/P=80)

Kenya Abundant biomass, good geothermal potential

Malaysia Biomass, natural gas available (R/P=35)

Philippines Abundant biomass and geothermal resources

Poland Abundant coal (R/P=47 to 108)

Saudi Arabia Abundant oil (R/P=66) and natural gas

Abundant biomass, coal (R/P=63 to 96) and natual gas also available Thailand (R/P=12)

Vast hydro resources (216 TWh technically and 130 TWh economically exploitable, compared to 73 TWh planned, 11 TWh under construction

Turkey and 35 TWh installed by end 2005)

United Arab Very abundant oil (R/P=97) and natural gas (R/P>100), small country Emirates with low demand

Venezuela Abundant hydro, oil (R/P=73) and natural gas (R/P>100) resources

Table 1Potential Non-Nuclear Sources of Electricity and Their Ratios of Reserves to Production, in Years,in 16 Developing Countries

Source: Survey of World Energy Resources 2007 (World Energy Council, 2008).



met. In the case of Iran, the perceptionwas that the United States wanted topromote regime change; in the case ofBrazil, that the United States was actingon suspicions that the military govern-ment had plans to manufacture nuclearweapons. These perceptions led bothgovernments to encourage national ef-forts to enrich uranium domestically,rather than to accept the limitationsimposed by the United States.

Over the years, nuclear reactors forelectricity production were installed innine developing countries: Argentina,Brazil, China, India, Iran, Mexico, Pak-istan, South Africa, and North Korea. Ofthese countries, ½ve–China, India, Pak-istan, South Africa, and North Korea–developed nuclear weapons (althoughSouth Africa later dismantled theirs).Argentina and Brazil embarked on pro-grams that could have led to weapons,but decided to abandon the programs in 1991. Only Mexico does not have en-richment facilities. It is unclear at thistime if North Korea has them, althoughit has facilities to reprocess nuclear fu-el and separate weapons-grade plutoni-um. The others installed such facilitiesdespite the fact that the number of re-actors in operation in these countries did not justify (from an economic view-point) the investments in such large-scale facilities. There is thus a funda-mental contradiction between efforts toavoid the proliferation of nuclear weap-ons and enthusiasm for the spread, forcommercial reasons, of nuclear reactorsto many developing countries. Recentefforts by North Korea, Iraq, and Iranevidence this contradiction.

These problems are not new; theystarted in the beginning of the nuclearage, as early as 1945. At that time, theUnited States had a monopoly on thetechnology and infrastructure needed

to make nuclear weapons, ranging fromthe uranium ore itself to the puri½cationand enrichment (to the high levels need-ed for weapons) processes to the know-how in building weapons. With suchclout, the United States tried to put nu-clear energy developments under inter-national control. The Soviet Union, con-½dent that it could develop nuclear weap-ons to break the U.S. monopoly, foundthis unacceptable. U.S. policy-makerswere probably under the delusion that it would take the Soviet Union a longtime to build its own nuclear devices;but within only four years of the Hiro-shima/Nagasaki explosions, the Sovi-ets had done so.

To keep some control of the spread of nuclear technology, President Eisen-hower’s 1953 program Atoms for Peaceoffered U.S. help to countries with inter-est in the civilian uses of nuclear energy.Under the program, reactors using high-ly enriched uranium were donated to anumber of countries for research pur-poses and for industrial and medical ap-plications. The rationale for such a move–stimulated by well-intentioned leadingscientists in the United States, such as I. I. Rabi–was that the spread of nucle-ar technology was inevitable, so effortsshould be made to restrict it to peace-ful uses. The United States, which thencontrolled the worldwide production of enriched uranium (besides the SovietUnion), established tight export controlof sensitive nuclear materials. Of course,the program also had commercial moti-vations: it promised to create a marketfor nuclear equipment produced in theUnited States.

Over the years, the United States andthe Soviet Union exported hundreds ofresearch reactors using highly enricheduranium to many developing countries.Some of the spent fuel from the reactorswas returned to the United States and



the Soviet Union, and new shipments of fuel and other materials were close-ly monitored. In practice, however, theprogram, despite its positive aspects in making available the use of radioac-tive isotopes in industry and medicine,often worked against the goal of discour-aging nuclear proliferation, because thedissemination of nuclear reactor tech-nology led to the training of thousandsof scientists and technicians and thespread of sensitive dangerous materials(such as highly enriched uranium andplutonium). This was certainly the casein India, where an active nuclear estab-lishment was built around the eminentscientist Homi J. Bhabba.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the Unit-ed Kingdom, France, and China devel-oped nuclear weapons without signi½-cant external help (except possibly in the case of China, which was assisted tosome degree by the Soviet Union). Thetechnical barriers to developing nucle-ar weapons using materials produced in those nuclear reactors nominally dedicated to peaceful uses aren’t insur-mountable; and the contention that nu-clear technology cannot be developedindigenously by developing countrieshas proved to be false. That any mod-ern industrialized country could devel-op nuclear weapons led to determinedeffort in the late 1960s to stop the fur-ther proliferation of such weapons toother states (horizontal proliferation). In the 1960s there were also very strongconcerns with testing nuclear weaponsin the atmosphere, and with the fright-ening increase of nuclear weapons in the ½ve countries that possessed them,especially the United States and the So-viet Union, both with their thousands of weapons (vertical proliferation).

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt)adopted in 1968 is the main instrument

used to address these problems. TheTreaty divided states in two categories:nuclear-weapons states (nws), de½nedas those that had “manufactured and ex-ploded a nuclear weapon or other explo-sive nuclear device prior to January 1967”(the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and Chi-na), and non-nuclear-weapons states(nnws), which “undertake . . . not tomanufacture or otherwise to acquirenuclear weapons or other nuclear ex-plosive devices.” In return for this un-dertaking, nnws are entitled to “par-ticipate in the fullest possible exchangeof equipment, materials and scienti½cand technological information for thepeaceful uses of atomic energy.” This“grand bargain” was very dif½cult toachieve, though. The nnws kept the“inalienable” right to the use of nucle-ar energy for peaceful purposes, and the nws agreed to pursue negotiationsleading to nuclear disarmament. Thesenegotiations led practically nowhere,and today the nws commitment to pursue nuclear disarmament is gener-ally considered mostly a rhetorical ges-ture. A few countries, such as India, Pakistan, Israel, Brazil, and Argenti-na, wanted to keep their options open,and so did not accept the limitationsimposed by the Treaty; indeed, India,Pakistan, and Israel produced weaponsin the subsequent years.

The npt gave the iaea the job of es-tablishing safeguards and overviewingactivities of the signatories in the nucle-ar area in order to avoid proliferation.Today, essentially all nuclear facilities in nnws are under safeguards. Never-theless, the regime was not in the pastsuf½cient to deter countries from devel-oping nuclear capability, so the nucle-ar powers have tried other approaches to prevent, inhibit, or delay the appear-ance of new nws. In addition to physi-

cal security measures to secure enricheduranium and plutonium and measures tokeep tight control on exports, two otherapproaches have been tried by the Unit-ed States to curb the proliferation of nu-clear weapons:

• Sanctions (“sticks”) to punish na-tions that embark in such a direc-tion. Libya’s renunciation of its nu-clear program is often given as an example of the success of this ap-proach.

• Rewards (“carrots”), such as trade or ½nancial bene½ts. North Korea’s behavior (although somewhat errat-ic) is given as an example of success with this approach.

All of these mechanisms have delayed,to some extent, several countries’ effortstoward acquiring the capacity to developnuclear weapons.

A speci½c security measure that provedmoderately successful was the ReducedEnrichment for Research and Test Re-actors (rertr) program, started by theUnited States before 1980 and soon fol-lowed by a similar program from the So-viet Union. The 250 research and test re-actors in use in 1978 were reduced to ap-proximately 134 by 2007, and most of theremaining ones are in the former SovietUnion and in the United States.9 How-ever, more recently, and particularly af-ter the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was realized that the stocks of enriched uranium still remaining rep-resented a real threat of proliferation insome problematic countries, and that re-doubled efforts should be undertaken torecover the material. As an example, in2002 the Nuclear Threat Initiative safe-ly moved 48 kg of highly enriched urani-um (enough to manufacture two nucle-ar weapons) from the defunct Vinca nu-clear reactor near Belgrade to a facility

in Russia. Another example is Congo,which received the heu research reac-tor that the United States displayed in1958 at the second Atoms for Peace con-ference. Less than two years later, Bel-gian colonial rule in Congo ended. In1970, the United States replaced the heu

reactor with a triga (Mark II) reactoroperated with leu. In the process, twofuel rods with fresh fuel went missing;only one was eventually found.10

The nuclear renaissance now promot-ed by the United States has some simi-larities with the Atoms for Peace pro-gram of President Eisenhower–andruns the risk of repeating and amplify-ing the problems created by that pro-gram. Setting up dozens, perhaps hun-dreds of large nuclear reactors in devel-oping countries means that enormousamounts of enriched uranium will benecessary. The plutonium produced inthese reactors could be used for weap-ons and, further, the enormous amountof radioactive products in the spent fuelin the uranium rods will have to be dis-posed of.

Associated with the nuclear renais-sance are Generation IV (gen IV) re-actors operating with recycled pluto-nium. Future nuclear systems, such as those that are studied in the gen IV

program and the so-called advancedFuel Cycle Initiative from the UnitedStates, are all aimed at making nuclearenergy more sustainable, either by in-creasing system ef½ciency or by usingclosed fuel cycles in which ½ssile ma-terials are either partially or totally re-cycled. Such an approach will involve large reprocessing of fuel rods to ex-tract plutonium. Signi½cant scienti½cand technical challenges must be re-solved before these systems are ready for deployment, which is not expect-ed before 2035–2040.11



It is clear, therefore, that a renaissancewould exacerbate two sets of problemsthat exist already with the present gener-ation of nuclear reactors:

1) Transportation of fuel rods shipped from producing countries and the return of spent fuel (unless they are reprocessed locally); and

2) Building up local enrichment facili-ties to avoid external dependence.

The widespread circulation of ½ssile ma-terials–particularly in some politicallyproblematic countries–increases theprobability of a fraction of this materialfalling into the hands of a terrorist group.

Such concerns led a group of very sen-ior former U.S. government of½cials–George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, HenryA. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn (branded asthe “gang of four”)12–to the convictionthat there is no solution to the problemof the spread of nuclear weapons exceptto seek “a world without nuclear weap-ons.” Naive as it might sound–and noneof these former senior of½cials could beconsidered “paci½sts” or naive–the pro-posal made some sense from the U.S. per-spective. They pointed out that “nuclearweapons were essential to maintaininginternational security during the ColdWar because they were a means of deter-rence,” which was made obsolete by theend of the Cold War. Presently, however,there is the possibility of nuclear weap-ons falling into the hands of non-stateorganizations (and terrorists) to whichthe concept of nuclear deterrence doesnot apply at all. Eliminating nuclearweapons altogether and strictly control-ling the circulation of materials usablefor the manufacture of nuclear weaponswould be the only solution to avoid thatnightmare.

There is a less benign interpretation ofthe motivations of Shultz and colleagues,

namely that whereas immediately afterthe end of World War II the only way tostop the Soviet Union from overrunningWestern Europe was to strengthen thenuclear weapons capacity of the UnitedStates, today the situation has reverseditself. Western Europe is in no real dan-ger from Russian takeover today, andU.S. conventional forces are dominantall over the world, with hundreds of mil-itary bases spread around the world. Ifnuclear weapons are indeed abandoned,that will not weaken U.S. power, but in-crease it.

One way of tightening control on ½s-sile materials and discouraging nuclearproliferation is to revive and strengthenthe npt, which could be achieved in2010 by addressing the thorny questionof implementation of Article VI. This is well in line with President Obama’sstatement that he “will make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy.”

Some developing countries, particu-larly Brazil, which is considered one ofthe countries capable of producing nu-clear weapons–but decided in 1991 notto do so–have recently adopted posi-tions that signal the urgency of comingto terms with the problem of nucleardisarmament, thus strengthening, insome ways, the gang of four’s proposal.The Brazilian government’s recently is-sued “National Defense Strategy” statesclearly that the country “will not adhereto proposed additions [meaning the Ad-ditional Protocol] to the npt which in-crease restrictions contained in it with-out progress by the nuclear weaponsstates in what is the central premise ofthe Treaty: their own nuclear disarma-ment.”

The Additional Protocol is presentlyone of the thorny issues in the efforts



to curb nuclear proliferation. There areproposals to make its acceptance a pre-condition for technical help and accessto technology from the Nuclear Suppli-ers Group, and to make it mandatory to signatories of the npt, to which sev-eral countries have objected. Brazil hasrefused to accept the Additional Proto-col because it claims to have developed,indigenously, ultracentrifuges that usean improved technology, and becauseunannounced inspections by the iaea

in non-declared nuclear facilities couldjeopardize industrial secrets. Brazil otherwise accepts inspections in all de-clared nuclear facilities, including en-richment facilities, where precautionsare taken not to reveal technical char-acteristics of the centrifuges.

Phasing out nuclear weapons will not come easy, but the many steps thatcould be taken in that direction (some of which were listed quite clearly in thegang of four’s proposal) could help dra-matically in “devaluing” the possessionof nuclear weapons. Progressive inter-mediate steps include:

• Extending key provisions of the Stra-tegic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991;

• Adopting a process for bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (ctbt) into effect;

• Adopting an effective Fissile Missile Cutoff Treaty (fmct); and

• Developing an international system to manage the nuclear fuel cycle. On this particular point there are a num-ber of proposals to establish multina-tional centers for enrichment of ura-nium and a “fuel bank” under iaea

control. The purpose of such a system would be to provide for reliability of nuclear fuel, reserves of enriched ura-nium, infrastructure assistance, ½nanc-ing, and spent-fuel management, to

ensure that the means to make nucle-ar weapons materials aren’t spread around the globe.

The strengthening of the npt is also made more urgent by the fact thatthe U.S.-India nuclear deal dealt a seri-ous blow to the safeguards regime of theiaea. As a non-signatory of the npt andhaving nuclear weapons, India could notreceive the technical assistance of nws.These requirements were bent to accom-modate the geopolitical and commercialinterests of the United States. What’smore alarming, the deal was approvedunanimously by the Nuclear SuppliersGroup, which makes decisions by con-sensus.

This controversial approval by theNuclear Suppliers Group can only beunderstood by assuming that some of the participants foresaw themselvesas someday being in the same position of India, and wanted to guarantee forthemselves the same bene½ts and tech-nical assistance India would get from the nws (although India has a milita-ry program that will not be under iaea

safeguards). Others are betting that the nuclear energy renaissance will in-deed take place, and see themselves assuppliers of raw materials or enricheduranium. This expectation is clearly one of the justi½cations for the Rezendeplant in Brazil, since it is unlikely thatthe internal market will be large enoughto justify large investment in facilities.From that perspective, it is clear that theexpectation of a nuclear renaissance isalready undermining the npt.





ENDNOTES

1 Harold Brown, “New Nuclear Realities,” The Washington Quarterly 31 (1) (Winter 2008/2009): 7–22.

2 José Goldemberg, “Lessons from the Denuclearization of Brazil and Argentina,” Arms Control Today (April 2006): 41–43.

3 Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power: Developments and Projections–25 Years Past and Future(Vienna, Austria: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2007).

4 Those 50 countries are Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Chile, Croatia,Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, Indo-nesia, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Libya, Malaysia, Mon-golia, Morocco, Myanmar (Burma), Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Poland,Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand,Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen;author’s personal correspondence with H. H. Rogner of the iaea, September 2008.

5 José Goldemberg, “The Limited Appeal of Nuclear Energy,” Scienti½c American (June 2007).6 “Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future” (InterAcademy Council, 2007);

www.interacademycouncil.net.7 World Energy Assessment: Energy and the Challenge of Sustainability, ed. José Goldemberg

(New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2000).8 A measure of the work done by a machine or plant that separates uranium into streams

with higher and lower fractions of U-235.9 Ole Reistad and Styrkaar Hustveit, “heu Fuel Cycle Inventories and Progress on Global

Minimization,” The Nonproliferation Review 15 (2) (2008): 265–282.10 Zia Mian and Alexander Glaser, “A Frightening Nuclear Legacy,” Bulletin of the Atomic

Scientists (September/October 2008): 42–47.11 Frank von Hippel, “Nuclear Fuel Recycling: More Trouble than It’s Worth,” Scienti½c

American (April 2008).12 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Call for a World

Free of Nuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, and “Toward a NuclearFree World,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008.

History of science and technology hasconsistently taught us that scienti½c ad-vances in basic understanding have soon-er or later led to technical and industrialapplications that have revolutionized ourway of life. It seems to me improbable that this effort to get at the structure ofmatter should be an exception to this rule.What is less certain, and what we all fer-vently hope, is that man will soon growsuf½ciently adult to make good use of the powers that he acquires over nature.

–Enrico Fermi, in 1953, the year before his death

I have spent nearly four decades in the utility industry grappling with the effort to “make good use” of thepower man has acquired in learning tosplit the atom. I cut my teeth in privatepractice licensing the fleet of Common-wealth Edison, one of the nation’s mostnuclear-intensive utility companies. Inmy ½rst ceo position, I worked to recov-er Central Maine Power’s economicallydisastrous investments in the Seabrookplant while ½ghting referenda to shutdown the productive and economicalMaine Yankee station. When I later re-turned to Illinois, this time as ceo of

ComEd, I led a dedicated team of nu-clear professionals who turned the country’s worst-performing fleet intothe nation’s best. This year I celebrat-ed my 25th year as a ceo in the electricindustry. Exelon Corporation, a succes-sor company to ComEd and peco (an-other nuclear utility), is the largest com-mercial nuclear operator in the UnitedStates and the third largest in the world.

The politics and economics of nuclearenergy represent a nearly complete cir-cle: a burst of building in the late 1960sand 1970s; public concerns and risingcosts aggravated by the Three Mile Is-land accident of 1979; deteriorating eco-nomics due to high inflation, poor op-erating performance, and low-pricednatural gas in the 1980s and early 1990s; and now, as of early 2009, 17 license ap-plications ½led with the Nuclear Regu-latory Commission (nrc) for the con-struction of as many as 26 new reac-tors, including Exelon’s application tobuild a two-unit plant in Texas. Tradi-tional considerations–the low produc-tion costs of nuclear power, volatility in electricity prices because of a grow-ing reliance on natural gas, projectedelectricity demand outstripping supply(a “shrinking reserve margin,” in util-ity parlance)–are driving these ambi-tious proposals and plans. Increasing-ly, however, concerns about climate


John W. Rowe

Nuclear power in a carbon-constrained world



John W.Roweon the globalnuclearfuture

change are also driving the so-callednuclear renaissance.

Dramatic economic growth and pro-jected power demand in nations such asChina and India have only acceleratedthe need for nuclear energy. Even morethan in the United States, nuclear pow-er is becoming a more attractive optionglobally. In a November 2008 survey of more than 10,000 respondents in 20countries, Accenture found strong grow-ing support for nuclear power as a way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. More-over, the strongest support came fromrespondents in India, China, the UnitedStates, and South Africa, in that order.Construction plans abroad are as boldas, and in many cases more real than,those in the United States. According tothe International Atomic Energy Agency,13 countries outside the United States arebuilding 44 reactors, and an additional108 are being planned. This is clearly apositive outcome from a climate changestandpoint, but it raises concerns as well–not the least of which are about nucle-ar security and nonproliferation.

From my vantage point, this nation’senergy and climate challenges pose three inconvenient truths (to borrow an already overworked phrase), ratherthan just one.

Inconvenient Truth #1: Climate Changeis Real. Our planet is warming, at least in part due to human production of CO2and other greenhouse gases. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Changeand the National Academy of Scienceshave issued reports that persuade all but the most skeptical reader. Indeed,one must be almost obstinately skep-tical to resist the weight of this analy-sis, the closest one gets to consensusamong scientists.

These reports conclude that globaltemperatures are rising and that hu-

man activity–especially the burning of fossil fuels–is a major contributor to that warming. The reports are lesssure about the long-term effects. Pre-dicted outcomes range from compara-tive nuisance to complete catastrophe. However, our inability to predict theoutcome must not be an excuse for inaction. Both governments and in-dustry, including electric utilities, areobliged to make billion-dollar invest-ment decisions in the absence of com-plete information. We must similarlydeal with our climate challenge in a way that is both decisive and prudent.

Fortunately, President Obama andcongressional leadership seem to agreethere is a problem. As I write this in thespring of 2009, both branches of gov-ernment are moving forward with pro-posals and legislation that will place a price on carbon emissions, eitherthrough a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, essential ingredients toencouraging low-carbon investmentsand discouraging high-carbon ones. We must ensure that this price signal is phased in gradually so as to avoidshocking a weak economy, to give itpolitical stability, and to allow time for better technological solutions todevelop. A predictable, economical-ly sustainable price for greenhouse gas emissions is the sine qua non of addressing climate change. I believe that today we are closer to a compre-hensive governmental policy on cli-mate change than ever before.

Putting a price on carbon, however,creates another huge challenge. Becausethe essence of global energy policy hasfor years been founded on the consump-tion of low-cost fossil fuels, in a carbon-constrained world new sources and ap-proaches to energy supply will be re-quired.

Inconvenient Truth #2: Energy Ef½cien-cy and Renewable Power Cannot Meet ourNeeds on Their Own. The United States’appetite for electricity is projected togrow dramatically, even accounting forthe impact of the current recession. Re-search by The Brattle Group based onthe Annual Energy Outlook 2008, pub-lished by the Energy Information Ad-ministration (eia) of the Department of Energy, concludes that the U.S. elec-tric industry will need to build 214 giga-watts (GW) of new generating capacityin the next 20 years to meet projecteddemand.1 This increase in generation is roughly 20 percent of the industry’scurrent installed nameplate capacity. It is a stark reflection of the fact that as our nation has grown more prosper-ous and our standards of living have in-creased, so, too, have our power needs.Meeting these needs will be a stiff chal-lenge for the utility industry, even ab-sent the need to adapt ourselves to alow-carbon world.

Energy ef½ciency will be a critical–and in some ways the most creative–component of meeting that growingdemand. Improved ef½ciency stan-dards have been in vogue for years with policy-makers who have (wise-ly, in my view) passed laws requiring air conditioners that run on less pow-er, toilets that flush with less water, and other similar measures. WhenExelon renovated its headquarters indowntown Chicago, we designed our 10 floors of the 1970s-era building tomeet leed (Leadership in Energy andEnvironmental Design) Platinum stan-dards. We changed our lighting, putadvanced controls on our heating andcooling, and installed Energy Star-ratedappliances. In doing so, we reduced ourelectricity consumption by 50 percentand achieved substantial cost savings.And ef½ciency is even penetrating the

public consciousness. As electricityprices rose in recent years, consumersfound themselves more willing to em-brace the twists and curves of a compactfluorescent light bulb–even if it did not½t perfectly with their home decor.

Undoubtedly, ef½ciency is the best ½rst step when it comes to meeting ourfuture needs in the least carbon-inten-sive fashion. But how much of futuredemand can be mitigated by improvedef½ciency? The answer is not at all clear. Technology and the behavior ofconsumers are both too complicated to be characterized by a supply curve.The items that clearly pay for them-selves, such as Exelon’s of½ce renova-tions, will be quickly adopted. Yet I be-lieve that we are still far from the daywhen consumers will pay $20 for an led bulb, even if it is more ef½cient than its compact fluorescent cousin. We must ½nd a way to convince land-lords to build the most ef½cient build-ings possible when their tenants–notthey–will pay the monthly bill. And we must realize that as our economygrows and our standards of living be-come ever higher, we will ½nd new technologies, like mobile phones andflat-screen televisions, that will use more power, not less. We will not andcannot all live simpler lives consumingless and still providing for ourselves.

The Brattle Group study estimates that in the most realistic case, 38 percentof the projected growth in generatingcapacity can be eliminated through im-proved ef½ciency and conservation. Inthe best-case scenario–which assumesthat we can (and will) change our behav-iors and pay the still-unknown costs–48 percent of projected growth in gener-ating capacity could be eliminated. Thatis certainly meaningful progress towardmeeting our needs in a low-carbon fash-ion, but assuming the best-case ef½cien-


Nuclearpower in a carbon-constrainedworld



cy scenario, we still must build 111 GW ofnew generation over the next 20 years.

Renewable generation sources–pri-marily wind, which is the most matureof the alternatives–have also caught the imagination of the public and pol-icy-makers. Subsidies and governmen-tal mandates fueled a wind construc-tion boom in recent years, aided by ris-ing electricity prices (largely due to vol-atile natural gas supplies) and concernsabout dependence on foreign energysources. According to the AmericanWind Energy Association, over 5 GWof wind capacity were installed in 2007,and approximately 7.5 GWwere project-ed for 2008. (The previous annual high-water mark for new installed wind ca-pacity was in the neighborhood of 3 GW.)There is something appealing to the pub-lic about a form of electric generationthat requires no fuel and passively har-nesses nature.

But how much generating capacity canrenewables achieve? The Brattle Groupand the eia conclude that we can expectto obtain roughly 39 GW of generatingcapacity from wind and other renewablesources. This amount is roughly the samein the reasonable and best-case scenar-ios, reflecting current knowledge aboutthe technologies involved. These 39 GWcome with a signi½cant cost, though. Ex-elon’s internal economic analysis placesthe unsubsidized cost of avoiding carbonemissions with wind at between $50 and$90 per metric ton.2 A recent article inThe Economist cites a study that places thecost of avoided carbon emissions withrenewables at between $70 and $140 dol-lars per metric ton. This translates intowholesale power price increases between3 and 14 cents per kilowatt-hour (depend-ing upon the market), which could easilydouble a consumer’s monthly bill. Andthese ½gures do not count the attendantinvestments that must come with renew-

able power. The most promising regionsin the United States for wind develop-ment are in the Southwest and GreatPlains, far from the population centersthat would need the power the most and necessitating the construction ofcostly transmission lines. A February2009 report by the Lawrence BerkeleyNational Laboratory summarizing morethan 40 existing transmission studies es-timates that the average additional costfor transmission–on top of the highercost of wind energy–is between 1.5 and2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Moreover, renewable power sourcesare intermittent. According to a 2007study by the engineering ½rm Black &Veatch, the newest and most ef½cientwind turbines have a 35 percent capac-ity factor (de½ned as the amount of en-ergy produced over a given time divid-ed by the unit’s total energy potential).We would still need to build backup generation from traditional sources,most likely quick-starting natural gasfacilities, to ensure reliability of the grid and that the lights come on when-ever customers flip the switch, regard-less of whether those wind resources are producing power. As for solar pow-er, the same issues about transmissionand reliability apply, but the technolo-gy is even less mature, and so the costs,according to Exelon’s internal analysis,are as much as 10 times higher than thecost of wind.

We can and must invest in wind, so-lar, and other emerging technologies.But even in the most optimistic of sce-narios, we face a shortfall of 75 to 100GW of power. And it is critically impor-tant to remember that this is merely the generation required to meet pro-jected demand. It does not address re-placement of any part of the existing and aging carbon-intensive coal-gener-ation infrastructure, which accounts



for roughly 50 percent of power generat-ed today and the vast majority of the in-dustry’s CO2 emissions.

Inconvenient Truth #3: We Need Low-Carbon Base Load Power, a SubstantialAmount of Which Will Have to be Nuclear.We have three options to ½ll the gap inour country’s future power needs in alow-carbon fashion: natural gas, cleancoal, and new nuclear plants. Each hasdisadvantages and complications.

More natural gas-½red generation is a certainty. The capital investmentsare manageable for companies the sizeof the average U.S. utility. It can be dis-patched quickly, making it the idealcomplement to intermittent renew-ables, and it is relatively attractive from the standpoint of carbon emis-sions. Current economic conditions,stresses on the ability of utilities to make large capital investments, andtoday’s low commodity prices all butensure another “dash to gas.” In to-day’s environment, natural gas is second only to energy ef½ciency as a way to provide electricity at the low-est avoided cost for carbon emissions. But we should be wary of the unintend-ed consequences of such a dash. Mostsigni½cantly, a further build-out of gasgeneration would lead to an increasing-ly undiversi½ed generation portfolio. Ac-cording to the energy data provider Ven-tyx, approximately 375 GW of nameplategenerating capacity have been broughton line in the United States since 1990;more than 85 percent of that capacity isgas-½red. As the percentage of gas-½redgeneration increases, the volatility in itsprice will become an even larger prob-lem. The potential volatility was perfect-ly illustrated in 2008: natural gas pricesstood at $7 per MMBtu at the beginningof the year, rose to almost $14 per MMBtuin the summer, and fell to $5 per MMBtu

at year’s end. By early 2009, it had falleneven further, to less than $4 per MMBtu.Future oscillations in price will translateinto power price volatility, and that vol-atility will become more pronounced as the dash to gas progresses. This out-come is good neither for power genera-tors, whose revenues and cash flows willride the peaks and troughs of the com-modity cycle, nor the customers theyserve, who will quickly become frustrat-ed by the uncertainty about what theirelectricity bill will cost.

Coal, which accounts for roughly 50percent of the electricity generated inthe United States, is a second option. We will not retire existing plants over-night, making coal-½red electricity areality for many years to come, even inthe unlikely event that we never buildanother new coal plant. Accordingly, we must pursue clean coal technology.Yet this, too, has limitations. Since my½rst day as a utility ceo, I have been told that the revolution in clean coal isimminent. While we have had success in removing the sulfur and nitrous ox-ides from the emissions, the challengecurrently lies in confronting carbonemissions. Carbon capture and seques-tration technology may work; however,it has not yet been proven on a largescale. The most signi½cant project thatwould do so–the FutureGen project indownstate Illinois–has been in limbodue to tenuous governmental fundingand industry support. The technologymust be proven on a large scale andmade available for both new plants andas retro½ts to existing plants. We mustunderstand the cost of coal with carboncapture, which Exelon’s analysis esti-mates to be the most expensive of anybase-load generating option, at roughly$150 per metric ton of CO2 avoided. And the public must understand andbecome comfortable with the risks of



sequestration. The process involves in-jecting a large amount of carbon diox-ide into a geological repository, where it must stay for the duration of humanexistence. If those repositories burp, our planet will have a problem.

The third option is new nuclear power.Today, nuclear is the predominant low-carbon base-load generating source. The eia estimates that in 2007 nuclearaccounted for approximately 74 percentof the electricity derived from sourcesthat emit no greenhouse gas. And as an industry, we have made progress onmany of the concerns that reared theirheads during the 1980s.

• Improved safety and reliability. We have made great progress since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island Unit 2. According to the nrc, the number of “signi½cant events” at U.S. plants has fallen from an average of 1 in 1989 to somewhere in the neighborhood of be-tween 0.04 and 0.07 in recent years. Capacity factors across the industry are substantially improved as well. At the time of the Three Mile Island inci-dent, the average nuclear reactor in the United States generated power at only 60 percent capacity; today that capacity factor is 91 percent. At Exelon we have had 6 straight years with ca-pacity factors in excess of 93 percent.

• Improved public support. The public per-ception of nuclear power is improving, due in no small part to efforts by the industry to win back the public’s trust through the safety and reliability im-provements mentioned above, as well as an increasing recognition of the cost and environmental impacts of other fuel options. A poll by Bisconti Re-search commissioned by the Nuclear Energy Institute in March 2009 found that 70 percent of Americans support-

ed nuclear power, up from roughly 50 percent in the early 1980s. Among those who view nuclear as a low-carbon option, the support level in-creases to 75 percent. Of those who have a plant within 10 miles of their home, 82 percent view nuclear power favorably. Lest one suspect some bias in the polling based on who commis-sioned it, an independent poll by Zog-by International conducted in June 2008 shows that two-thirds of Amer-icans favor the construction of new nuclear plants.

• Plentiful, stable, and secure fuel source.Nuclear power offers advantages over gas from the standpoint of fuel securi-ty. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd) noted in its Nuclear Energy Outlook, pub-lished in October 2008, that identi½ed uranium supplies could support an ex-pansion of nuclear generating capacity until 2050 without the need for repro-cessing; additional suspected reserves could provide enough supply for “sev-eral hundreds of years.” Moreover, the oecd points out that uranium comes from diverse sources and regions, with the key suppliers operating in politi-cally stable countries. The high energy density of uranium means that its trans-portation is less vulnerable to disrup-tion, and the storage of reserves is easi-er. Finally, Goldman Sachs states in its January 2008 report, “Reacting to Cli-mate Change: Considering Nuclear Options,” that uranium costs repre-sent only about 10 percent of the over-all production cost. This compares to roughly 77 percent for coal and 93 per-cent for gas, according to data provid-ed by Ventyx. This means that even when uranium prices become volatile, as was the case in the past several years,nuclear power is substantially less vul-

nerable to price shocks. In the United States, investments are beginning to bemade in conversion, fabrication, enrich-ment, and other parts of the fuel cycle. This strengthened fuel supply chain will support new nuclear facilities as they come on line.

• Spent fuel. Sadly, we are not much clos-er to a consensus solution on spent fu-el than we were when I ½rst became a ceo. The government and the indus-try have spent approximately $9 bil-lion and countless man-hours over a 20-year period on a permanent reposi-tory at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Nevada congressional delegation has exerted a comparable amount of effort to thwart it. Recent policy pronounce-ments indicate that the game is over, and Nevada has won. Nevertheless, current storage provisions at existing nuclear generating sites are safe. The nrc has certi½ed on-site storage for the 60-year life of the plant plus an-other 30 years afterward during de-commissioning, and the amounts of fuel are relatively compact in physi-cal size. The nuclear industry has paid the federal government $20 billion since its plants entered operation to fund the government’s obligation to take possession of spent fuel. Progress is beginning on alternatives to a per-manent geological repository. Secre-tary of Energy Steven Chu plans to as-semble a blue ribbon commission to determine the best options for manag-ing spent fuel and the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. I believe that the most likely outcome will be several re-gional, above-ground interim storage sites, which will serve as a bridge to further development of the technolo-gy and a national consensus on the so-lution. However, all options must be on the table, including developing ad-

vanced, safe reprocessing methods to close the fuel cycle.

• Competitive economics. Nuclear genera-tion from existing sources enjoys the lowest production cost of any major form of base load generation in the United States. According to the eia, production costs in 2007 amounted to 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for nuclear generation, compared to 2.5 cents for coal, and 6.8 cents for natural gas. Ex-elon’s 17 reactors had an average pro-duction cost of 1.5 cents, well below the national average. In terms of new-build economics in the long-term, nu-clear is competitive with gas and coal even without a price on carbon emis-sions. Goldman Sachs estimates that the construction cost of new nuclear plants is roughly 6.3 cents per kilowatt hour, equal to that of natural gas and scrubbed coal.3 Their analysis assumes a long-term natural gas price of $7 per MMBtu, a long-term coal price of $65 per ton, and a new-build cost for nucle-ar of $6,000 per kilowatt (in nominal dollars). It also ignores any production tax credit bene½t nuclear would enjoy under the provisions of the Energy Pol-icy Act of 2005. Were that to be includ-ed and were there to be a $20 per met-ric ton carbon cost, nuclear would be advantaged over natural gas and far more attractive than scrubbed coal. Other studies provide different conclu-sions in terms of absolute generating costs but not in relative ordering.

While nuclear is far from being “toocheap to meter,” neither is it too expen-sive to contemplate.4 At the same time,there are three important caveats to thiseconomic analysis to bear in mind.

• Construction risk remains. The U.S. nucle-ar supply chain has atrophied, and no major project will proceed without sig-



ni½cant engineering and construction support from French or Japanese part-ners. The industry and the nrc have designed processes to avoid many of the regulatory and design delays that plagued the last cycle of construction, but several projects will need to be com-pleted on-time and on-budget to instill con½dence that we truly have learned to avoid our past mistakes.

• Financing risk is more acute than ever. A two-unit nuclear plant is a massive cap-ital investment, greater than the book equity of Exelon, the largest company in the industry. While oil companies can and do regularly undertake capi-tal projects of this size, building a new nuclear plant may be a task too large for the U.S. electric industry in its cur-rent state. A few utilities in traditional-ly rate-based regulatory environments with cooperative state utility commis-sions might be able to build a plant with the costs and risks borne by their ratepayers through construction-work-in-progress (cwip) rate increases, al-lowing them to recover the costs from their customers even before the plant is placed in service. The federal loan guarantee program is designed to pro-vide additional assistance, offering at-tractive debt ½nancing for up to 80 per-cent of the project’s costs. For compa-nies like Exelon that operate in com-petitive markets without the backstop of ratepayers, loan guarantees are es-sential. Congress, however, has under-funded the loan guarantee program. The allocated $18.5 billion cannot ade-quately support more than 5 or 6 of the 26 proposed units, which will dra-matically curtail construction plans. Whether through cwip or loan guar-antees, ultimately all utilities will need some form of assistance until the con-struction risk diminishes in the minds

of investors and a price on carbon translates into power prices that can support a project of this size.

• Current economic conditions are unfavor-able. It takes serious courage, if not sheer audacity, to begin a project of this size in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Electricity demand has fallen in the near term and reserve margins are not as tight, creating un-certainty about the revenues of a new project. More signi½cant is the col-lapse in the price of natural gas. It has reduced the marginal price of electric-ity dramatically, and at $4 per MMBtu,gas-½red generation is by far the pre-ferred low-carbon base load option. None of this addresses the concerns about energy security, price volatility, and diversity in generation, but the prospect of low gas prices for several years to come may be as powerful as the Sirens’ call to Odysseus.

Finally, the U.S. nuclear industry has made progress on proliferation. Our plants have security plans and well-trained security forces in place.These in-depth security measures are designed both to protect publichealth and safety in the event of a terrorist attack and to safeguard ½s-sile materials. We are con½dent in our ability to protect against either possibility.

In a larger sense, the industry is ready to contribute to crafting a pol-icy response to concerns about pro-liferation, but we are only a small part of that response. When a roguestate contemplates building a nuclearweapon, spent fuel sitting in Clinton,Illinois, or Pottsville, Pennsylvania,probably doesn’t occur to them as their ½rst or best option. In addition



to storage at generally remote locations,the plutonium is mixed with highly ra-dioactive elements that make handlingspent fuel dangerous and reprocessingcomplicated. Nevertheless, we need acomprehensive solution that covers thenuclear power industry and others withpotential weapons-making capabilities.The solution needs to be led by publicpolicy-makers who are cognizant of all the issues and competing interests.And the solution needs to be global, ac-counting for not only the U.S. sources of potentially ½ssionable material, butalso those sources around the world. The American nuclear power commu-nity stands ready to contribute to thedebate on that solution, and will work to ensure that the ultimate nonprolif-eration regime is effective.

Nuclear power is inescapably part ofthe answer to addressing climate change.We face a growing need for power; everyavailable option to meet that demandhas its limitations. Energy ef½ciency isvaluable but too limited in its scope tomeet all of our future needs without rad-ically changing the way we live. Renew-ables are too expensive and too unreli-able at the current or near-term state oftechnological advancement. Coal is toodirty, and carbon capture and seques-tration is too hypothetical. Natural gas is too volatile. And nuclear, while sig-ni½cantly more attractive today than 20years ago, still has unresolved issues re-lated to construction, economics, andspent fuel. Nothing is perfect, and noneof these solutions is compelling on its own. All of them taken together give us a realistic chance of meeting our futureenergy needs and adapting our currentgeneration mix for a carbon-constrainedworld. But construction of new nuclearplants has to be on the table with all ofthe other options.

Which brings me to one ½nal in-convenient truth: when this nuclear renaissance comes, it will come not only to the United States and Europe,but also to Asia, Africa, and the Mid-dle East. Barring a breakthrough on carbon sequestration for coal, there is no other way to meet the needs of theworld’s fastest growing economies in a low-carbon fashion. This clearly cre-ates new challenges for nonprolifera-tion regimes. Despite past stumbles and a couple of near-calamities, the nu-clear community in the United States,Europe, and Japan has by and large managed to be, in Fermi’s words, “suf-½ciently adult to make good use” of thepower to split the atom. The realities of a warming climate and growing energyneeds now force us to address Fermi’schallenge amid a new, larger interna-tional nuclear-generating community.





ENDNOTES

1 Other studies suggest different ½gures, but the Brattle and eia scenario is a good enoughapproximation to illustrate the task before us.

2 Exelon conducted a comprehensive economic analysis of carbon abatement opportunitiesas part of Exelon 2020: A Low Carbon Roadmap. Exelon 2020 is our plan to reduce, offset, ordisplace more than 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions (our 2001 carbonfootprint) per year by 2020. The report, along with the supply curve showing the variouscosts of avoided emissions, can be found on our website, www.exeloncorp.com.

3 Production costs consist of operations and maintenance charges plus the cost of nuclearfuel. This is contrasted to construction costs, which include the capital expenditures andexpenses incurred up to the point of a unit’s commencement of commercial operations. In this context, construction costs are quoted in nominal dollars and include a substan-tial amount of interest incurred during the lengthy construction period.

4 “Too cheap to meter” is an old chestnut from Rear Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, the particu-larly controversial head of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1953–1958. All too oftenit has been attributed to a utility executive.

President Obama gave a remarkablespeech in Prague on April 5, 2009, inwhich he called for deep reductions innuclear arms in the immediate futureand, eventually, a world without nucle-ar weapons. He also proposed strength-ened measures to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. His words recallthose of the German philosopher Hegel:“Human beings make history, but theyare not aware of which history they aremaking.” We should join President Oba-ma in becoming aware of the history we should all strive to make–one thatlays the groundwork for a safer, moreprosperous world in which the planet’sresources are more equitably distrib-uted and the environment is safer andcleaner.

The we which I use here refers, ½rstand foremost, to states, which have theresponsibility to ensure a peaceful andprosperous world. But nongovernmen-tal actors, such as laboratories, universi-ties, think tanks, and corporations, musteach play its individual part in helping to build and sustain this world. And nowthat the growing enthusiasm for nuclearenergy that has been expressed by gov-ernments, utilities, and electro-intensive

industries around the globe seems morethan just a craze or a passing fashion, itis that much more necessary to involveall stakeholders.

Do we have to fear this nuclear renais-sance? Several observers suggest that we do, arguing that the current nonpro-liferation system, the product of manydecades of development, simply no long-er works effectively or that it needs to beradically altered. I would suggest that,rather than fear a nuclear renaissance,we must seize it as a unique opportuni-ty to enhance the culture of nonprolif-eration, in a way that involves all stake-holders in this renaissance.

Rational, well-grounded reasonsunderlie the nuclear renaissance. Gov-ernments and electricity utilities want to build new nuclear plants to addressgreenhouse gas emissions and to meetgrowing energy needs. Nuclear must do so while addressing three challenges that lie at the heart of any energy con-sideration: namely, sustainability, com-petitiveness, and security.

Few sources of energy can meet allthree of these requirements. Fossil fu-els, with their substantial greenhousegas emissions, cannot meet the sustain-ability requirement. While we do needto develop renewable energy sources,


Anne Lauvergeon

The nuclear renaissance: an opportunity to enhance the culture of nonproliferation



AnneLauvergeonon the globalnuclearfuture

most renewables provide only intermit-tent supplies of energy and thereforecannot by themselves ensure full securi-ty of supply. Moreover, they do not meetthe competitiveness requirement, since,like all sources of energy at an early stageof development, they will require heavysubsidies in the United States, as well asin Europe.

Nuclear energy meets all three require-ments. Indeed, nuclear energy is:

• Carbon free and sustainable, because it emits the lowest amount of carbon per kilowatt hour among all sources of energy;

• Competitive, even without a carbon pricing system. That is why it is the choice of countries with highly regu-lated economic systems (for example, China and India); partially deregulat-ed ones, such as the United States; or totally deregulated economies, like in the United Kingdom; and

• Secure, because uranium is widely available around the world. Current major mines are in politically stable countries, such as Canada and Aus-tralia, and conventional resources account for 200 times the annual de-mand. In addition, the global nuclear fuel market is functioning effectively, and consumer states are able to obtain satisfactory assurances of enriched uranium fuel through long-term con-tracts. For example, areva has signed a 60-year contract with one customer.

Nuclear power’s ability to meet theserequirements explains the growing glob-al interest in nuclear energy. However,the prospects for expanding nuclear en-ergy also come with concerns in somequarters that the spread of this technolo-gy could contribute to the proliferationof nuclear weapons, either in additional

states or among non-state actors, such as terrorist groups. As a result, somehave advocated discouraging the de-velopment of nuclear power, particu-larly its spread to states that do not now have nuclear energy programs inoperation. Over the last several years,some academic and media circles havetaken a pessimistic view of the pros-pects of containing the spread of nucle-ar weapons. They have argued that theend of the Cold War has accelerated therisks of proliferation and that the cur-rent nonproliferation system, a decades-long development, is no longer effec-tive and needs to be radically altered.

While a few countries have taken ir-responsible actions in the nuclear ½eldthat threaten international and region-al peace and security, the internation-al nonproliferation system has, on thewhole, been highly successful in limit-ing the spread of nuclear weapons. Onehundred and eighty-seven states nowadhere to the Treaty on the Non-Prolif-eration of Nuclear Weapons (npt).Only three states have elected not to join the npt, and some states, such asSouth Africa or, more recently, Libya,have abandoned or dismantled theirnuclear weapons programs altogether.The non-nuclear-weapons states that are party to the npt have pledged toforgo the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons and have agreed to accept International Atomic Ener-gy Agency (iaea) safeguards on all of their nuclear activities. Nearly all have faithfully abided by that commit-ment.

Nevertheless, during the past fewyears, new threats have emerged to challenge the global nonproliferationregime. Over a 20-year period, Iran hasclandestinely acquired uranium enrich-ment capabilities in a manner that con-stitutes a violation of its obligations

under the iaea safeguards agreement. In this action Iran has been supported byPakistan, which itself has admitted thatA.Q. Khan, the former head of the KhanResearch Laboratory in Pakistan, trans-ferred enrichment technology to NorthKorea, Iran, and Libya. The A.Q. Khanclandestine network also spread nuclearweapons technology to Iran and Libya.Thus far Iran has chosen to ignore sever-al calls by the United Nations SecurityCouncil to suspend its enrichment activ-ities. North Korea, which withdrew fromthe npt and conducted nuclear tests,demonstrates another major challengeto the nonproliferation regime. WhileNorth Korea had begun dismantling itsnuclear facilities, the 6-party talks withPyongyang have stalled over disagree-ments about veri½cation arrangements;as of this writing, North Korea had justexpelled iaea inspectors and announcedits decision to restart its facilities.

Clearly the nonproliferation regimeshows weaknesses and needs continuousstrengthening. Responsible members of the international community must beever vigilant, and must accelerate theirefforts to strengthen international safe-guards, nuclear export controls, physi-cal protection, and other elements of the regime. The nonproliferation policyproposed by President Obama provideshope that the international communitycan take effective steps to close the loop-holes in the nonproliferation regime.

However great the challenges we nowface in preventing the spread of nuclearweapons, they do not cast doubt on theeffectiveness of the nonproliferation sys-tem as a whole. Nor do they justify theconclusion that the growth of civil nu-clear power programs means the spreadof nuclear weapons. It is worth empha-sizing that the few countries that havesought to acquire nuclear weapons in

recent years have done so for reasons of national security, national power, or prestige: in other words, their basicmotivations have been political. Thenuclear programs of these countries–North Korea, Iraq, and Iran–have never used nuclear power to produce a single kilowatt hour of electricity.

The responsibility for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons rests ½rst and foremost with governments. As President Obama has said, “Rulesmust be binding. Violations must bepunished.” States must ensure thatcountries comply with commitmentsthey have made under the npt, theiriaea safeguards agreements, and otherelements of the regime. But we all sharein the responsibility to prevent the pro-liferation of nuclear weapons. The nu-clear industry, as well as the arms con-trol and nonproliferation communities,must join governments in ensuring that the nuclear renaissance takes place under conditions that minimizethe risk of proliferation.

The renewed interest in nuclear en-ergy and the international growth ofnuclear electricity generation do notequate–and should not be equated–with increasing proliferation risks. In-deed, the nuclear renaissance presents a unique opportunity to enhance the culture of nonproliferation. The nucle-ar industry must play a major role instrengthening this culture. areva’s“Value Charter” establishes nonprolif-eration at the top of its operating prin-ciples. Among other things:

• areva manages all of its nuclear facili-ties and nuclear materials in full accord with all international nonproliferation treaties, norms, and national regula-tions.

• areva does not, and will never, coop-erate with any customer from a coun-


An opportu-nity to en-hance theculture of nonprolif-eration



try that does not adhere to internation-al nonproliferation standards or is not compliant with its nonproliferation ob-ligations.

• Even if a country satis½es the above cri-teria, areva reserves the right to assessthe political stability and security situ-ation of the country, and even the re-gion, to consider possible risks associ-ated with a given commercial transac-tion.

• areva strictly implements national and international rules and procedures governing export control for all end-user countries; it has also developed a special training and awareness pro-gram for all areva employees in charge of export control.

• areva is ready to supply countries with light water reactors, such as its epr reactor, that by themselves do not present a proliferation risk, pro-vided effective controls and condi-tions are accepted and implemented in these countries.

• areva is committed to exercising spe-cial care in considering the transfer of sensitive technologies, such as enrich-ment and reprocessing (or recycling) technologies, to other countries. We have transferred recycling technology to Japan, with the provision that Japan agree to refrain from retransferring the technology to any other country, and we have supported the implemen-tation of iaea safeguards in Japan. We are currently considering transferring recycling technology (without separa-tion of pure plutonium) for peaceful purposes to China, and we are also prepared to transfer such technolo-gy to the United States, if the United States chooses to adopt recycling as part of its strategy to manage the back end of its fuel cycle. However, we have

no plans to transfer such sensitive nu-clear technology to other countries.

It also bears mentioning that the vast majority of potential areva cus-tomers have no aspiration to acquireenrichment or recycling facilities. Onthe contrary, most are interested only in the generation of clean and afford-able power. We no longer live in the era when countries sought to master all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle forreasons of prestige or demonstratingtheir technological prowess. Rather,most countries recognize that we haveentered an era of realism and ef½cien-cy in meeting energy needs. Countrieshave an equation to solve: how to gen-erate X thousand megawatts of electric-ity beginning in 2020 or 2025 on a com-petitive, sustainable, and responsiblebasis. Nuclear electricity generation isone of the solutions; but most countriesdo not believe that the development oftheir own sensitive nuclear technologies,such as highly sophisticated uranium en-richment or used-fuel treatment capa-bility, will provide them with a sensible,economic, or competitive approach to help solve this equation. None ofareva’s customers has expressed a real interest in acquiring sensitive nu-clear technology. At any rate, areva

would not provide such technologies to countries where it would make noeconomic sense, or where it would present a risk of political instability or a danger of proliferation.

Beyond the care that areva exercisesin its nuclear export policies, areva alsoseeks to contribute to nonproliferationin several other ways. areva activelyparticipates in numerous internationalinitiatives, committees, and institutionsthat are working to strengthen the non-proliferation regime. Such participationgives areva the opportunity to share its



experience, to bene½t from the exper-tise of others, and to improve its ownexport control practices, safeguards, and physical protection measures. For example, areva joined the iaea’sCommittee 2020, established in 2008 by iaea Director General MohamedElBaradei with the purpose of reflect-ing upon the nature and scope of theAgency’s program up to 2020 and be-yond and addressing the many chal-lenges and opportunities the Agency will face in the coming years. That com-mittee’s report set out concrete recom-mendations, calling for a reinvigoratedglobal nuclear order that reduces riskswhile allowing rapidly growing contri-butions from nuclear technologies tohuman well-being. areva is also work-ing with the International Commissionon Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disar-mament, chaired by Garreth Evans andYuriko Kawaguchi. The commissionaims to revive the global debate on theneed to prevent the further spread ofnuclear weapons, as well as the need for nuclear disarmament; the commis-sion also hopes to strengthen the npt

by seeking to shape a global consensusin the lead-up to the 2010 npt ReviewConference and beyond. A key issue that the commission will examine ishow to ensure that expanded use of civil nuclear energy–most welcome in view of climate change and energysecurity concerns–does not result in an associated increase in proliferationrisks.

areva does not participate in suchendeavors to enhance its public image or to win a seal of good behavior for the nuclear industry. Rather, areva be-lieves that being a responsible memberof the international community meansthat the nuclear industry should partnerwith others, to learn from them and toshare with them areva’s considerable

experience in safeguards, physical pro-tection, and other technical aspects ofnonproliferation.

In considering the global nuclear ren-aissance, we need to pay special heed to the interests that developing coun-tries have expressed in acquiring civilnuclear programs. Some observers haveexpressed concern that the expansion of civil nuclear power to such countrieswill only increase the risk of nuclearweapons proliferation. However, weshould view these countries’ interest in nuclear energy as good news, for at least three reasons.

First, we need to do everything we canto put an end to today’s global energyimbalance. Two billion people currentlylive without access to electricity, and nothaving electricity shortens life expectan-cy to 35 or 40 years. We know that manycountries without suf½cient energy nowwill face serious power shortages in thefuture as their populations continue togrow. We should not–cannot–allowthis situation to continue.

Second, the effects of climate changewill not be limited to industrializedcountries. Developing countries will be hit particularly hard by global warm-ing. Many of them are now turning tonuclear power as a source of energy that is carbon free. Far from trying todissuade this, we should applaud andsupport their efforts.

Third, objecting to nuclear energy in the developing world on nonprolif-eration grounds is politically, legally, and ethically unacceptable. Article IVof the npt

1 is part of the basic bargainof the international nonproliferationregime. As President Obama stated inhis speech in Prague:

The basic bargain is sound: Countrieswith nuclear weapons will move towards



disarmament, countries without nuclearweapons will not acquire them, and allcountries can access peaceful nuclear en-ergy. To strengthen the treaty, we shouldembrace several principles. We need moreresources and authority to strengtheninternational inspections. We need realand immediate consequences for coun-tries caught breaking the rules or trying to leave the treaty without cause.

And we should build a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation, including an international fuel bank, so that coun-tries can access peaceful power withoutincreasing the risks of proliferation. Thatmust be the right of every nation that re-nounces nuclear weapons, especially de-veloping countries embarking on peace-ful programs. And no approach will suc-ceed if it’s based on the denial of rights to nations that play by the rules. We mustharness the power of nuclear energy onbehalf of our efforts to combat climatechange, and to advance peace opportuni-ty for all people.

Opposing the expansion of civil nu-clear power to developing countries byclaiming that it will lead to the spread ofnuclear weapons is to deny these states’right to peaceful nuclear energy. Any ef-fort to deny the bene½ts of civil nuclearpower programs to developing countriesrisks overturning the fundamental bal-ance of the npt and jeopardizes the veryfoundation of the nonproliferation sys-tem. Nuclear energy is not just a privi-lege for rich countries.

This does not mean that it makes sensefor all developing countries to choose thenuclear power option. Nuclear energywill not be appropriate for some coun-tries in the world because they lack therequired political stability and secure en-vironment, the industrial infrastructure,and the human and ½nancial resourcesto purchase, operate, and maintain nu-

clear power plants in the long run. How-ever, for those countries for which nucle-ar power provides a sensible economicand technical means of meeting energyneeds, areva believes that the rules forselling nuclear reactors and fuel shouldbe fair, nondiscriminatory, and univer-sal. Once a country commits to com-ply with international nonproliferationnorms and obligations, we must applythe same rules, whether that country is America or Finland, China or SouthAfrica. India has represented an impor-tant development in this respect. Thereopening of nuclear trade relations with India over the last years has beenbased on the necessary peaceful-useguarantees and international inspec-tions in the country.

The past several years have seen a num-ber of proposals to minimize the risksassociated with the spread of sensitivenuclear technologies. The Nuclear Sup-pliers Group is working to develop newcriteria for the transfer of enrichmentand reprocessing technology. France,Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the UnitedStates, at the June 2006 meeting of theiaea Board of Governors, offered im-proved fuel assurances in order to dis-courage countries from developing en-richment and reprocessing facilities of their own. The proposal from thatmeeting, “Concept for a MultilateralMechanism for Reliable Access to Nu-clear Fuel,” outlines a reliable supplymechanism, backed up by reserves ofenriched uranium, that would supportexpansion of nuclear energy while at the same time obviating the need forinvestments in additional enrichmentand reprocessing facilities.2 The Unit-ed States announced in September 2005 that it would commit 17.4 tons ofhighly enriched uranium to be blended

down to low enriched uranium “to sup-port assurance of reliable fuel suppliesfor states that forgo enrichment and re-processing.”3

In addition, the Nuclear Threat Ini-tiative (nti), an American nongovern-mental organization, pledged $50 mil-lion for the establishment of an inter-national fuel bank under the auspices of the iaea, provided that one or moremember states contribute either an ad-ditional $100 million in funding or anequivalent value of low enriched urani-um to jump-start the reserve. The Unit-ed States, the European Union, Norway,the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwaithave pledged the necessary funds to es-tablish this bank; the iaea now needs to de½ne the proper mechanism to im-plement such a bank.

In June 2007, Russia offered to setaside 120 tons of low enriched urani-um, to be released upon request by theiaea for use by member states of theAgency.4 These initiatives show that the international community is pre-pared to take concrete and meaningfulsteps to provide nuclear fuel assurancesto countries that suffer disruptions ofsupply unrelated to their ful½lment ofnonproliferation obligations.

The nuclear industry itself can play an important role in making the acqui-sition of national enrichment and recy-cling facilities unnecessary and uneco-nomic. A well-functioning fuel cyclemarket, with suppliers like areva pro-viding enrichment and used-fuel recy-cling services at competitive prices,makes it unnecessary for newcomers to nuclear energy to acquire sensitivenuclear technologies. It is worth point-ing out that developed countries such as Belgium and Switzerland have en-joyed the bene½ts of nuclear energy for40 years without perceiving any need to acquire sensitive capabilities, despite

their having the technical and ½nancialmeans to do so. They have purchasednuclear fuel as part of long-term con-tracts with enrichment suppliers, cov-ered by export licenses. To make sure its products and services remain reli-able in the long term, the nuclear in-dustry has already committed to ma-jor investments in new capacity.

However, we cannot restrict our at-tention to assurances of supply of nu-clear fuel. We also have to decide how to manage the used nuclear fuel once it has been discharged from reactors.There has been a long-standing debateabout the merits of recycling and themanagement of the back end of the fuelcycle. On one side of the debate is theonce-through approach historically en-dorsed by the United States, which in-volves disposing of used nuclear fuel as a waste. On the other side is the re-cycling approach adopted by France,Japan, Belgium, Germany, the UnitedKingdom, The Netherlands, and underconsideration by China and India; thisapproach entails recycling used fuel and recovering both plutonium and uranium to produce recycled fuel forpeaceful use in nuclear reactors.

Concerns about the proliferation risksassociated with recycling have been atthe heart of U.S. policy, which was orig-inally established on an interim basis by President Ford and was extended by President Carter. The Bush adminis-tration showed a new willingness to re-consider America’s once-through used-fuel management strategy and to exam-ine the merits of developing advancedreprocessing and recycling technolo-gies. We do not yet know what policy the Obama administration will adopt on recycling, but Secretary of EnergySteven Chu has expressed interest incontinued research and development in the area of recycling technologies.



areva believes that the closed fuelcycle approach is an industrial solutionavailable today, and that under the appro-priate nonproliferation controls and con-ditions, it offers a sensible path in the fu-ture for some countries. In such cases,areva’s experience shows that treat-ment and recycling can provide a verygood fuel-cycle option at a competitivecost, and is an economically, environ-mentally, and socially responsible ap-proach to the management of used nu-clear fuel. areva has treated more than20,000 tons of used nuclear fuel fromseven countries on a commercial basis.areva takes the used fuel produced by our customers back to La Hague and treats it there to recycle 96 percentof its contents. The recycled materialsare then manufactured into mixed-oxide fuel (mox) in our melox facility.Waste from recycling (which is exemptfrom iaea safeguards) is returned to the country that enjoyed the bene½t of the energy delivered. Recycled urani-um can be reenriched and sent back onthe global market. Plutonium, the mostsensitive material, shall be recycled inselected countries, dependent on tech-nical, economic, security, and nonpro-liferation considerations and subject tointernational arrangements. With such a model, most countries could enjoy the full bene½ts of nuclear energy with-out having either to master or developlocally any sensitive technologies, sig-ni½cantly contributing to stabilizing the world’s geopolitics.

areva believes that treating used nu-clear fuel and fabricating mox fuel forcountries under effective internationalsafeguards and physical protection mea-sures do not present a proliferation riskand will not contribute to the weakeningof the nonproliferation regime. On thecontrary, areva is contributing both toreducing proliferation risks and to pro-

tecting the environment by removingused fuel, recycling reusable material,and reducing the volume and radiotox-icity of waste. In this respect, areva isprepared to consider treating used fuelfrom countries that would not necessar-ily be interested in or be in a technical or political position to recover the recy-cled fuels themselves. Some utilities that already recycle their own fuels, aswell as utilities located in the G8 coun-tries, for instance, could be encouragedto facilitate such operations.

In addition to its industrial reprocess-ing and recycling programs, areva iscontributing to nuclear arms control and disarmament by helping to elimi-nate excess weapons-grade plutoniumfrom the United States in connectionwith the U.S.-Russian Plutonium Man-agement and Disposition Agreement of2000. Securing and reducing global in-ventories of nuclear weapons and ma-terials must be an integral part of anyeffort to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists. The Unit-ed States and Russia have already de-clared a signi½cant fraction of their plutonium as in excess of their defenseneeds. Much larger amounts could beremoved as they reduce their arsenals to somewhere in the range of 1,700 to2,200 operationally deployed strategicnuclear warheads by 2012, as agreedunder the Strategic Offensive Reduc-tions Treaty (sort). And U.S. Presi-dent Obama and Russian PresidentMedvedev have agreed to pursue newand veri½able reductions in strategicoffensive arsenals. Such reductionscould result in additional quantities of excess plutonium from dismantledweapons.

areva is building a mox fuel fabri-cation facility in Savannah River, SouthCarolina, based on its melox facility.This new U.S. facility will enable the



United States to convert 34 metric tonsof surplus weapons-grade plutoniuminto mox fuel and to produce electricityfor peaceful use in nuclear plants. Presi-dent Obama has urged the nuclear-weap-ons states to reduce their nuclear weap-ons arsenals. areva, already part of sev-eral U.S.-led initiatives aimed at reduc-ing the risks of unused highly enricheduranium, is ready to deepen its partner-ship with the U.S. government to sup-port this goal. It is important to stressthat using mox fuel for peaceful pur-poses in nuclear reactors is the onlysolution available in the short term toreduce the surplus of weapons-usableplutonium and civil plutonium.

We have entered a world where thenuclear industry cannot be part of theproblem; it must be an active part of the solution. It must help create a world

where countries must replace the allegedprestige and status of possessing nuclearweapons or sensitive nuclear technolo-gies with new emphasis on the ef½ciencyand pragmatism of producing electricityfor peaceful purposes.

The ongoing nuclear renaissance pre-sents a tremendous opportunity to meetthe energy, economic, and environmen-tal needs of both developed and devel-oping countries for the lifetime of ourchildren and beyond. However, govern-ments, industry, and the nonprolifera-tion community must cooperate close-ly to ensure that the growth of nuclearpower does not increase the risk of nu-clear weapons. We must make use of this nuclear renaissance as a unique op-portunity to enhance the culture of non-proliferation among all stakeholders inthe renaissance.



ENDNOTES

1 Paragraph 1 of Article IV of the npt provides that “Nothing in this Treaty shall be inter-preted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research,production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.” Paragraph 2 of Article IV provides that“All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in,the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scienti½c and technological in-formation for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to doso shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other States or internationalorganizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peace-ful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty,with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.”

2 Cf. iaea document gov/inf/2006/10, June 2006.3 See iaea document infcirc/659, September 2005.4 Cf. iaea document infcirc/708, June 2007.


Today, there are approximately 440nuclear power plants (npps) around the globe contributing roughly 16 per-cent of the world’s total supply of elec-trical energy, and the contribution fromnuclear power is likely to grow in theyears ahead.1 Energy is an essentialunderpinning for economic growth, and as the developing world advances,its demand for energy is projected togrow signi½cantly. At the same time, the carbon-intensive energy sources the world now relies on–chiefly coal,petroleum, and natural gas–pose a grave threat because the growing con-centrations of carbon dioxide in the at-mosphere are bringing about climatechange and ocean acidi½cation. As aresult, the world needs to turn to ener-gy sources that are substantially carbonfree. Nuclear power, by far the most sig-ni½cant current source of greenhouse-gas-free energy, must play an importantpart in the world’s response to the in-creasing concentrations of greenhousegases in the atmosphere. In addition,volatile fossil fuel prices, coupled withconcerns about the security of oil andgas supplies, enhance interest in energysources that do not pose the same costs

and risks. Nuclear technology is attrac-tive in this regard, too, because fuel costsare only a slight component to the costsof nuclear energy (most of the costs arisefrom the amortization of the plant) andbecause supplies of uranium are abun-dant and secure.

The current widespread interest innuclear technology has been describedas a “nuclear renaissance.” Construc-tion of new plants is under way or is contemplated around the globe. SomeAsian countries have steadily pursuednuclear construction over the past fewdecades, and several are signi½cantlyaccelerating their efforts. Many Euro-pean countries that had turned awayfrom nuclear power in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident are recon-sidering their positions and are eitherundertaking or exploring new construc-tion. Although no generating companyin the United States has placed an orderfor a new plant for more than 30 years,the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(nrc) has received 17 applications forcombined construction-and-operat-ing licenses for 26 plants, and it expects several more applications in the yearsahead. Perhaps most important, manycountries that do not currently havenpps have expressed interest in acquir-ing one. (These countries are the so-

Richard A. Meserve

The global nuclear safety regime


called new entrants.) The Internation-al Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) has re-ported that some 60 such countries haveexplored nuclear power in recent years,and that as many as 20 are seriously in-terested in proceeding with npps.

No doubt, the current worldwide eco-nomic decline will slow major projectsof all kinds. Nuclear power is a capitalintensive activity, and therefore ½nanc-ing a new plant will be a dif½cult un-dertaking until the economy recovers.Nonetheless, the pressures that createdinterest in nuclear power persist, and we should anticipate that signi½cant newconstruction probably will occur aroundthe world over the next decade or two.

The growth of nuclear power presentschallenges. One, of course, is the con-cern that the spread of nuclear tech-nology could enable more countries to pursue nuclear weapons. Reactors are not the principal concern in this re-gard; rather, expansion of nuclear pow-er might result in new countries under-taking fuel-cycle activities that presentproliferation threats. The need for anassured fuel supply could cause morecountries to develop their own urani-um enrichment capacity. (Most com-mercial npps require fuel enriched inthe isotope uranium-235 to a level of 4 to 5 percent; natural uranium has 0.7percent uranium-235.) Although com-mercial nuclear fuel is not usable in aweapon, the technology to enrich ura-nium to the level needed for fuel couldbe applied to produce highly enricheduranium (above 20 percent uranium-235)–a weapons-usable material. Moreover, the used fuel from npp op-erations can be chemically reprocessed to recover plutonium, another weap-ons-usable material. Because the prin-cipal barrier to the construction of anuclear weapon is the challenge of ob-

taining the necessary weapons-usablematerial, expanded enrichment or re-processing capacity heightens the pro-liferation risk, a signi½cant concern that is discussed by other contributors in this volume.

The public also has particular con-cerns about the safety and security risks that attend nuclear power. We must heed these concerns not only because the public who might be af-fected by an accidental release from a npp must be protected, but also be-cause the prospects for nuclear powereverywhere would be influenced by the public clamor following a seriousnuclear event anywhere.

The history of nuclear power rein-forces the need to pay special attentionto safety. In 1979, operators at the ThreeMile Island Plant in Pennsylvania failedto respond appropriately to a pressurerelief valve on a reactor that was stuck in the open position, resulting in theventing of coolant. There was extensivemelting of fuel, and, in effect, the reac-tor was destroyed. But no radioactivematerials in excess of regulatory limitswere emitted into the environment be-cause the containment structure thatsurrounded the reactor prevented un-controlled releases. The Russian rbmk

reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant inthe Ukraine did not have a containmentsystem, with the result that, in 1986, arunaway reactor not only destroyed thereactor, but also released extensive ra-dioactive materials into the environ-ment, spreading radioactive materialsacross Europe. Understandably, theseevents dampened enthusiasm for nu-clear power in the United States andEurope in subsequent years.

Events such as these reinforce the ob-ligation of all those associated with nu-clear power–operators, regulators, ven-dors, and contractors–to be ever-vigi-


The global nuclear safetyregime


lant. Fortunately, the recent safety rec-ord has, in the main, been good. Plant-based safety indicators (for example,measures of such things as actuation of reactor safety equipment, availabil-ity of safety-related equipment, releas-es of radiation, worker exposure, andunplanned shutdowns) have shown rea-sonably steady improvement for morethan a decade. These improvements, at-tributable to greater attention to opera-tions, maintenance, training, advancesin diagnostic and assessment technolo-gy, and system upgrades, are impressiveand, as a general matter, reassuring.

Recent experience also shows thatstrong economic performance corre-lates with strong safety performance. In the United States, for example, theimprovement in safety indicators coin-cided with a signi½cant improvement in capacity factors (a measure of theenergy production actually achievedweighed against the theoretical maxi-mum from continuous full-power op-eration). This correlation isn’t acci-dental: the attention to detail that im-proves safety also leads to plant avail-ability and stronger economic perfor-mance.2

Nevertheless, noteworthy safety lapses continue to occur at npps aroundthe globe, including at reactors in coun-tries with extensive operational experi-ence and strong regulatory capabilities.None of the recent events has resulted in a substantial off-site release of radio-activity,3 but these events reinforce thereality that assuring safety is hard work.It must be embedded in the managementand cultural practices of both operatorsand regulators; it is an obligation thatdemands constant attention.

One lesson from years of operations is that the operator must assume the pri-mary obligation for assuring safety. The

operator controls what happens in theplant and, as a result, can best assurecontinuing safe performance. The op-erator must have the engineering, ½nan-cial, and management capability to en-sure not only that the plant is built andoperated in a safe fashion, but also that it operates with safety as the highest pri-ority. In turn, a national nuclear safetyregulator undertakes the reinforcementand policing of the operator, de½ning the operator’s responsibilities and seek-ing to ensure that those responsibilitiesare being met. The regulator should beindependent, capable, and suf½cientlystaffed and funded to perform its func-tions. Every regulator should aspire to be tough, but fair, to ful½ll its obliga-tions and to meet public expectations.

Although operators and national regu-lators play the essential roles, there is animportant backstop to the licensee andregulator: the global nuclear safety re-gime. The regime is a collective interna-tional enterprise that sets a level of per-formance expected of all operators andregulators, monitors that performance,and builds competence and capabilityamong both operators and national reg-ulators. This global nuclear safety re-gime will be increasingly important asthe nuclear renaissance takes full flower.

Ad hoc in nature, the regime has grown and developed over many years. It is made up of several components:

• Intergovernmental organizations such as the iaea and the Nuclear Energy Agency (nea) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-ment (oecd). The iaea is a un orga-nization with responsibilities for non-proliferation, the safety and security of nuclear facilities, and the peaceful application of nuclear technology. In the safety and security arena, it pro-vides standards and, at the request of

Richard A.Meserveon the globalnuclearfuture

a member country, inspections and advice on nuclear activities. The nea

is involved in international coopera-tive safety research and in the study of safety and regulatory issues. The iaea

and nea jointly operate an internation-al system for the exchange of operating experience.

• Multinational networks among regula-tors, including the International Nu-clear Regulators Association and the Western European Nuclear Regula-tors Association. These networks en-courage regulators to exchange views and information and coordinate activ-ities.

• Multinational networks among opera-tors, the most important of which is the World Association of Nuclear Op-erators (wano). Among other activi-ties, wano provides peer reviews of plant operations and serves as a clear-inghouse for the exchange of operat-ing information between operators. wano assessments and advice are held con½dential. The World Institute for Nuclear Security (wins) was re-cently created to serve a similar func-tion on security-related matters at nu-clear facilities.

• Stakeholders in the international nu-clear industry. The vendors that de-sign and sell npps are international businesses that market their products throughout the world. Similarly, the architect-engineering ½rms and the suppliers of equipment and services are worldwide enterprises. These en-terprises provide a means for trans-ferring knowledge from country to country.

• Multinational networks among scien-tists and engineers. Scienti½c and engi-neering societies encourage communi-cation among experts in many nations.

• Standard development organizations–for example, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (asme), ieee

(formerly known as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), and the American Nuclear Society (ans)–and their interfaces with the International Organization for Stan-dardization (iso). Parts and compo-nents may originate in many different countries, and thus compliance with detailed standards is an important means of assuring appropriate quality.

• Nongovernmental organizations and the international press. Nuclear activities attract attention and inter-est around the globe, including from ngos and the press. This attention provides an important stimulus for change.

A framework of international con-ventions, international safety standards,codes of conduct, joint projects, and in-ternational conferences and workshopsholds the system together. These ele-ments together provide the context inwhich every national nuclear programoperates. (See Figure 1.)

Several overlapping factors serve tomake the examination and revitaliza-tion of the global nuclear safety regime a pressing obligation. First, every na-tion’s reliance on nuclear power is tosome extent hostage to safety perfor-mance elsewhere in the world; a nucle-ar accident anywhere will have signi½-cant consequences everywhere, if onlythrough an indirect impact on publicopinion. Thus each country currentlyusing or contemplating nuclear powerhas an interest in ensuring that there isattention to nuclear safety everywhere.The overall global improvement in safe-ty performance does not tell the whole,or even the most crucial element of the




story. The web of nuclear safety is no stronger than its weakest link: all are vulnerable to the capabilities of theweakest performers. It is in the interestof all to identify and help those most inneed of strengthening their safety per-formance.

The need for such international assis-tance is growing. As noted above, thereis the prospect of substantial numbers of new entrants and of increasing num-bers of npps around the globe. Many of the new entrants, by de½nition, have

limited experience with nuclear energy,and nearly all lack the extensive nation-al infrastructure common in most coun-tries currently with npps. Constructingand operating these new npps in a safefashion demands a strengthened inter-national backstop.

Moreover, many currently operatingplants were built years ago and are near-ing the end of their originally anticipat-ed lifetime of 40 years or so. The plantshave had the bene½t of detailed surveil-lance, maintenance, and replacement of

Figure 1Global Nuclear Safety Regime

Source: iaea, Strengthening the Global Nuclear Safety Regime (insag 21), 2006. Reprinted with permissionfrom the International Atomic Energy Agency.


components over those years, and many of them are running reliably andeconomically. As a result, operators inseveral countries are seeking to extendoperations to 60 years and some are raising the prospect of operation for aslong as 80 years. But aging plants pre-sent unique safety challenges becauseplants and equipment can deteriorateover time through mechanisms that may not yet be fully understood (forexample, stress corrosion cracking);because spare parts may be dif½cult to ½nd; and because older plants maynot have all of the safety features ofmore modern designs. The continuingoperation of older plants thus requirescareful attention to aging mechanisms,with heightened attention over time tosurveillance, preventive maintenance,and component replacement. Hereagain, the international system shouldhelp ensure that the safety margins ofaging plants are maintained.

Second, the construction and servic-ing of npps has become a global enter-prise, with vendors and contractors en-gaged around the world. Consequently,ef½ciencies and safety advantages havearisen from avoiding needless country-speci½c differences that require customdesign modi½cations or that presentunique operational challenges. Nuclearpower must compete in the economicmarketplace with other sources of ener-gy, and the legal regime should further,rather than retard, economic ef½ciency,while simultaneously ensuring adequatesafety. The global safety regime shouldreflect and respond to the changingstructure of the industry by encourag-ing greater international harmonization.

Finally, there is also the simple realitythat we have much to learn from eachother. One of the most important waysto anticipate and prevent possible prob-lems is to analyze and learn from the rel-

evant experience of others, and to put in place anticipatory or corrective mea-sures to forestall an accident. We nowhave about 13,000 reactor-years of expe-rience around the world, and we bene½tfrom putting systems in place to sharethe knowledge arising from that experi-ence. Moreover, bene½ts are obtained by coordinating research activities andsharing research results, thereby reduc-ing the cost of research to each partici-pant and helping to ensure that all ben-e½t from the growth in knowledge. Theglobal safety regime should encouragethe sharing of knowledge and nurture its expansion.

Any one of these reasons is suf½cientby itself to justify the careful scrutiny ofthe global safety regime. Taken together,they offer a compelling argument for re-view. But what should change?

As noted above, the existing legalregime is founded on the fundamentalobligation of operators to ensure safety,subject to rigorous oversight by a nation-al regulatory entity exercising sovereignauthority to protect the public healthand safety. The national programs areaugmented by an overlay of assistanceprovided by and through a variety of in-ternational organizations, chief amongthem the iaea, the nea, and wano. But the decisions of each nation-statelargely determine the extent and scopeof international engagement.

One might imagine a different regimein which an international regulator with sweeping transnational authorityensures the adequacy of licensees’ safetyperformance. Such an approach mightbe seen as a way both to ensure that allnuclear activities, regardless of location,conform to safety standards as well as to facilitate the harnessing of safety ca-pabilities around the globe in an ef½cientand effective manner. It is very unlikely,




however, that such a regime will soon be established, at least not in an extremeform, in which an international regu-lator displaces national regulators. Cer-tainly, the population in the vicinity of a nuclear facility needs to be assuredthat its safety is guaranteed by a politi-cally responsive body, rather than a dis-tant and unaccountable internationalregulator. And the strategic importanceof energy supply makes it doubtful thatany nation would willingly surrender its authority over the continued oper-ation of critical energy infrastructure,such as a npp. Moreover, the safety system must operate within each na-tion’s legal, economic, and social cul-ture; adaptations of regulatory sys-tems to ½t local conditions are prob-ably necessary in any event.

Accordingly, a global safety regimepremised on a single and strong inter-national regulator is implausible, per-haps even undesirable. This is not todeny, however, that we should encour-age regional networks among regula-tors to share resources and capabilities,or that in the long term we should seekto establish the capacity of the iaea

to inspect and police the performance of the national safety systems, to ensurethat at least minimum safety standardsare achieved. The iaea would then have strengthened capacity to ensurethat the national systems were func-tioning appropriately.

At the moment, the iaea does nothave the power to undertake indepen-dent safety inspections absent the invi-tation of the member state, or the au-thority even to recommend sanctions for poor performance. Given safety’simportance, the objective over timeshould be to enhance the iaea’s pow-er to assure safety by giving the iaea

powers in the safety arena that are analogous to its powers on safeguards

matters under the Additional Protocol–that is, the power to inspect nuclear fa-cilities at a time of its choosing and toestablish and seek compliance with stan-dards. Because the national regulatorwill continue to have ongoing regulato-ry responsibilities, the focus of iaea’sincreased role would be to monitor andassess the adequacy of the national reg-ulator’s efforts. An amendment of theConvention on Nuclear Safety (cns)(discussed below) would provide thelogical vehicle for the institution ofthese powers.

Establishing such strengthened in-spection and enforcement authoritywould likely take many years of dif½-cult negotiation and an arduous andtime-consuming process to bring anamendment of the cns into force. The dif½culty of establishing the wide-spread implementation of the Addition-al Protocol in the safeguards arena illus-trates the challenge that should be ex-pected. In the meantime, however, theexisting system can and should be rein-forced and expanded in various ways.We must proceed now to augment na-tional systems with a stronger overlay of international cooperation and en-gagement.

First, the safety services offered by the iaea need to be enhanced. Theseservices, which include voluntary in-spections of nuclear facilities and of regulatory systems, currently receiveonly about 8 percent of the iaea’s reg-ular budget. Given the need to assist the new entrants in establishing andmaintaining appropriate national safe-ty systems, the iaea effort should growsigni½cantly. There is an immediateneed to provide training facilities for the staff of the operating companies and the regulatory organizations thatwill carry the primary responsibility for assuring safety at these new facili-


ties. The iaea (among others) has a veryimportant role to play in making certainthat the new entrants have the capacityand knowledge to ful½ll their responsi-bilities.

Second, international security-relatedservices need to be strengthened and co-ordinated with safety. Safety is focusedon accidental events whereas, in the caseof npps, security is aimed principally atpreventing acts of sabotage that couldresult in releases of radioactive materi-als.4 (Security at fuel-cycle facilities alsofocuses on the prevention of the theft of nuclear materials.) The security ofnpps has appropriately received great-ly increased attention in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The security challenge will grow withthe advent of more npps and more fuel-cycle facilities in more places. But theinternational network of security-relat-ed services, still in development, has not achieved the maturity that surroundssafety. Because of the need to keep secu-rity-related information con½dential,there are challenges in designing andimplementing international programs.This should be given high priority.

Safety and security are linked to each other. Common principles apply to both safety and security, such as a philosophy of defense in depth. The two objectives can reinforce each other:the massive structures of reinforced con-crete and steel, for example, serve bothsafety and security objectives. But occa-sionally, plant features and operationalpractices that result from safety consid-erations conflict with those that servesecurity purposes. Access controls thatare imposed for security reasons can in-hibit safety, limiting access for emergen-cy response or maintenance or for egressin the event of a ½re or explosion. Sim-ilarly, if there were an attack, safety considerations may require access to

an area at exactly the time that the secu-rity forces might seek to deny access. Inshort, the synergy and the antagonismbetween safety and security require care-ful evaluation.

This reality has national and inter-national implications. At the nationallevel, although the evaluation of secu-rity threats might appropriately be the responsibility of an intelligence orpolice organization, authority to deter-mine the actions necessary to ensureboth safety and security should be vest-ed in a single body, so that safety andsecurity are weighed at the same timeand an appropriate balance is found. At the international level, the guidanceand assistance that are now common-place in the safety arena should be ex-panded to cover security, in a way thatintegrates security and safety advice.Both the iaea and wins should play a role in assuring that appropriate inte-gration occurs.

Third, a universal, effective, and opennetwork for sharing operating experi-ence should be established to promotecommunication about near misses, de-sign de½ciencies, and even low-level op-erational events. Analysis of such occur-rences can indicate ways of avoiding aserious accident. Currently, regulatorsand operators report safety-related in-formation through existing global sys-tems. The iaea and nea jointly oper-ate an Incident Reporting System (irs)that is available to the world’s regula-tors; operators have access to operat-ing information, on a private and con-½dential basis, from wano. But not allrelevant events and observations arereported, particularly to irs. Moreover,there are inadequate mechanisms to sortand analyze the information, to distilland prioritize the lessons that should belearned, and to propagate those lessonswidely in a user-friendly fashion. There




is a need to ½nd the means to preserveand facilitate access to the accumulat-ed knowledge from operational experi-ence in order to further the commoninterest in avoiding events that couldlead to accidents. Access to such infor-mation is particularly important for the new entrant countries, so that theydo not have to repeat the hard-learnedlessons of their predecessors in the nu-clear enterprise.

Fourth, to enhance the assurance of safety, national safety regulationsshould be harmonized, so that mini-mum requirements are met everywhereand greater compatibility is facilitated.The iaea has developed three layers of documents–Safety Fundamentals,Safety Requirements, and Safety Guides–that provide a widely accepted foun-dation for nuclear safety and now serveas key references for national require-ments. Safety Fundamentals establishthe foundation that must be met with-out exceptions. Safety Requirements setmandates for new facilities and new ac-tivities, while setting a compliance tar-get for existing facilities and activities to be met over time, if it is reasonable to do so. Safety Guides provide practicalguidance on the state of the art in nucle-ar safety, but acknowledge that differentmeans of providing equivalent safety areacceptable. While rigid application ofiaea safety standards may not be pos-sible, particularly for existing facilities,iaea standards do provide a commonapproach to which nations should beencouraged to conform, to the extentpractical. The iaea should pursue fullawareness of and competence in theapplication of these standards.

At the same time, iaea safety stan-dards should be encouraged to evolve in two different directions. On the onehand, we should seek a global consen-sus on fundamental principles–how

safe is safe enough–to guide the artic-ulation of general safety goals, the ex-pectations for new plants, and the re-quirements for safety improvements inolder plants. This effort would seek toestablish enduring fundamental goals,thereby serving the overall objectives of transparency, adequacy, stability, and harmonization. Compatibility cannever be achieved unless there is com-mon agreement on the fundamentalgoals.

On the other hand, the standardsshould be made suf½ciently concrete,providing unambiguous guidance on theaccepted and best practices in the multi-tude of areas in need of regulatory guid-ance. Again, compatibility can only beexpected if the practical implications of the requirements are spelled out.However, safety standards must evolveto accommodate innovative new reac-tor designs. The existing standards, un-derstandably, were written with currentlight water reactors in mind, and manyof the requirements may not be appro-priate, at least in their current form, forsome of the new reactor designs beingcontemplated. (For example, the SafetyRequirements document on design ex-plicitly states in its introduction that it applies primarily to water-cooled re-actors; similar statements are found inseveral of the supporting safety guides.)While the key elements of requirementscan certainly be applied by analogy insome cases to different types of reactors,it would be bene½cial to de½ne a deeperset of principles so that the regulatorysystem can more readily accommodate,even encourage, designs that offer im-proved safety and other advantages.

Fifth, certain essential characteristicsthat extend beyond standards, but thatare the foundation for success in achiev-ing safety, must be encouraged. Primeamong these is encouragement of an ap-


propriate “safety culture”: the cluster oforganizational and individual elementsthat are fundamental to the achievementof safety. Organizational elements in-clude the recognition by managementthat safety is the highest priority, as well as a commitment by managementto organizational effectiveness, success-ful communications, a capacity to learnand adapt, and a workplace culture thatencourages the identi½cation of safetyissues. Individual elements include per-sonal accountability, a questioning atti-tude, and procedural adherence. Theseelements are dif½cult to de½ne crisplyand, hence, to regulate effectively. Butthey are foundational to safe opera-tions, and the global nuclear safety re-gime should encourage their propaga-tion everywhere. Similarly, the safetyregime should encourage transparency,stability, practicality, and competence.Greater efforts must be undertaken tobuild these characteristics into regula-tory and operator organizations aroundthe world.

Sixth, while pursuing the amendmentof the cns along the lines describedabove, its current processes could be aug-mented without a formal amendment.The cns calls for a meeting of parties atthree-year intervals in which each stateprovides a report on its compliance withthe various commitments set out in theConvention. Each national report is sub-ject to peer review by the other parties,often resulting in recommendations forfurther improvement. The Conventionoffers no enforcement mechanism be-yond the obligation to endure possiblecriticism from others in the reviewmeeting.

Although the cns has furthered its original purpose of promoting up-grades in national safety systems, theprocess still needs to be strengthenedand re½ned. The review process could

be more probing, perhaps by focusing on the most important safety issues,rather than by emphasizing a wide (and necessarily super½cial) survey that is today’s norm. The iaea now re-ports to the meeting of the parties onconclusions drawn from its safety re-view missions and services, but the iaea could contribute more centrally.The iaea’s report might, for example,provide more detail and be given morefocused attention by the parties, per-haps by requiring affected nations torespond to the iaea’s observations. Perhaps most fundamentally, the per-spective of the parties should change:rather than seeking to prove its ownexcellence in the review process, eachcountry should instead welcome pro-ductive criticism and thereby collectuseful ideas and lessons for safety en-hancements. The questioning and openattitude that regulators expect of theirlicensees might also become the expect-ed behavior of the parties in the reviewmeetings.

Seventh, multinational design evalu-ation programs should be encouraged.As noted previously, the nuclear indus-try has become more concentrated, with the result that a small group of ven-dors seeks to construct npps around theglobe. A group of countries is coordinat-ing the evaluation of the designs, withthe nea serving as the secretariat for the group. Each national regulator re-tains its autonomous licensing author-ity, but can obtain guidance and infor-mation from the international evalua-tion process. This effort should be en-couraged and expanded, with the aim to facilitate the construction of a givendesign in more than one country withonly necessary modi½cations to accom-modate local circumstances.5 The mul-tinational process facilitates the coordi-nation of safety assessments, perhaps




enabling more complete and thoroughassessments than any one country couldaccomplish. It would also promote inter-national trade, by bringing cost savingsto the parties involved in licensing theplants and in constructing them. And it would further the general goal of ad-vancing greater international consisten-cy, thereby avoiding questions that mayreasonably arise if signi½cant differencesin design were to be required from coun-try to country.

Of course, because each country willretain its licensing authority, the ½nallicensing actions must be taken at a na-tional level. The coordination of designevaluation thus should not be seen tochallenge the sovereign authority of na-tional regulators. Clearly, site- or coun-try-speci½c issues must be taken intoaccount separately in connection witheach construction application–issuessuch as site-related risk factors (for ex-ample, earthquake risk), reliability ofoff-site power, and the licensee’s capa-bility to build, operate, and maintain the plant. Indeed, the national regula-tor must be fully engaged in the detailsof design, construction, and operation if it is to be effective in the oversight ofthe plant. Nonetheless, a coordinatedinternational design evaluation wouldstreamline and strengthen the process,augmenting the capacities that any par-ticular regulator could bring to bear.

At the same time, because the nuclearindustry is part of a world economy inwhich production capabilities are glob-ally interconnected, parts and compo-nents for nuclear plants may come frommany areas of the world. The quality-assurance standards for nuclear plantsare high, but no one regulator, vendor, or operator can readily have scrutinyover the quality of all these parts andcomponents. As a result, there is a needfor careful coordination among regula-

tors around the globe to develop globalstandards and to ensure that those stan-dards are being met.

Finally, increased efforts should beundertaken to advance internationalcooperation on research and develop-ment related to the safety performanceof npps. Many existing plants werelicensed in the years before there wasextensive experience with nuclear pow-er. Licensing decisions were guided byconservative engineering judgment andthe application of fundamental designprinciples (such as defense in depth) to assure a robust capacity to mitigate or prevent accidents. But much has been learned over the years, and theresulting insights should be appliedmore effectively than is currently thecase in many countries. For example, the insights from both probabilistic and deterministic analyses should bebrought together and applied so as toassure focused attention on safety in allimportant areas. An international con-sensus on the application of these toolsshould be developed, to facilitate com-mon understandings and standardizedapproaches. Moreover, coordinated re-search programs to increase knowledgebearing on advanced designs will ensurethat necessary information is in place in time to facilitate decision-making.

There are opportunities for otherinternational research activities that will bene½t all. For example, aging phe-nomena that will affect performance ofnpps are not well understood at a fun-damental level and, absent research, it is not clear that these issues will be dealtwith properly. Further advances in non-destructive monitoring techniques willenhance the capacity to assess aging fa-cilities. And although digital instrumen-tation and control offers great opportu-nities for safety improvements, there is a need for research to understand more


deeply the safety implications of theincreased reliance on digital systems.Many other such research opportuni-ties present themselves.

The global nuclear safety regime pro-vides an important and largely unrec-ognized means for helping to assure the safety of existing and future npps. It will have growing importance in thecoming years, and there are opportu-

nities for its signi½cant improvement.These opportunities should be pursuedin order to ensure that nuclear technol-ogy can be appropriately harnessed forthe bene½t of all humankind.


ENDNOTES

1 Many of the matters explored in this paper are discussed in an International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) document prepared by the International Nuclear Safety Group(insag); iaea, Strengthening the Global Nuclear Safety Regime (insag 21), 2006.

2 See Statement by iaea Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, Nuclear Safety: A Matur-ing Discipline (October 14, 2003), http://www.iaea.or.at/PrinterFriendly/NewsCenter/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n022.html.

3 The most serious recent event in the United States can be characterized as a near miss. In 2002, it was discovered that corrosion arising from a boric acid leak at the Davis-BessePlant in Ohio had completely penetrated 6 inches of steel in the head of the reactor pres-sure vessel, leaving a pineapple-sized hole. The pressure boundary was preserved only bythe stainless-steel cladding on the inner surface of the head–cladding that was not intend-ed to provide pressure integrity. There had been clear clues of a signi½cant problem–forexample, containment ½lters clogged with corrosion products–that were ignored by thelicensee and by the nrc inspectors, presumably in part because of falsi½ed inspection re-ports by licensee staff.

4 Some reactors are fueled with mixed oxide (mox) fuel, which includes both plutoniumand uranium ½ssile materials. Fresh mox fuel also needs to be protected from theft ordiversion at power reactors.

5 Unfortunately, substantial modi½cations from country to country may be necessary insome circumstances. Consider, for example, the consequences of the differing nationalstandards for electricity between the United States (60 Hz, 120 V) and Europe (50 Hz, 220 V). Frequency differences in particular can drive substantial design changes becausethey affect the sizes of motors and the buildings in which they are installed, which in turn affect seismic analyses and cooling requirements. Substantial design changes resultdirectly from different national standards for electricity.



In April 2009, President Obama warnedthat there was still a real danger that ter-rorists might get and use a nuclear bomb,calling that possibility “the most imme-diate and extreme threat to global secu-rity.” He announced “a new internation-al effort to secure all vulnerable nuclearmaterial around the world within fouryears.”

Keeping nuclear weapons and the dif-½cult-to-manufacture materials neededto make them out of terrorist hands iscritical to U.S. and world security–andto the future of nuclear energy as well. In the aftermath of a terrorist nuclearattack, there would be no chance of con-vincing governments, utilities, and pub-lics to build nuclear reactors on the scalerequired for nuclear energy to make anysigni½cant contribution to coping withclimate change.

But Obama’s four-year goal will not be easy to achieve. At sites in dozens ofcountries around the world, the securitymeasures in place for plutonium or high-ly enriched uranium (heu)–the essen-tial ingredients of nuclear weapons–are dangerously inadequate, amountingin some cases to no more than a nightwatchman and a chain-link fence. Chang-

ing that in four years will take sustainedWhite House leadership, broad inter-national cooperation, a comprehensiveplan, and adequate resources.1 The fun-damental key to success will be convinc-ing policy-makers and nuclear managersaround the world that nuclear terrorismis a real threat to their countries’ securi-ty, worthy of new investments of theirtime and resources to reduce the risks–something many of them do not believetoday.

Resources for this mission are not in-½nite, and choices will have to be made.Clearly there is little prospect of arrang-ing for every building that has some plutonium or heu to have a division ofarmed troops to guard it. It is critical tofocus resources on reducing the most se-rious risks. But how can we judge wherethose most serious risks lie?

There remains a very real danger thatterrorists could get and use a nuclearbomb, turning the heart of a major city into a smoldering radioactive ruin. Tens or hundreds of thousands of peo-ple would be killed, and devastating economic shock waves would reverber-ate throughout the world, creating a sec-ond death toll in the developing worldfrom the ensuing increase in global pov-erty, as then un Secretary-General Ko½

Matthew Bunn

Reducing the greatest risks of nuclear theft & terrorism


Annan warned in 2005. The horror ofsuch an event, were it ever to occur,would change America and the worldforever.

The al Qaeda terrorist network hasbeen seeking nuclear weapons for years.Osama bin Laden has said that he feels a“religious duty” to acquire nuclear andchemical weapons, and al Qaeda opera-tives have made repeated attempts tobuy stolen nuclear material in order tomake a nuclear bomb. They have tried to recruit nuclear weapon scientists tohelp them, including, but not limited to, the two extremist Pakistani nuclearweapon scientists who met with binLaden and Ayman al-Zawahiri shortlybefore the 9/11 attacks to discuss nucle-ar weapons. Documents recovered inAfghanistan reveal a signi½cant al Qae-da research effort focused on nuclearweapons. This effort included prelimi-nary tests with conventional explosivesin the Afghan desert. Long after the re-moval of al Qaeda’s Afghanistan sanc-tuary, bin Laden sought and received a religious ruling, or fatwa, from a rad-ical Saudi cleric authorizing the use of nuclear weapons against Americancivilians. In the 1990s, the Aum Shin-rikyo terror cult, which launched thenerve gas attack in the Tokyo subways,also sought nuclear weapons. Russianof½cials have con½rmed two cases of terrorist teams, presumably Chechens,carrying out reconnaissance at secretRussian nuclear weapon storage sites.With at least two groups pursuing nu-clear weapons in the last 15 years, wemust expect that others will, too, in the future.

Repeated government studies in theUnited States and in other countrieshave concluded that if a technically so-phisticated terrorist group could get the heu or plutonium they need, theymight well be able to make at least a

crude nuclear bomb. Making a bombdoes not take a Manhattan project: more than 90 percent of that 1940s-eraeffort was devoted to making the nucle-ar material, not making the bomb; andthat was before the basic principles ofnuclear bombs were widely known, asthey are today. One study by the now-defunct congressional Of½ce of Tech-nology Assessment summarized thethreat: “A small group of people, noneof whom have [sic] ever had access to the classi½ed literature, could possiblydesign and build a crude nuclear explo-sive device. . . . Only modest machine-shop facilities that could be contractedfor without arousing suspicion would be required.”

Theft of potential nuclear bomb ma-terials is not just a hypothetical worry; it is an ongoing reality, highlighting theinadequacy of the nuclear security mea-sures in place today: the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency (iaea) has doc-umented some 18 cases of theft or loss of plutonium or heu con½rmed by thestates concerned (and there are morecases that the relevant states have so farbeen unwilling to con½rm, despite theconviction of some of the participants).In virtually all of the known cases, noone had ever noticed the stolen materi-al was missing until it was seized, sug-gesting that other thefts may have goneundetected.

Fortunately, there is no convincing ev-idence that any terrorist group has yetgotten the nuclear material or the exper-tise needed to make a bomb (though wecannot know what capabilities they mayhave succeeded in keeping secret). Alsofortunately, hostile states are highly un-likely to choose to provide nuclear weap-ons or the materials needed to makethem to terrorist groups, because of thepossibility that this would be traced backto them and that overwhelming, regime-


Reducing the greatestrisks ofnuclear theft &terrorism


destroying retaliation would follow.Moreover, making plutonium or heu

on their own is beyond the plausible ca-pabilities of any terrorist group today.Hence, if the world’s stockpiles of nu-clear weapons, plutonium, and heu

can be kept under tight state control,nuclear terrorism can be prevented.

A multilayer defense against nuclearterrorism is certainly needed, includingefforts to stymie terrorist nuclear plotsand interdict nuclear smuggling; but thegreatest policy leverage on reducing therisk is in the ½rst layer, in preventing nu-clear weapons and materials from beingstolen in the ½rst place. The plutoniumor heu needed for a bomb would ½t eas-ily in a suitcase, and is not radioactiveenough to make it dangerous for nuclearsmugglers to transport or easy for borderof½cials to detect. Thus, once someonesucceeds in getting these materials out of the facility where they are supposed to be, they could be anywhere, and theproblem of ½nding and recovering themmultiplies a thousandfold. In short, in-secure nuclear material anywhere is athreat to everyone, everywhere–andthat threat must be addressed by a fast-paced global campaign to ensure that all nuclear weapons and all of the mate-rials needed to make them are secureand accounted for.

Terrorists seeking a nuclear bomb orthe materials to make one–or thievesseeking to supply them–will steal wher-ever they think they have the best chanceof success in meeting their objectives.This means not only that the theft itselfhas to be successful, but that the terror-ists have to be able to set off a nuclearbomb with what they get. The risk ofnuclear theft from any particular facil-ity or transport operation depends on:

• The quantity and quality of the mate-rial available to be stolen (that is, how dif½cult it would be to use it to make a nuclear bomb);

• The security measures in place (thatis, what kind of insider and outsider thieves could the security measures protect against, with what probabili-ty); and

• The threats those security measures must protect against (that is, the prob-ability of different levels of insider or outsider capabilities being brought to bear in a theft attempt).

The overall risk of nuclear theft de-pends on the balance among these fac-tors. The few sites where the tails of two distributions intersect–sites ortransport routes with particularly weaksecurity measures facing adversarieswith particularly effective capabilities–dominate the global risk of nucleartheft, both because terrorists are morelikely to target them and because theyare more likely to succeed if they do.

Because these factors interact, a one-size-½ts-all approach to nuclear securitywill not work. A security system effec-tive enough to reduce the risk to a lowlevel in a country like Canada, where it is highly unlikely that nuclear facilitieswould be attacked by dozens of well-armed outsiders or have to cope withconspiracies of al-Qaeda-linked insid-ers, might not be remotely suf½cient fora site located in Pakistan, where bothoutsider and insider threats are danger-ously high. (However, as will be dis-cussed later, in a world of terrorists with global reach, at least a minimumlevel of security must be maintained for stockpiles of nuclear weapons andthe materials needed to make them, even in the safest countries.) Unfortu-nately, the approaches in use today are

MatthewBunnon the globalnuclearfuture

not providing accurate and nuancedglobal assessments of any of these three critical parameters, leaving dan-gerous uncertainties over where nucle-ar security efforts should be targeted.

Assessing which nuclear sites andtransport routes have the weakest secu-rity is not easy. Most countries regardthe speci½c measures they have in placeto protect nuclear weapons or nuclearmaterials from theft as closely guardedsecrets, and any test or assessment thatrevealed particularly urgent vulnerabil-ities would be especially closely held. In Pakistan, to take one urgent example,U.S.-Pakistani nuclear security coopera-tion has been greatly constrained by Pak-istan’s fear that the United States mightbe tempted to snatch Pakistan’s nuclearweapons if it could. As a result, U.S. ex-perts are not allowed to visit the Paki-stani nuclear sites to assess what prob-lems need to be ½xed, or even to knowwhere the sites are. Thus cooperationfocuses on offering advice to Pakistan on how best to assess such vulnerabili-ties and design security systems to ½xthem, and on helping Pakistan buy andinstall security equipment. (The Paki-stanis generally regard U.S.-providedequipment with suspicion, fearing itmight somehow be bugged.) Even inRussia, where the United States has in-vested billions of dollars in nuclear se-curity and achieved dramatic improve-ments as a result, it remains illegal forRussian experts to give their Americancounterparts the results of detailed as-sessments of remaining vulnerabilitiesat Russian sites.

As a result, no country or institution in the world has a comprehensive glob-al database assessing the effectiveness of the security measures for each nucle-ar site and transport route handling nu-clear weapons or weapons-usable mate-rials. Despite these obstacles, however,

much more can be done to collect andassess information about key indicatorsof nuclear security effectiveness in coun-tries around the world, as the U.S. intel-ligence community’s Nuclear MaterialsInformation Program (nmip), launchedin 2006, is now beginning to do. Infor-mation to inform such assessments canbe gleaned from published nuclear secu-rity regulations; from a wide variety of“open source” literature (journalisticaccounts, legislative hearings, paperspresented at conferences, and the like);from con½dential exchanges of infor-mation among particular countries;from visits to nuclear sites; from in-ternational nuclear security reviews,such as those organized by the iaea

for the small fraction of the key siteswith weapons-usable materials wheresuch reviews have been conducted;2

and from intelligence information.Ultimately, a combined all-source

analysis is needed, drawing on the partialinformation available about each partic-ular site or transport route and makingjudgments about what types of threatsthe security measures there could pro-tect against effectively. Today, by con-trast, the assessments guiding some keyU.S. programs are based on simple yes/no estimates of whether sites complywith a particular rule or not; some of the assessments simply exclude all sitesin advanced developed countries fromany possibility of posing urgent issues.

While we live in a world with terror-ists with global reach, and organizedthieves are present in every country,there is no doubt that the threat is high-er in some countries than in others. Howcan we assess what outsider and insidercapabilities nuclear security systemsshould be designed to protect against?

Such an assessment should start fromexperience–from the kinds of capabili-




ties and tactics terrorists and thieveshave actually used against high-valueguarded targets in recent years (whethernuclear or non-nuclear). In some coun-tries, these include large, well-plannedforcible attacks; the use of multiple co-ordinated teams (such as the four teamsthat struck on 9/11); sophisticated co-vert attacks that defeat alarm and detec-tion systems; the use of unusual routes(such as tunneling into bank vaults);deception attacks (for example, usingreal-looking uniforms, identi½cation,and paperwork to get through the se-curity system); and the use of sophisti-cated weapons such as armor-piercingrocket-propelled grenades and plattercharges to blow through security doors.

Most importantly, perhaps, suchcrimes and attacks frequently have in-siders as participants. All but one of the documented cases of theft of heu

or plutonium appear to have been per-petrated by insiders (and the exceptioninvolved insider help to an outsider).3Security managers who believe that all of their personnel are trustworthyshould remember that insiders may becoerced: in a 2004 case, for example,thieves apparently linked to a splinterfaction of the Provisional Irish Republi-can Army (ira) made off with £26 mil-lion from the Northern Bank after kid-napping the families of two of the bank’smanagers to force the managers to usetheir keys together to open the vault.

A wide variety of indicators can beused to judge how likely it is that out-siders or insiders could bring particulartypes of capabilities to bear in differentcountries or regions of countries. (AlQaeda clearly can bring more force tobear in the mountainous regions nearPakistan’s Afghan border than in the rest of the country, though the militants’ability to strike throughout the countryis clearly greater than it was three years

ago; it is a good bet that none of Pak-istan’s nuclear assets is located in thisconflict zone.) The most important in-dicators would be the kinds of capabili-ties terrorists and thieves have demon-strated in that country (or similar neigh-boring countries) in recent times, fromthe number of people involved to thetactics and weapons used. The frequen-cy of terrorist incidents and of crimesinvolving theft of valuable items fromheavily guarded facilities or transportswould be additional important indica-tors, as would the level of insider cor-ruption and theft in the country.4 Thelevel of pay and morale among nuclearstaff and guards, and the procedures in place to screen and monitor individu-als before giving them access to nuclearmaterials or roles in protecting them, are also critical factors that should beexamined in considering the scale of in-sider threat. In integrating assessmentsof these factors, governments can workwith insurance companies, which havealready had to assess risks of theft in dif-ferent countries to determine how muchthey should charge to insure againstbank robbery, for example.

Unfortunately, despite the creation of nmip, much of this kind of informa-tion is not being systematically collect-ed and analyzed, though in many cases it is not dif½cult to get. Some years ago,for example, two researchers then atAmerican University documented keyelements of insider corruption, organ-ized crime presence, and the potentialfor Islamic extremism among some in-siders worshipping at recently estab-lished nearby Wahabbi mosques in one of Russia’s closed nuclear cities that stores and processes enough plu-tonium and heu for thousands of nu-clear weapons.5 Prior to this study, the U.S. government was unaware ofthese circumstances. Similar in-depth


studies of other facilities around theworld have not been done, despite the modest level of effort required.

A building with nuclear material thatterrorists could readily make into a nu-clear bomb needs more security than a building with lower-quality materialthat would be very dif½cult for adver-saries to use to make a bomb. But thissensible “graded safeguards” approach,used in national regulations and inter-national recommendations around theworld, must avoid slipping into whatmight be called “cliffed safeguards,” inwhich security falls off catastrophicallyif nuclear material is beyond some arbi-trary threshold that has little relation to real risk. For example, under currentNuclear Regulatory Commission (nrc)rules in the United States, nuclear mate-rial that would normally require securi-ty measures costing millions of dollars a year requires none of that if it is radio-active enough to cause a radiation doseof one Sievert per hour at one meter–a level considered radioactive enough to make the material “self-protecting.”But studies at the national laborato-ries have shown that at this level of ra-diation, thieves who carried the mate-rial out to a waiting truck with their bare hands would not even receive a bigenough dose of radiation to make themfeel sick. In a world of suicidal terror-ists, these rules–and similar, though less extreme, international rules–urgently need to be revised.

More broadly, in-depth assessments of how different chemical, physical, iso-topic, and radiological properties of amaterial affect the odds that adversarieswould succeed in making a bomb from itshould be used to determine how muchsecurity can be relaxed for particulartypes of material while keeping overallrisks low. In making these assessments,

it is important to remember that heu

at enrichment levels far below the 90percent U-235 level considered “weap-ons grade” can still readily be used in abomb, at the cost of using somewhatmore material. So past policies that have focused cooperative security up-grades only on sites whose heu is atleast 80 percent U-235 should certainlybe revised. Similarly, while weaponsdesigners prefer weapons-grade pluto-nium, produced speci½cally to contain90 percent or more Pu-239, the “reac-tor grade” plutonium produced in thespent fuel from typical power reactorscan also be used to make fearsome ex-plosives, despite the extra neutrons,heat, and radiation generated by the less desirable plutonium isotopes it contains. Indeed, repeated governmentstudies have concluded that any state or group capable of making a bomb from weapons-grade plutonium wouldalso be able to make a bomb from reac-tor-grade plutonium.6

Based on the limited data publiclyavailable about these factors, three cat-egories of facilities stand out as posingthe highest risks of nuclear theft: facili-ties in Russia, facilities in Pakistan, andresearch reactors fueled with heu indozens of countries.7

Russia still has the world’s largeststocks of nuclear weapons and weap-ons-usable nuclear materials, stored in the world’s largest number of build-ings and bunkers. The egregious secu-rity weaknesses of the 1990s–gapingholes in fences, lack of any detectors to set off an alarm if someone was car-rying plutonium out in a briefcase–have, in general, been ½xed, but impor-tant security weaknesses remain. Andthe threats these facilities must protectagainst–not only possible large-scaleterrorist assaults, but widespread insider




corruption and theft–are substantial. In 2008, for example, a colonel in theMinistry of Interior troops that guardRussia’s nuclear sites was reportedly ar-rested for soliciting thousands of dollarsin bribes to overlook violations of secu-rity rules in the closed nuclear city ofSnezhinsk. Earlier, the chief of securityat Seversk, a huge plutonium and heu

processing facility, described a stunningarray of weaknesses in his site’s guardforces, from patrolling with no ammu-nition in their guns to widespread cor-ruption, calling the guards “the mostdangerous internal adversaries.”8

By contrast, Pakistan has a smallnuclear stockpile, in a small number of locations. Pakistan’s stockpile isbelieved to be heavily guarded, but itfaces immense threats, from possibleattacks by huge numbers of well-armedextremists to insiders with extremistsympathies. At least two Pakistani nu-clear weapon scientists sat down withOsama bin Laden to discuss nuclearweapons, and while General PervezMusharraf was president, at least twonear-miss assassination attempts in-volved serving Pakistani military per-sonnel in league with al Qaeda. If the people guarding the president cannot be trusted, how much con½dence canone have in the people guarding thenuclear weapons?

Finally, there are some 130 researchreactors around the world that still useheu as their fuel, and many of thesehave only the most minimal securitymeasures in place. Many of these do not have enough material for a bomb at one site, but some do; and the 1998embassy bombings as well as the 9/11attacks are painful reminders of terror-ists’ ability to strike in more than oneplace at the same time.

In each of these cases, and in othersthroughout the world, urgent actions

are needed to improve security, con-strain the plausible threats (throughactions that make it more dif½cult to put together large outsider attacks or to in½ltrate insiders without detection),and remove weapons-usable nuclearmaterial entirely (such as by convert-ing research reactors to fuels that can-not be used in a nuclear bomb, or shut-ting down little-used reactors entirely).

In the last 15 years, the United Statesand other countries have put together a patchwork quilt of programs and ini-tiatives to address these issues. TheNunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Re-duction program and related efforts have dramatically improved security at scores of sites in the former SovietUnion and elsewhere, and removed the potential bomb material entirely atdozens more. New treaties have beennegotiated, such as the Convention onthe Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Ter-rorism and the amendment to the Con-vention on Physical Protection of Nucle-ar Materials and Facilities. The un Se-curity Council unanimously approvedResolution 1540, which legally requiresall states to pass legislation making it a grave crime to help non-state actors with nuclear, chemical, or biologicalweapons, and also requires all states to provide “appropriate effective” secu-rity for any stockpiles of nuclear weap-ons or related materials they may have.In 2006, the United States and Russiaannounced the launch of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terror-ism, providing a new forum for dis-cussion and capacity-building amonglike-minded states.

Nevertheless, global nuclear securityinstitutions and standards remain farweaker than the task demands–and cer-tainly far weaker than global safety insti-tutions. Nuclear security has never had a


Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl tofocus the world’s attention, and as a re-sult, complacency is widespread, withmany policy-makers and nuclear man-agers around the world dismissing thedanger of nuclear terrorism or assumingthat existing security measures are morethan suf½cient. Unlike safety, where in-formation can be widely shared, nuclearsecurity measures are shrouded in secre-cy, inhibiting international cooperation.(As one French of½cial put it: “In safety,transparency is an obligation. In securi-ty, it is an offense.”) And secretive nu-clear security establishments are simp-ly not in the habit of cooperating witheach other.

Hence, while there are establishedmechanisms for reporting and analyz-ing nuclear safety incidents around theworld and ensuring that reactor opera-tors act on their lessons, and there is an industry organization to which allpower reactors belong that reviews the safety of these plants, nothing com-parable exists for nuclear security. Theiaea Of½ce of Nuclear Security makesrecommendations (which states canchoose to adopt or ignore) and only or-ganizes nuclear security reviews whenstates request them (which most stateshave not done). An independent orga-nization to exchange best practicesamong operators, the World Institute for Nuclear Security (wins), was onlyestablished in 2008.

Remarkably, years after the 9/11 at-tacks, with overwhelming evidence that terrorists are seeking stolen nu-clear weapons material, the world hasstill been unable to agree on any spe-ci½c and binding minimum standardsfor how well nuclear weapons or thematerials to make them should be se-cured. Despite the danger that insecureplutonium or heu in any state poses toall other states, security for these stock-

piles is left almost entirely to the discre-tion of each country where these weap-ons and materials exist. Even more re-markably, no effort to put speci½c andbinding global standards in place is nowunder way.

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty(npt) does not contain any provisionsrequiring states to secure nuclear mate-rial from theft. Similarly, iaea “safe-guards” are only inspections to ensurethat nuclear material is still in civil use,and do not involve any form of inter-national guarding or even internation-al review of the quality of security. Noone has yet de½ned what essential ele-ments must be in place for a nuclear se-curity and accounting system to meetthe “appropriate effective” requirementof unscr 1540. Neither the new nuclearterrorism convention nor the amendedphysical protection convention includesany speci½c requirements for how securenuclear material should be; the amend-ed physical protection treaty requiresevery party with nuclear facilities to en-act and enforce a national rule on thatsubject, but it does not specify what that rule should say. iaea recommenda-tions on nuclear security are more spe-ci½c, but still quite vague: they specify,for example, that signi½cant amounts ofweapons-usable nuclear material shouldbe stored in a place with a fence and in-trusion detectors, but they say nothingabout how strong the fence should be or how dif½cult to defeat the intrusiondetectors should be. More fundamental-ly, they say nothing about what level ofthreat nuclear weapons and the materi-als needed to make them should be pro-tected against.

These international approaches needurgent steps to strengthen them. All nu-clear weapons and all stocks of the mate-rials needed to make them, whether at




½xed sites or during transport, should beeffectively protected against the kinds ofthreats that terrorists and criminals havedemonstrated they can pose in the coun-tries where those stocks exist.

While terrorist and criminal capabili-ties vary from one country to the next, in an age of global terrorism, there areno countries so safe that substantial se-curity measures are not needed whenhandling materials that could be used to make a nuclear bomb. Every facili-ty or transport route anywhere in theworld where there is a nuclear weaponor a stash of plutonium or heu shouldbe protected against a family of poten-tial types of theft attempts, including at-tempts by insiders with authorized ac-cess to a facility, forcible outsider attack,or a variety of other outsider scenarios,such as attempts to enter the facility co-vertly (such as by tunneling into a vault,as often occurs in bank robberies), orattempts to deceive the facility securityforces with fake uniforms, forged docu-ments, and the like. At a minimum, suchfacilities and transport routes must bewell protected against one well-placedinsider; two small teams of well-armed,well-trained outsiders; or both workingtogether. This corresponds to the threatrevealed in the attack on the Pelindabasite in South Africa in November 2007,when two armed teams attacked fromopposite sides of the site. One of theteams got through a 10,000-volt securi-ty fence, disabled intrusion detectorswithout detection (apparently with in-sider knowledge of the security system),proceeded to the emergency control cen-ter (where they shot a site worker in thechest), and spent 45 minutes inside theguarded perimeter without ever beingengaged by site security forces. As far asis known, they never entered the area ofthe site where hundreds of kilograms ofweapons-grade heu are stored; but nev-

ertheless, this is the kind of lapse thatsimply should not be allowed to occur at sites handling the essential ingredi-ents of nuclear weapons.

Today, there are many facilities withplutonium or heu that are not effective-ly protected against this level of threat.Gaining agreement that all states withnuclear weapons or enough plutoniumor heu to provide a substantial fractionof the material needed for a bomb willprotect these stocks, at least against such a minimum level of threat, shouldbe a high priority for the Obama admin-istration. Such an accord, if followedthrough, would lead to major improve-ments at the world’s most vulnerablenuclear sites, greatly reducing the risk ofnuclear theft and terrorism. Of course,in countries where adversaries can posemore capable threats, additional protec-tion should be provided. In Pakistan, inparticular, the most stringent attainablesecurity measures against both outsiderand insider threats are clearly required.

A strong argument can be made thatunscr 1540’s requirement for “appro-priate effective” security already obli-gates states to provide something likethis level of security. If the words “ap-propriate effective” mean anything, they should mean that nuclear securi-ty systems would effectively protectagainst the threats that terrorists andcriminals have shown they can pose.

While effective security for nuclearstockpiles is the most important step toreduce the danger of nuclear terrorism, a multilayered defense is needed–notleast because some weapons-usable ma-terial may already have been stolen, butmay not yet be in the hands of terroristsor proliferating states.

First, counterterrorist measures fo-cused on detecting and disrupting thosegroups with the skills and ambitions to


attempt nuclear terrorism should begreatly strengthened, and new stepsshould be taken to make raising fundsand recruiting nuclear experts moredif½cult (including addressing somesources of radical Islamic violence andhatred and challenging the moral le-gitimacy of the mass slaughter of civil-ians–already a matter of debate evenamong violent Islamic jihadists).

Second, a broad system of measures to detect and disrupt nuclear smugglingand terrorist nuclear-bomb-acquisitionefforts should be put in place, includingexpanded international police and intel-ligence cooperation, increased emphasison intelligence operations such as stings(that is, intelligence agents posing asbuyers or sellers of nuclear material ornuclear expertise), and targeted effortsto encourage participants in such con-spiracies to blow the whistle.

Radiation detectors such as those now being installed at ports and bordercrossings in the United States and doz-ens of other countries have a role to playin this effort, but there is a limit to whatcan be done with large, readily observ-able detectors that adversaries can easi-ly bypass by taking other routes. (And itis important to understand that neitherthe detectors now being installed nor theproposed Advanced Spectroscopic Por-tals would have any signi½cant chance of detecting heu metal with even mod-est shielding.) Congress would be welladvised to abandon the current legislat-ed requirement that 100 percent of car-go containers be scanned for radiationbefore entering the United States, focus-ing instead on requiring the administra-tion to develop an integrated approachthat places as many barriers in the pathof an intelligent adversary trying to getnuclear material into the United Stateson any pathway as can be done at rea-sonable cost.

Third, while the danger of consciousstate decisions to transfer nuclear weap-ons or materials to terrorists is only asmall part of the overall risk of nuclearterrorism, more can be done to reducethat danger. This is yet another motiva-tion for putting together internationalstrategies that can convince the govern-ments of North Korea and Iran that it isin their own national interests to con-strain their nuclear ambitions in a veri½-able way. And the United States shouldmake one “red line” clear: any transferto terrorists of nuclear weapons or thematerials to make them would provoke a swift and sure response.

Fourth, while the focus must be on preventing nuclear terrorism fromever occurring, there is also much to be done to prepare for the ghastly af-termath should these efforts fail, frombetter preparations to keep the govern-ment and the economy functioning to a strengthened ability to treat tens orhundreds of thousands of injured peo-ple, including making use of the mili-tary’s capabilities.9 Many of the need-ed steps would help respond to any ca-tastrophe, natural or man-made, andwould pay off even if efforts to prevent a terrorist nuclear attack succeeded.

Fortunately, there is good news in this story as well. The initial overthrowof the Taliban government in Afghani-stan and the death or capture of many of al Qaeda’s top leaders have made itmore dif½cult for al Qaeda to carry outthe large, complex operation of gettingand using a nuclear bomb. As noted ear-lier, at scores of sites that once posedparticular dangers of nuclear theft, se-curity has been dramatically upgrad-ed or the dangerous nuclear materialremoved, as a result of cooperativethreat reduction programs and coun-tries’ own efforts.




Moreover, the expected growth andspread of nuclear energy need not in-crease the chance that terrorists couldget their hands on the material for a nu-clear bomb. Today, most nuclear pow-er reactors run on low-enriched urani-um fuel that cannot be used in a nuclearbomb without further enrichment, whichis beyond plausible terrorist capabilities.These reactors produce plutonium intheir spent fuel, but that plutonium is 1 percent by weight in massive, intense-ly radioactive spent-fuel assemblies thatwould be extraordinarily dif½cult for ter-rorists to steal and process into materialfor a bomb. In some countries, the pluto-nium is removed from the spent fuel (anapproach known as “reprocessing”) forrecycling into new fuel; that process re-quires extraordinary security measuresto ensure against terrorist access to theseparated plutonium. Fortunately, eco-nomics and counterterrorism point inthe same direction in this case: becausereprocessing is much more expensivethan simply storing spent fuel pendingdisposal, few countries that do not al-ready reprocess their fuel are interest-ed in starting, and some of the existingplants are running far below capacity or will soon be shut down.

Many more nuclear power reactors inmany more countries would mean morepotential targets for terrorist sabotage–and more chances that some reactor’ssecurity would be weak enough that a

terrorist attack would succeed. Sabotagewould not cause the kind of massive, in-stantaneous destruction a nuclear bombwould cause, but in the worst case, suc-cessful sabotage might cause a massiveradiation release–a “security Cherno-byl.” Such an event would be a catastro-phe for the country where it occurred,and for its downwind neighbors; but un-like readily transported nuclear weaponsor materials, it would not pose a threatto countries thousands of kilometersaway. It would, however, pose a threat to the global nuclear power industry, for the public reaction to such an eventwould almost surely doom any prospectfor nuclear growth on the scale neededto play a signi½cant role in mitigatingthe threat of climate change.

The bottom line: nuclear terrorismremains a real and urgent threat. Theway to respond is through internation-al cooperation, not confrontation andwar. Immediate action is needed aroundthe world to improve security for nucle-ar weapons and the materials needed to make them, focusing on those sitesand transport routes that pose the high-est risks. The job is big and complex, but ½nite and doable. With suf½cienthigh-level leadership and political will,the world can meet the four-year targetfor achieving effective nuclear securitythat President Obama has laid out. Theclock is ticking.

ENDNOTES

1 For comprehensive recommendations for meeting this objective, see Matthew Bunn,Securing the Bomb 2008 (Cambridge, Mass.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative, November 2008), and Matthew Bunn andAndrew Newman, “Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: An Agenda for the Next President”(Cambridge, Mass.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, and NuclearThreat Initiative, November 2008); http://www.nti.org/securingthebomb.

2 It is important to understand that iaea “safeguards,” which cover all nuclear material in non-nuclear-weapons states, involve inspectors visiting every few weeks or months to



check that nuclear material is where the state says it is; they do not protect the materialfrom theft. The iaea only reviews a state’s arrangements for protecting against theft if the state in question asks for such a review, and the states with nuclear weapons and mostof the world’s weapons-usable nuclear materials have not asked for such reviews.

3 The exception was a 1993 case at a Russian naval base in which the perpetrator was an out-sider who was informed of how to steal the nuclear material by a relative who worked atthe base. See Oleg Bukharin and William Potter, “Potatoes Were Guarded Better,” Bulletinof the Atomic Scientists 51 (3) (May/June 1995): 46–50.

4 See Matthew Bunn, “Corruption and Nuclear Proliferation,” in Corruption, Global Securi-ty, and World Order, ed. Robert I. Rotberg (Washington. D.C.: Brookings Institution Press,2009).

5 For a summary of part of their results, see Robert Orttung and Louise Shelley, “LinkagesBetween Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in Nuclear Smuggling: A Case Study ofChelyabinsk Oblast,” ponars Policy Memo No. 392 (Washington, D.C.: Program onNew Approaches to Russian Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies,December 2005).

6 For the most detailed authoritative, unclassi½ed statement on this point, see Nonprolifer-ation and Arms Control Assessment of Weapons-Usable Fissile Material Storage and Excess Pluto-nium Disposition Alternatives, doe/nn-0007 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Energy,January 1997), 37–39.

7 For a more detailed assessment, see Bunn, Securing the Bomb 2008, 7–10, 21–44.8 Report of the Snezhinsk incident is from “An Employee of the Department of Classi½ed

Facilities of the mvd Was Arrested in Snezhinsk: What Incriminates the ‘Silovic,’” trans.Jane Vayman; reported on www.ura.ru, May 29, 2008. The Seversk description is fromIgor Goloskokov, “Refomirovanie Voisk mvd Po Okhrane Yadernikh Obektov Rossii(Reforming mvd Troops to Guard Russian Nuclear Facilities),” trans. Foreign Broad-cast Information Service, Yaderny Kontrol 9 (4) (Winter 2003).

9 For an especially useful recent discussion, see Ashton B. Carter, Michael M. May, andWilliam J. Perry, The Day After: Action in the 24 Hours Following a Nuclear Blast in an Amer-ican City (Cambridge, Mass.: Preventive Defense Project, Harvard and Stanford Univer-sities, May 2007); http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/½les/dayafterworkshopreport_may2007.pdf (accessed May 29, 2009).



A new and popular disarmamentmovement was provoked by a com-pletely unexpected combination ofHenry A. Kissinger, William J. Perry,Sam Nunn, and George P. Shultz withtheir op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal from January 4, 2007, and Jan-uary 15, 2008. For the ½rst time since the demise of General and CompleteDisarmament (gcd) in the 1960s, thereis a serious discussion of the possibil-ity of utterly removing nuclear weaponsfrom the planet Earth. Furthermore, the discussion is taking place amongnuclear policy professionals, the peoplewho publish in Foreign Affairs, Internation-al Security, and other serious journals.

The International Institute for Strate-gic Studies, founded in London in 1958and notable for its Adelphi papers, pub-lished in August 2008, Paper 396, Abol-ishing Nuclear Weapons, by George Per-kovich and James Acton of the CarnegieEndowment for International Peace. Itwas central to a conference at the Car-negie Endowment that produced 17 re-sponse papers from around the world.Other meetings similarly motivated have been occurring, many under thesponsorship of the Nuclear Threat Ini-

tiative (nti). The Stanley Foundationconvened 25 of½cials, including diplo-mats from un institutions, U.S. and for-eign experts, and of½cials from othernations “to examine the ½rst steps to-ward a world free of nuclear weapons.”The rapporteur of that meeting noted,“Participants were in general agreementthat complete and eventual disarma-ment, or global zero, is the objective.”

The American Academy of Arts andSciences, which publishes Dædalus,awarded the Rumford Prize to Perry,Nunn, Shultz, Kissinger, and SidneyDrell at its 1929th Stated Meeting inOctober 2008, for “their contribution to nuclear abolition.” President Oba-ma’s April 2009 Prague speech, in which he stated “clearly and with con-viction America’s commitment to seekthe peace and security of a world with-out nuclear weapons,” was a sign thatthe disarmament debate was now a se-rious enterprise.

Some of the motivation, among thediverse respondents on the issue, is to ful½ll, or appear to ful½ll, the “com-mitment” undertaken by the of½cialnuclear-weapons states in the Non-Pro-liferation Treaty (npt) “to pursue nego-tiations in good faith on effective mea-sures relating to cessation of the nucleararms race at an early date and to nuclear

Thomas C. Schelling

A world without nuclear weapons?


disarmament, and on a treaty on gen-eral and complete disarmament understrict and effective international con-trol.” The underlying motive would be to renew and strengthen the Treatyitself, by removing an objection oftenvoiced by non-nuclear governmentsabout unacceptable discrimination.Some of the motivation is evidently to spur an overdue drastic reduction in Russian and American nuclear war-heads, especially those on high alert.

But hardly any of the analyses or pol-icy statements that I have come acrossquestion overtly the ultimate goal oftotal nuclear disarmament.1 Nearly all adduce the unequivocal language ofThe Wall Street Journal quadrumvirate.

None explicitly addresses the ques-tion, why should we expect a worldwithout nuclear weapons to be saferthan one with (some) nuclear weap-ons? That drastic reductions makesense, and that some measures to re-duce alert status do, too, may require no extensive analysis. But consider-ing how much intellectual effort in thepast half-century went into the study ofthe “stability” of a nuclear-deterrenceworld, it ought to be worthwhile to ex-amine contingencies in a nuclear-freeworld to verify that it is superior to aworld with (some) nuclear weapons.

I have not come across any mention of what would happen in the event of amajor war. One might hope that majorwar could not happen in a world with-out nuclear weapons, but it always did.One can propose that another war on thescale of the 1940s is less to worry aboutthan anything nuclear. But it might givepause to reflect that the world of 1939was utterly free of nuclear weapons, yetthey were not only produced, they wereinvented, during war itself and used withdevastating effect. Why not expect thatthey could be produced–they’ve already

been invented–and possibly used insome fashion?

In 1976, I published an article, “WhoWill Have the Bomb?” in which I asked,“Does India have the bomb?”2 India had exploded a nuclear device a coupleof years earlier. I pursued the question,what do we mean by “having the bomb?”I alleged that we didn’t mean, or perhapsdidn’t even care, whether India actuallypossessed in inventory a nuclear explo-sive device, or an actual nuclear weap-on. We meant, I argued, that India “had”the potential: it had the expertise, thepersonnel, the laboratories and equip-ment to produce a weapon if it decidedto. (At the time, India pretended that itsonly interest was in “Peaceful NuclearExplosives” [pnes].) I proposed an anal-ogy: does Switzerland have an army? Ianswered, not really, but it could haveone tomorrow if it decided today.

The answer to the relevant questionabout nuclear weapons must be a sched-ule showing how many weapons (ofwhat yield) a government could mobi-lize on what time schedule.

It took the United States about ½veyears to build two weapons. It mighttake India–now that it has already pro-duced nuclear weapons–a few weeks, or less, depending on how ready it keptits personnel and supplies for mobiliza-tion. If a “world without nuclear weap-ons” means no mobilization bases, there can be no such world. Even start-ing in 1940 the mobilization base wasbuilt. And would minimizing mobili-zation potential serve the purpose? Toanswer this requires working throughvarious scenarios involving the expec-tation of war, the outbreak of war, andthe conduct of war. That is the kind ofanalysis I haven’t seen.

A crucial question is whether a govern-ment could hide weapons-grade ½ssile


A worldwithoutnuclearweapons?


material from any possible inspection-veri½cation. Considering that enoughplutonium to make a bomb could be hidden in the freezing compartment ofmy refrigerator, or to evade radiationdetection could be hidden at the bot-tom of the water in a well, I think onlythe fear of a whistle-blower could pos-sibly make success at all questionable. I believe that a “responsible” govern-ment would make sure that ½ssile mate-rial would be available in an internation-al crisis or war itself. A responsible gov-ernment must at least assume that otherresponsible governments will do so.

We are so used to thinking in terms of thousands, or at least hundreds, ofnuclear warheads that a few dozen mayoffer a sense of relief. But if, at the out-set of what appears to be a major war, or the imminent possibility of majorwar, every responsible government must consider that other responsiblegovernments will mobilize their nucle-ar weapons base as soon as war erupts,or as soon as war appears likely, therewill be at least covert frantic efforts, orperhaps purposely conspicuous efforts,to acquire deliverable nuclear weaponsas rapidly as possible. And what then?

I see a few possibilities. One is that the ½rst to acquire weapons will usethem, as best it knows how, to disrupt its enemy’s or enemies’ nuclear mobi-lization bases, while itself continuing its frantic nuclear rearmament, alongwith a surrender demand backed up byits growing stockpile. Another possibil-ity is to demand, under threat of nucle-ar attack, abandonment of any nuclearmobilization, with unopposed “inspec-tors” or “saboteurs” searching out themobilization base of people, laborato-ries, ½ssile material stashes, or any-thing else threatening. A third possibil-ity would be a “decapitation” nuclearattack along with the surrender demand.

And I can think of worse. All of these, of course, would be in the interest ofself-defense.

Still another strategy might, justmight, be to propose a crash “rearma-ment agreement,” by which both sides(all sides) would develop “minimumdeterrent” arsenals, subject to all theinspection-veri½cation procedures thathad already been in place for “disarma-ment.”

An interesting question is whether“former nuclear powers”–I use quota-tion marks because they will still be la-tent nuclear powers–would seek waysto make it known that, despite “disar-mament,” they had the potential for arapid buildup. It has been suggested that Saddam Hussein may have wantedit believed that he had nuclear weapons,and Israel has made its nuclear capabil-ity a publicized secret. “Mutual nucleardeterrence” could take the form of let-ting it be known that any evidence ofnuclear rearmament would be promptlyreciprocated. Reciprocation could takethe form of hastening to have a weap-on to use against the nuclear facilities of the “enemy.”

But war is what I ½nd most worrisome.In World War II there was some fear inthe U.S. nuclear weapons communitythat Germany might acquire a nuclearcapability and use it. There is still spec-ulation whether, if Germany had notalready surrendered, one of the bombsshould have been used on Berlin, with a demand that inspection teams be ad-mitted to locate and destroy the nucle-ar establishment. Would a governmentlose a war without resorting to nuclearweapons? Would a war include a race to produce weapons capable of coerc-ing victory?

Could a major nation maintain “con-ventional” forces ready for every con-tingency, without maintaining a nucle-

Thomas C.Schellingon the globalnuclearfuture

ar backup? Just as today’s intelligenceagencies and their clandestine operatorsare devoted to discovering the locationof terrorist organizations and their lead-ers, in a non-nuclear world the highestpriority would attach to knowing theexact locations and readiness of enemynuclear mobilization bases.

Would a political party, in the UnitedStates or anywhere else, be able to cam-paign for the abandonment of the zero-nuclears treaty, and what would be theresponse in other nations?

I hope there are favorable answers to these questions. I’m uncertain who in government or academia is workingon them.3

One can take the position that sub-stantial nuclear disarmament makessense, and that the abstract goal of aworld without nuclear weapons helpsmotivate reduction as well as presents an appearance of ful½lling the npt

commitment. Maybe some leaders ofthe movement have no more than that in mind. But even as a purely intellectu-al enterprise the “role of deterrence intotal disarmament,” to use the title of an article I published 47 years ago, de-serves just as thoughtful analysis as mu-tual nuclear deterrence ever received.4

In summary, a “world without nucle-ar weapons” would be a world in whichthe United States, Russia, Israel, China,and half a dozen or a dozen other coun-tries would have hair-trigger mobiliza-tion plans to rebuild nuclear weaponsand mobilize or commandeer deliverysystems, and would have prepared tar-gets to preempt other nations’ nuclearfacilities, all in a high-alert status, withpractice drills and secure emergencycommunications. Every crisis would be a nuclear crisis, any war could be-come a nuclear war. The urge to pre-empt would dominate; whoever gets

the ½rst few weapons will coerce or preempt. It would be a nervous world.

It took a couple of decades for theUnited States to work out a satisfactorytheory of “strategic readiness,” of howto con½gure strategic nuclear forces toprovide reasonably comfortable assur-ance against surprise or preemption,with appropriate command and con-trol. Nothing is perfect: we never didsolve the mx missile basing problem; we apotheosized a “triad” that didn’treally exist; we missed the early oppor-tunity to restrain multiple independent-ly targetable reentry vehicles (mirv);we never had an agreed understandingof “flexible response” or “no-cities” and its relation to counterforce target-ing; and we let a president carry us away with an expensive dream of ac-tive defense of the population. Still, wegot away from soft, exposed, unreadybombers and missiles; we avoided thetroubles that rival anti-ballistic-missile(abm) systems would have brought; and we understood the mx problem, if we couldn’t solve it.

There are now many proposals for rad-ically recon½guring the strategic offen-sive force. Possible reductions in num-bers get plenty of attention. The compo-sition of the force–undersea, airborne,and ½xed; gravity, ballistic, and cruise;air and naval–gets less attention, butwill receive it intensely when service ri-valries become aroused. The proposalsthat to me sound hasty and in need ofmore thought than I can detect behindthem are those that would drasticallychange the readiness status of the stra-tegic force. These involve various pro-posals for reduced alert status. In partic-ular, some propose physically separatingwarheads and vehicles. An extreme case is the idea of “strategic escrow,” war-heads removed from vehicles, presum-ably at quite some distances, and stored




under international supervision. I haveheard proposals for keeping warheadsnearby but separate from the bombers or the missiles themselves. There arealso proposals, which I’m not able tojudge, for electronic de-alert or fail-safe retargeting.

What I think took those couple ofdecades I mentioned was really getting“vulnerability” under control. It beganseriously with the Gaither Committee in 1957, got incorporated into the sur-prise-attack negotiations in 1958, led to airborne alert for bombers and aban-donment of Atlas and Titan, and gavethe navy a strategic lease on life. One key to reduced vulnerability was disper-sal. Minuteman was spread out so thatno single enemy weapon could destroymore than one. (Decoys for the samepurpose were considered during the mx predicament.)

What has me worried is a new kind of “dispersal,” a perverse kind: offer-ing multiple disabling points for an en-emy to target. If a missile or bomber can be rendered inactive by, alternative-ly, destroying it, destroying its warhead,or destroying the means of locomotionfrom warhead storage to vehicle, vulner-ability has increased. If removed war-heads are stored centrally, or in clusters,“dispersal” has been reversed. (Subject-ing warhead storage to inspection elim-inates the possibility of keeping loca-tions secret from potential targeting.) If there are limited transport routes bywhich warheads can join their vehicles,vulnerability is increased. And maybenot just vulnerability to strategic attackbut to disruption or sabotage as well.

Another theme of strategic readi-ness that took pretty good hold duringthose decades was “crisis stability.” Theconcept involved a couple of potentiallycontradictory ideas: that any urgent ef-

forts to enhance readiness in a crisisshould be unnoticeable, lest they alarmthe enemy, and that any efforts shouldbe so visible that, if they were not beingtaken, the enemy could see they werenot! On balance I think the consensuswas that the dynamics of mobilizationshould be minimized; that, of course,could depend on what kinds of actionswe are talking about. And the actionsdepend on just what mode of de-alert or separation of components is beingconsidered.

I worry that the necessary scenarioanalyses to ½nd the strengths and weak-nesses, especially the weaknesses, ofthese proposals have not been done. I do not want to see many years–morethan half a century now–of painfullyacquired understanding of the require-ments of “safe readiness” be lost or ig-nored in a hurried effort to invent newcon½gurations of readiness-unreadiness.In particular, just what can be done onwhat time schedule and with what visi-bility to the public or to the enemy (or to international referees) in variouskinds of crises needs to be thoroughlyworked out; the logistics need to becarefully simulated; and the range ofchoices needs to be identi½ed.

I do not perceive that this analysis is being done before proposals arelaunched that would produce highly un-familiar strategic-readiness situations.What we have developed and becomeacquainted with should be dismantledonly when we are sure we understandwhat we may be getting into.

We have gone, as I write this, morethan 63 years without any use of nucle-ar weapons in warfare. We have expe-rienced, depending on how you count,some eight wars during that time inwhich one party to the war possessednuclear weapons: United States vs.

Thomas C.Schellingon the globalnuclearfuture


North Korea, United States vs. Peo-ple’s Republic of China, United States vs. Viet Cong, United States vs. NorthVietnam, United States vs. Iraq twice,United States vs. Taliban in Afghani-stan, Israel vs. Syria and Egypt, UnitedKingdom vs. Argentina, and ussr vs.Afghanistan. In no case was nuclearweapons introduced, probably not se-riously considered.

The “taboo,” to use the term of Secre-tary of State John Foster Dulles in 1963–he deplored the taboo–has apparentlybeen powerful. The ability of the Unit-ed States and the Soviet Union to collab-orate, sometimes tacitly, sometimes ex-plicitly, to “stabilize” mutual deterrencedespite crises over Berlin and Cuba, forthe entire postwar era prior to the disso-lution of the ussr, would not have beencountenanced by experts or strategistsduring the ½rst two decades after 1945.

These are two different phenomena,the taboo and mutual deterrence. Wecan hope that mutual deterrence willsubdue Indian-Pakistani hostility; wecan hope that the taboo will continue

to caution Israel, and that it will affectother possessors of nuclear weapons,either through their apprehension of the curse on nuclear weapons or theirrecognition of the universal abhorrenceof nuclear use.5

There is no sign that any kind of nu-clear arms race is in the of½ng–not, any-way, among the current nuclear powers.Prospects are good for substantial reduc-tion of nuclear arms among the two larg-est arsenals, Russian and American. Thatshould contribute to nuclear quiescence.

Concern over North Korea, Iran, orpossible non-state violent entities isjusti½ed, but denuclearization of Rus-sia, the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom is pretty tan-gential to those prospects. Except forsome “rogue” threats, there is little that could disturb the quiet nuclear re-lations among the recognized nuclearnations. This nuclear quiet should not be traded away for a world in which a brief race to reacquire nuclear weap-ons could become every former nucle-ar state’s overriding preoccupation.

ENDNOTES

1 For exceptions, see Harold Brown and John Deutch, “The Nuclear Disarmament Fantasy,”The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007, and Charles L. Glaser, “The Instability of SmallNumbers Revisited,” in Rebuilding the npt Consensus, ed. Michael May (Stanford, Calif.:Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, October 2008),http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/22218/RebuildNPTConsensus.pdf.

2 Thomas C. Schelling, “Who Will Have the Bomb?” International Security 1 (Summer 1976):77–91.

3 See Sverre Lodgaard’s and Scott Sagan’s essays in this issue of Dædalus for expert analysesof the problem of stability without nuclear weapons.

4 Thomas C. Schelling, “The Role of Deterrence in Total Disarmament,” Foreign Affairs 40(1962): 392–406.

5 T. V. Paul, The Tradition of the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford. Calif.: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 2008); Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 2007); and Thomas C. Schelling, “The Legacy of Hiroshima,” in Schelling,Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,2006).



The ½rst 40 years of the nuclear age,dominated by the Cold War, witnessedthe staggering buildup of nuclear weap-ons in U.S. and Russian arsenals. In 1987the arsenals reached a combined total ofabout 70,000. U.S. weapons peaked at32,000 in 1966; Soviet weapons peakedsomewhere between 40,000 and 50,000in 1986. Equally remarkable has been thedecline from those heights: both coun-tries, having reduced their stockpiles to10,000 by 2002, agreed to cut the num-ber of “operationally deployed strategicwarheads” to 2,200 by 2012. The Unit-ed States has already reached this limit,but retains 700 tactical weapons and a reserve of 2,500 active and inactiveweapons, not treaty-limited, making for a grand total of 5,200. While compa-rable data are not available from Russia,it is likely that their stockpile will soonapproach a similar level, representingthe lowest number of weapons betweenthe United States and Russia since theearly days of the buildup, around 1959.

A massive exchange between U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals during anypart of the past half-century would haverisked near or total destruction of theworld’s civilization. That this did not

happen was mainly due to the fear thatresorting to use of such weapons by oneside would quickly lead to an escalation,since each side would seek to destroy the other’s not-yet-used forces, as well as to retaliate in response to destructionalready under way. The level of devas-tation that would have occurred is un-imaginable, but several models have at-tempted to describe some of the conse-quences. One model, for example, con-cluded that to destroy 25 percent of thepopulation of Russia, the United States,Britain, France, and Germany wouldneed fewer than 250 large weapons. Mil-lions more fatalities and further disrup-tion of transportation, energy supply,communications, food supplies, andmedical aid, as well as the breakdown of government, commerce, trade, socialorder, and civil life, would follow, whiledelayed fatalities and illnesses from ra-dioactive fallout would peak and thensubside only slowly over centuries.1

Alas, the potential for this level ofdestruction still remains, despite theseven-fold reduction in U.S. and Rus-sian weapons that has occurred. There-fore a primary goal in the next decadesmust be to remove this risk of near glob-al self-destruction by drastically reduc-ing nuclear forces to a level where thisoutcome is not possible, but where a

Paul Doty

The minimum deterrent & beyond


deterrent value is preserved–in otherwords, to a level of minimum deter-rence. This conception was widely dis-cussed in the early years of the nucle-ar era, but it drowned in the Cold Warflood of weaponry. No matter how re-mote the risk of civilization collapse may seem now–despite its being sovivid only a few decades ago–the elim-ination of this risk, for this century andcenturies to come, must be a primarydriver for radical reductions in nuclearweapons.

As the Cold War risks of catastrophicdamage receded, the risk of destructionat the other end of the scale–attacks on single cities–sharply increased.These attacks might come either fromnew, hostile nuclear-weapons states orfrom nuclear terrorists stealing or buy-ing a weapon or acquiring enough ½ssilematerial to make a primitive weaponthemselves. Since the mid-1990s, vigor-ous efforts have been made through ne-gotiations and sanctions, so far unsuc-cessful, to block North Korea and Iranfrom going nuclear; bombing from Is-rael attempted to block Syria from go-ing nuclear. Nuclear terrorists havefocused mostly on stealing or buyingenriched uranium through the under-ground from Russia: the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency (iaea) lists 18con½rmed attempts.2 The security ofRussia’s ½ssile materials has improvedsubstantially over the last 15 years, butmuch remains to be done since Russiahas the world’s largest stockpiles ofnuclear weapons and ½ssile materials,spread over hundreds of sites.

Not only have these accelerated riskshelped restimulate long-standing oppo-sition to nuclear weapons, from “ban the bomb” groups that originated in the1960s, for example, but they have alsoincreased advocacy of “a nuclear-free

world” from new groups, including for-mer governmental of½cials and otherswell acquainted with nuclear matters.(Google lists 234 million references to“nuclear-free.”)

The vision of a nuclear-free worldcaught hold at the governmental lev-el more than 40 years ago, most nota-bly through the 1968 Non-Prolifera-tion Treaty (npt), which required that“[e]ach of the Parties to the Treaty un-dertakes to pursue negotiations in goodfaith on effective measures relating tocessation of the nuclear arms race at anearly date and to nuclear disarmament.”Eighteen years later, in 1986, the Reyk-javik Summit gave further hope for gov-ernment action toward total nuclear dis-armament, even hope for a new treaty.At the Summit, Gorbachev suddenlyproposed the elimination of all nuclearweapons if space-based defenses wouldbe abandoned as well; Reagan, however,could not agree to this condition, andhopes for a new treaty failed.

Although very major reductions in nu-clear arsenals did follow the end of theCold War, there is no evidence that themajor nuclear states are moving towardcomplete divestiture. Nevertheless, urg-ing radical reductions in nuclear arsenalsand, ultimately, their elimination grew.Perhaps the most detailed, early propos-al by experts was that of the Australiangovernment-sponsored Canberra Com-mission on the Elimination of NuclearWeapons.3 In 1999, Paul Nitze, long anadvocate of a hard line nuclear posture,questioned the deterrent itself, saying, “I can think of no circumstances underwhich it would be wise for the UnitedStates to use nuclear weapons, even inretaliation for their prior use against us.” Then in 2007 four highly placed for-mer government leaders–George Shultz,William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn–furthered Nitze’s convic-


Theminimumdeterrent & beyond


tion and proposed “the goal of a worldfree of nuclear weapons,” specifying a number of steps to be taken in that di-rection. Many leading former of½cials of both parties along with quali½ed others have added their support to thegroup’s 2007 statement or to a supple-mentary statement from 2008.4 Impor-tantly, this later statement reempha-sized that a nuclear-free world is a dis-tant goal rather than a state certain to be accomplished within a given time.

Four former defense ministers andfour former foreign ministers of Brit-ain joined this call in 2008, and PrimeMinister Gordon Brown went on rec-ord proposing concrete steps that statescould take jointly to help create the con-ditions necessary for the abolition of nu-clear weapons. Most recently, PresidentObama added his endorsement, in hisApril 5, 2009, speech in Prague: “I stateclearly and with conviction America’scommitment to seek the peace and se-curity of a world without nuclear weap-ons. I am not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly–perhaps not in mylifetime. It will take patience and persist-ence. But now we, too, must ignore thevoices that tell us that the world cannotchange.” Numerous endorsements fol-lowed, for example by German ForeignMinister Steinmeier, who noted thatHelmut Schmidt and three other for-eign policy leaders had af½rmed thisposition.5

Thus, the goal of a world free of nu-clear weapons has become the secondprincipal driver toward radical weap-ons reduction. Reflecting on the paththat might lead to this twin goal–end-ing the risk of civilization collapse andpreparing for the zero option–makesclear that any such course must involvethe committed cooperation of Russiaand the United States in three stages.First, the two nations must see that it

is to their advantage to take the leadtogether in undertaking drastic reduc-tions in their nuclear arsenals, whichaccount for 96 percent of the world’sweaponry. To prepare for these reduc-tions, the United States and Russiashould ½rst adjust their arsenals to a common level; provide accurate inventories of all nuclear weapons; and establish new means of enhanc-ing transparency, inspection, and veri½cation to monitor accurately the progress of reductions. Second, once suf½cient reductions have beenmade to demonstrate their own com-mitment, the United States and Rus-sia should lead in seeking a treaty thatwould embrace the other three orig-inal nuclear states (Britain, France, and China) and the other states withsigni½cant arsenals (at present, India,Israel, and Pakistan); the treaty wouldincorporate scheduled reductions aimed at reaching the very low level constitutive of a minimum deterrent.The third phase would consist of reduc-ing weapons to the designated levels of a minimum deterrent. Without reduc-tions on this scale, neither can the long-term risk of worldwide destruction beeliminated, nor can advances toward a nuclear-free world be realized.

Completing these three phases would certainly take time–at least two decades or more. Yet taking thistime to reach levels of minimum de-terrent is necessary, because only thencan the real problems of going on to zero be addressed. Can complete glob-al participation be attained? If not, how can one deal with nuclear statesunwilling to join? How can the risk of hidden weapons or the resort to re-building weapons, especially by coun-tries facing defeat in wartime, be dealtwith? Can inspection and veri½cationsystems be devised that will ensure per-

Paul Dotyon the globalnuclearfuture

petual compliance and be affordable?Can allies and friends long dependent on the United States’ deterrent capabil-ity adjust to the disappearance of thatcapability? It is futile to try to answersuch questions now because the politi-cal world order will have been changedso much if a minimum deterrent level isachieved; no one can now foresee howstresses and tensions, old and new, willreshape the world a few decades hence.Finding answers to these questions willbe a task not for this generation, but forthe next.6

What follows is a brief examination of one path for reaching a minimum de-terrent in this generation. The aim is notto advocate this particular example, butrather to illustrate in concrete terms themagnitude of the steps needed and someof the impediments that will be met.

The destructive power of nuclear ar-senals is measured commonly in terms of numbers of weapons. When levels re-main in the many thousands this metricis convenient and adequate. But if weap-ons are radically reduced to only thoseneeded for a minimum deterrent or less,then the number of weapons cannot be the only factor: the yield of weaponsmust be considered as well. Maintain-ing a balance by numbers would only be a formality, not real progress, andwould favor the retention of higher-yield weapons.

Alternatively, explosive yield could be used as the primary metric to re-duce (but not eliminate) uncertainty.The most convenient measure of ex-plosive yield is the weight in tons of theexplosive tnt required to produce theexplosive force of a given warhead. Theyield of individual weapons is measuredin thousands of tons (KT) or millions oftons (MT) of tnt. The U.S. stockpile isat least 500 MT7; Russia’s stockpile may

be greater. It is unlikely that either sidewould specify the exact yield assigned to various weapons, but agreementmight be reached in assigning ranges to weapon yield–weapons with a yieldbelow 10 KT, say, or between 10 and 30KT. Furthermore, arrangements allow-ing inspectors access to ½ssile materi-al removed from dismantled weaponswould provide a rough estimate of totalyield, based on comparisons betweenyield from dismantled weapons and previously declared total yield. Theseand other measures would greatly re-duce the uncertainty about destructive-ness when relying on numbers alone.Even so, were the levels of a minimumdeterrent reached, some limitation of numbers, even for the lowest-yieldweapons, would be necessary since 20 weapons of 5 KT yield, for example,would in many circumstances be moredamaging than one 100 KTweapon.

Initially, a very ambitious prelimi-nary step would be necessary to bringRussian and U.S. nuclear arsenals to thesame approximate levels and prepare foraccurate monitoring of subsequent re-ductions. Two changes would need to be introduced in concert with what theStrategic Offensive Reduction Treaty(sort) now in operation requires. One,all nuclear weapons, strategic and tacti-cal, active and inactive–in effect, anythat is not dismantled, not just thosethat are operationally deployed strate-gic warheads–would need to be includ-ed. Two, as explained above, the totalexplosive yield of the remaining nucle-ar arsenals would need to be used as theprimary metric, rather than the numberof weapons.

In tabulating necessary reductions for each step, we have chosen 512 MT asthe beginning yield in order to keep thenumbers simple. (The exact megatonyield to assume for a minimum deter-




rent is somewhat open to question,depending on what actions are to bedeterred.) As will be discussed later, we have assumed that with balancedreductions of nuclear arsenals to lessthan 1 percent of current values, deter-rence would be restricted to a single mission–that is, to deter the use ofnuclear weapons or, if that fails, to becapable of retaliation in kind. We havealso assumed that damage resultingfrom forbidden ½rst use or in retalia-tion would not exceed that of larger past wars. The explosive power used in each of the world wars and the Viet-nam War is estimated to be just under 2 MT. Hence, we have chosen 2 MT asthe minimum deterrent, although 1 MTmight be more appropriate, as damagefrom nuclear weapons would surely be compressed in time relative to a con-ventional war, thereby allowing muchless time for partial recuperation. If thetime came when this choice had to bemade, input from an analysis of whatwas thought to be necessary to cover the reduced deterrence needs as thenenvisioned would be required.

The period of time needed for Rus-sia and the United States to agree on this framework and adjust their inven-tories to the 512 MT limit (or some otheragreed upon number) is unpredictable;we have optimistically chosen ½ve yearsand called this Step 0. During this peri-od, the inventory of all nuclear weaponsexisting in 2010 would be established asan essential guide to what is destroyedand what remains at each step of thereduction schedule.

It would be necessary to work out how the successor to the present Stra-tegic Arms Reduction Treaty (start)would relate to seeking equal levels oftotal yield in Step 0. And further, agree-ment would have to be reached on thestate in the dismantlement process at

which a weapon is no longer a weapon,and which components, other than ½s-sile material, must be rendered unavail-able for weapons use.

A series of ½ve-year steps, paced byreductions in total yield, would followStep 0. However, an equal reduction ineach of the four steps is not practical,since it would mean large reductions in all steps followed by a precipitous fallat the end. Instead, we have proposed aninverted progressive approach, reducingyield in each step by a factor of three-quarters of the limit reached in the pre-vious step. This schedule, in terms ofmegaton yield, is shown in Table 1. Thegoal of reaching 2 MT by 2035 assumesthat Step 1 begins in 2015 and that eachsubsequent step takes ½ve years. Follow-ing this hypothetical schedule, the explo-sive yield of the United States and Rus-sia would be reduced by 94 percent bythe end of 2025, at which point furtherreductions would depend on the intro-duction of a comprehensive treaty thatincludes all, or nearly all, nuclear states.

Since dismantling weapons is verytime consuming (one U.S. gravity bombcontains nearly 7,000 parts) and requiresspecially constructed facilities to con-vert plutonium pits to scrap, additionaltime (perhaps 10 years) may be neededto complete the dismantlement.8 Whilethe megaton limit does not specify thenumbers of weapons, it is of interest to see what the numbers would be if all weapons were, say, 15 KT each (theyield of the Hiroshima weapon) or 100KT; we have shown these numbers at the end of Step 4 (133 and 20, respec-tively) in the two columns at the right of the table. We have shown one fur-ther step in reductions if a lower min-imum deterrent level were chosen.9

The other seven nuclear states are currently estimated to have about 1,000


weapons. Consequently, the success ofthis plan necessarily requires these states’participation no later than by the end of Step 2. However, the question of whatconstitutes appropriate reduction goalsfor these states is trickier. Since this illus-trative proposal assumes a 40-fold reduc-tion in numbers and a 250-fold reductionin yield from the two dominant powers,it is arguable that the others should ac-cept much lower limits, scaled by size of their arsenals at that time. Or the re-duction rates used above might be ap-plied to only the ½ve original nuclearpowers, with negotiated lower levels for the others. If no consensus on cus-tomized solutions such as these can bereached, it may be preferable to agree on the same reduction schedule (three-quarters elimination at each step) for all nuclear states, rather than to aban-don the whole process, since the vastexperience and the many nuclear tests of the ½ve original nuclear states givethem an inherent technical advantage,even if the same rules apply to all.

Although the impediments to nego-tiating and implementing a minimumdeterrent treaty are intimidating, theyare not unlike those faced by arms con-trol efforts in the past, or by the intro-duction of those treaties already in forceor being negotiated now. For example,concentrating most of the weapons re-ductions (perhaps 10,000) in the ½rst 10 years (Steps 0 and 1) may seem tooambitious. However, Russia and theUnited States eliminated nearly 50,000weapons in the 20-year period, 1988 to2008. And sort currently envisions atwo-third reduction of deployed opera-tional strategic weapons (from 6,000 to approximately 2,000) in 10 years; thefollow-on to sort is expected to call foradditional reduction by one-third to one-half. Further, the oft-forgotten Interme-diate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of1988 saw 2,692 nuclear-armed missilesremoved from Europe and Russia inthree years.

Two existing treaties, the npt alongwith the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

If Weapons If WeaponsStep Duration Yield in MT Were 15 KT Were 100 KT

0 2010–2015 512

AdjustmentReductions

Begin1 2015–2020 128 8,533 1,2802 2020–2025 32 2,133 320

All NuclearStates Join

3 2025–2030 8 533 804 2030–2035 2 133 20

FurtherReductions?

5 2035–2040 0.5 33 5

Table 1A Schedule for Reductions to a Minimum Deterrent by Russia and the United States




(ctbt), have contributed much to createan environment that makes radical re-ductions and the goal of a minimum de-terrent treaty possible; yet the future ofthese two treaties is troubled. However,if Russia and the United States were tocommit to a reduction program such asthe one outlined here, some of this trou-ble could be avoided.

Although the ctbt of 1996 is not yetin force, many of its functions are inplace because the Treaty’s PreparatoryCommission created a ctbt Organiza-tion. This organization has greatly im-proved the network of monitoring sta-tions to detect nuclear tests, and has cre-ated a worldwide data center and an on-site inspection capability. Its operatingbudget is based on annual contributionsof signatories. Thus, the Treaty now op-erates largely on a voluntary basis, nodoubt in part because of its broad popu-lar support–judged to be near 80 per-cent. However, that 10 of the 44 statesthat need to ratify the Treaty to bring itinto force haven’t done so10 threatens its chance of becoming a much-needed,established part of the arms control en-vironment. It is unfortunate and unwisethat the United States failed to ratify the Treaty in 1999, but President Oba-ma is now leading a renewed effort to do so. Such support seems vital to per-suading some of the other non-ratify-ing states to ratify, and to sustaining the voluntary operation that so far hasmaintained nearly complete compli-ance until means can be found to bringthe Treaty into force.

Whether or not the United States rati-½es the ctbt within the coming year hasbecome crucial to the advancement of a draw-down both in physical weaponsand in the role of nuclear weapons in na-tional security policy. Only by ratifyingthe Treaty can the United States signalthat it is prepared to move into a new era

of a nearly nuclear-free world. Withoutsuch con½rmation, President Obamawould be denied the leadership role thatis essential to the redirection of armscontrol on the scale envisioned here.

The npt, entered into force in 1970, isthe central means by which the spread of nuclear weapons can be contained.This Treaty has led nine states to aban-don their intention to become nuclear-armed states. However, the four de fac-to nuclear states (India, Israel, NorthKorea, and Pakistan) are not party to the npt. Moreover, of the 189 signato-ries of the npt, 66 have not rati½ed the1997 Additional Protocol, which givesiaea inspectors greater authority to visit declared and undeclared nuclearsites. Here, too, the United States has aleadership role to play in winning oversignatories to the Additional Protocoland strengthening the Treaty at its FiveYear Review Conference in 2010.

If the treaty expected to follow on fromthe original start, which was rati½ed in1991, is secured, that, too, would greatlyease what must be done in Step 0 of theminimum deterrent treaty outlined here.The same is true if a ½ssile materials cut-off treaty were to be developed. Of theseveral treaties that collectively aim tocontrol and reduce nuclear weapons, cen-tral is the one that radically reduces nu-clear arsenals to a minimum deterrentlevel or beyond. This treaty would bestprovide the strategic framework to co-ordinate all the others and diminish therole of nuclear weapons in the securitypolicies of the nuclear states–and todeter non-nuclear states from believingthat nuclear weapons are a shortcut topower and prestige.

Clearly, there are other impedimentsto overcome and initiatives to under-take. These include negotiating treatiesdealing with a ½ssile material productioncutoff; introducing a regime to secure


and reduce the large stocks of ½ssile ma-terials and to monitor the flow of ½s-sile materials through the reactor fuelcycle in the hundreds of power reac-tors worldwide; providing services for nuclear fuel and the disposal of used fuel from nuclear power reactors of non-nuclear states; expanding theiaea; improving inspection and veri-½cation techniques; and ½nding effec-tive ways to share intelligence, ensureenforcement, and deal with possible violations.11

General Kevin Clinton, who heads the U.S. Strategic Command, recentlypointed out that the 2,200 operation-ally deployed strategic warheads nowpermitted by sort are needed to carryout the missions developed under presi-dential guidance and policy directives.Such guidance is apparently based onthe 2006 National Security Strategy,which continues wide-scale targeting of Russia’s offensive strategic forces and command centers (that is, counter-force targeting along with targeted at-tacks on infrastructure such as trans-portation hubs, major industries, andcommunications centers). Numerousnon-Russian targets are also included invarious strike options developed by theDepartment of Defense. In April 2009,General Clinton noted that he cannotreduce the number of needed warheadswithout revised White House guidance.

Reducing weapons to a minimumdeterrent level means substantiallyreducing nuclear missions, includingcounterforce targeting, which, at anyrate, struggles with diverse demands and redundancy, a consequence of in-complete intelligence. Furthermore,counterforce targeting may not reachsubmarine-based, mobile land-based, or other well-hidden weapons. Aban-doning counterforce targeting would

take away the United States’ ½rst-strikecapability, aimed at preempting attacksby Russia’s nuclear forces. However,while current U.S. declaratory policymaintains that it is necessary to threat-en the ½rst use of nuclear weapons forthe sake of deterrence in a number ofscenarios, including deterrence of at-tacks by chemical and biological weap-ons and by large-scale, conventional military force, some experts have be-gun to argue convincingly that move-ment to a no-½rst-use doctrine would be in the best interests of the UnitedStates.12 For these reasons, the mis-sions for which U.S. nuclear forces could justi½ably be used should con-tract to a single one: to retaliate after a nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies.The minimum deterrent must be de-termined for this single mission alone,not for obsolete missions or those bet-ter left to conventional forces.

At present the United States extendsprotection by nuclear forces to 28 mem-bers of nato, as well as to Israel, Japan,South Korea, and Australia. According tothe nato Treaty, “The Parties agree thatan armed attack against one or more ofthem in Europe or North America shallbe considered an attack against all . . . andto assist the Party or Parties so attackedby taking . . . such action as it deems nec-essary, including the use of armed force,to restore and maintain the security ofthe North Atlantic area.” On this basisthe United States can deem necessarythe use of its nuclear forces in support of armed attack–nuclear or non-nuclear–against any member state. The nato

Treaty is of course 1949 language, withwhich the United States aimed to deterSoviet attacks in Europe. But now theTreaty justi½es the United States’ con-tinuing to deny making a no-½rst-usenuclear pledge, even against non-nucle-




ar attacks, in a nato that now includesthe Baltic states and most of the Bal-kans (and that would include, if somehad their way, Georgia and Ukraine).Absurd as such possibilities may be, the move toward a minimum deter-rent should be the occasion for clari-fying that retaliation after a nuclearattack is the only mission for U.S. nu-clear forces. This should apply as well to those non-nato countries that theUnited States has expressed a similarcommitment to protect.

Of course, constriction on extendednuclear deterrence should be discussedin advance with the states affected. Al-ready there are indications that allies’reactions to dramatic reductions willvary. The German Foreign Minister has just called for the United States toremove its tactical nuclear weapons inGermany, and polls show this to be apopular view throughout Western Eu-rope. By contrast, the Japanese Minis-try of Defense has expressed opposi-tion to deep cuts and has insisted, forexample, that a U.S. nuclear weapon system in Japan that the United Stateswould prefer to terminate be retained,no doubt in part because of uncertain-ties about the future of nuclear forcesand growth in other Asian countries,including China. Yet it is quite likely that Russian-U.S. reductions wouldmake the enlargement of Chinese

nuclear forces unnecessary, and if Steps3 and 4 were reached, would reduce Chi-nese nuclear forces.

The foregoing proposals, or alterna-tive ways to the same goal, would haveseemed fanciful at any earlier stage. It is only through the arrival of a new U.S. administration, with unprecedent-ed goals in arms control combined withstrong Russian interests in the same di-rection, and through the backing of somany experienced and responsible ex-perts here and abroad that a serious de-bate on such matters may be near. Thekey will be what is decided at two criti-cal points: will Russia and the UnitedStates join in taking down their ownenormous arsenals, and will other nu-clear states join with them in proceed-ing to a minimum deterrent level andpossibly beyond? If India, Israel, Paki-stan, or any newer nuclear state does not join in this transforming effort, will means be found to restrain that state from undoing the effort? In short, will the window that a rare confluence of events has opened be used to marginalize the role of nucle-ar weapons in the global search for asafer, more stable, and more secureworld and to create the environment in which the elimination of nuclearweapons could become possible?

ENDNOTES

1 Matthew McKinzie et al., The U.S. War Plan: A Time for Change (Washington, D.C.: National Resources Defense Council, June 2001), 126. More succinctly, the command-er of the Strategic Air Command (sac) once told the author, in answer to the question of what would be the difference if only half of the nuclear arsenals were used in an ex-change, that “the difference would be between sand and gravel.”

2 Matthew Bunn, Securing the Bomb 2008 (Cambridge, Mass.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative, November 2008), 9;www.nti.org.

3 http://www.dfat.gov.au/cc/index.html.



4 George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, and “Toward A Nuclear-Free World,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008.

5 See www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diploen/Infoservice; also, Helmut Schmidt, Richard vonWeizacker, Egon Bahr, and Hans-Dietrich Genschler, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,”International Herald Tribune, January 9, 2009.

6 A detailed and objective study of these problems can be found in George Perkovich andJames Acton, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, Adelphi Paper No. 396 (London: InternationalInstitute for Strategic Studies, 2008).

7 The 500 MT number being assigned for both sides is lower than estimates of current force yields because the total number of warheads and their yields are not publicly known for both sides. Moreover, there is another uncertainty: as a current compila-tion of U.S. nuclear forces shows, most of the 14 weapon types now deployed by the United States have a broad range of selectable yields, often more than a hundredfold; see Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (July/August 2009): 72–80. If these weapons could be reliably converted to the lower yield range, then the total force yield would be greatly reduced. If not, the use of the highest yieldwould perhaps double the force yield. Clearly, dealing with this would be a dif½cult negotiators’ problem as the reductions proceeded. Our choice of 500 MT force yieldremains a reasonable level to reach before serious parallel reductions begin, but it may involve large and uneven reductions for both sides to reach such a common lev-el. The further reduction proceeds the more necessary it will be to take into account both numbers and yields.

8 Presently the United States is dismantling plutonium pits at a rate of 350 per year; at this rate, the backlog of currently retired warheads would not be dismantled until 10 years after the treaty deadline, that is, 2022, unless facilities are expanded.

9 See the recent, very extensive analysis of this problem in Hans M. Kristensen, Robert E.Norris, and Ivan Oelrich, From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence (Federation of Ameri-can Scientists/Natural Resources Defense Council, April 2009); www.fas.org. They con-clude that 500 warheads reached by 2025 would constitute a minimum deterrent for theUnited States, with submarine deployment ending in 2020. However, their conclusions do not assume any parallel Russian reductions and therefore are not comparable to ours.

10 These 10 countries are China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United States.

11 The details of such initiatives are examined in the papers prepared for the conference that led to the proclamations of George Shultz and colleagues in The Wall Street Journal.These are now available in Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weap-ons, ed. George Shultz, Sidney Drell, and James Goodby (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Insti-tution Press, 2008).

12 Scott D. Sagan, “The Case for No First Use,” Survival 51 (3) (2009): 163–182.



In a speech in Prague on April 5, 2009,President Obama recon½rmed his in-tention to seek a nuclear-weapons-freeworld (nwfw): “today, I state clearlyand with conviction America’s commit-ment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”1

In Cairo two months later, he defusedthe charge of double standards that hasbeen leveled at the nuclear-weaponsstates (nws) throughout the 40-yearhistory of the nuclear Non-Prolifera-tion Treaty (npt): “No nation shouldpick and choose which nation holdsnuclear weapons. That’s why I strong-ly reaf½rmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.”2 By seizing thehigh ground he is set to win importantdebates. However, there are numerousobstacles in the way.

What might a nwfw look like? Theterm is used in a variety of ways, some of which appear more stable and satis-factory than others. Certain principles,prerequisites, and transitional issues, as well as political order requirements,must be considered on the way to such a world. On the whole, growing inter-national interdependence is helpful,

but for nuclear disarmament to succeed,interdependence must be turned intocooperative security practices betweenthe big powers, with a view to more ef-fective collective security mechanisms in the hands of the world organization(currently the United Nations).

In their Wall Street Journal article of January 4, 2007, George Shultz, Wil-liam Perry, Henry Kissinger, and SamNunn emphasized the interrelationshipbetween the vision of a nwfw and mea-sures to that end: “without the bold vi-sion, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions,the vision will not be perceived as real-istic or possible.”3

To achieve a dynamic, interactive rela-tionship between vision and measures,one has to be serious about both. To beserious about the vision means that aconvincing rationale for a nwfw has tobe spelled out; that the broadest possi-ble agreement must be sought; and thatthe advantages of such a world shouldweigh in the assessment of speci½c stepsto be taken. If not, the advantages anddisadvantages of each step will insteadbe weighed within the framework of theexisting international system, with littleor no regard for the gains that a nwfw

offers, leaving the steps hostage to the

Sverre Lodgaard

Toward a nuclear-weapons-free world


obstacles that will surely be raised alongthe way. The “four horsemen” are there-fore right in their emphasis on vision: ifthe vision is not persistently invoked inthe discussions of how best to promotedisarmament and nonproliferation, ef-forts in this direction may not lead veryfar. The dynamism will be missing.

One part of the rationale relates to the terrorist threat: terrorists seek nu-clear weapons in order to use them.Another part emanates from the stateparadigm. In an increasingly multicen-tric world with more nws, nuclearweapons are likely to interact with in-terstate conflicts in more regions and in new ways. A nwfw would also besafer for nuclear energy. This is notamong the major factors in the case for such a world–the overriding ob-jective is to prevent nuclear weaponsfrom being used–but for proponents of nuclear power it is another attrac-tion. Others emphasize that a nwfw

would be far more sustainable as part of a double abolition: an end to bothnuclear weapons and nuclear energy.However, much like the compromisebetween the “no” to nuclear weaponsand the “yes” to nuclear power built into the npt, a nwfw would proba-bly entail the same compromise. If and when a nwfw comes into being,the energy situation will certainly be a lot different from what it is today; but this is what full implementation of the npt implies.

As of mid-2009, the call for a nwfw

remains primarily a Western one. Inother regions of the world, nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapons states arewaiting to see what comes of the call.Will it ½zzle out? Will the domesticinterests in nuclear weapons hit backand reaf½rm the continued relevance of nuclear arms? Abolition has beenproposed three times before–the Ba-

ruch plan in 1946, the McCloy-Zorinproposal of 1961, and the Reagan-Gor-bachev attempt in 1986–and those ini-tiatives were short-lived.

Others have more fundamental doubts.They are concerned that the call is partof a double agenda, the real purpose ofwhich is to sustain and enhance Westernunilateral advantage. The synergies ofdisarmament and nonproliferation maystop smaller and weaker states from ac-quiring “the great equalizer”–nuclearweapons–thus minimizing those states’ability to counter the vast U.S. conven-tional superiority. So why should NorthKorea, Iran, and other states that are atodds with the United States willingly ex-pose themselves to threats and humilia-tion? In a world without nuclear weap-ons, U.S. forces may be even more su-perior than they are today; moreover, at low levels of offensive forces an ad-vanced ballistic missile defense systemmay give the United States a ½rst-strikecapability vis-à-vis other nws. Seen inone or more of these ways, nuclear disar-mament is not a hallmark of progressivepolitics, but a conservative goal: changemeant to preserve the dominance of theUnited States and the West.

In the nws, the call for a nwfw raisesstrong concerns of a different nature.There is the view that nuclear weaponsmake major war very unlikely, if not im-possible; that they provide unique andirreplaceable security bene½ts; that aworld of zero would be highly unstable;and that approaching zero might spurproliferation by making it possible forvery small arsenals to have large strate-gic implications not neutralized by themuch bigger arsenals of the major nws.Then there are the less legitimate, butstill very real, unilateral advantages thatnuclear weapons are seen to offer: theycan be used to threaten and humiliateothers, and in some cases they confer a




status on their possessors that is thoughtto be generally useful in the pursuit ofnational interests.

It is critically important, therefore, toconvince states–nuclear and non-nucle-ar–that disarmament will be pursued inthe universal interest. It is a matter nei-ther of unilateral advantage nor of nation-al sacri½ce, but of seeking abolition as acommon, public good. The objective isto prevent nuclear weapons from beingused ever again. The task is to turn fun-damental moral considerations–pre-venting mass slaughter; preserving human civilization–into realpolitik.

To begin in earnest, the United Statesmust lead and Russia must cooperate. If Russia is not ready for major cuts, thedisarmament ambition will not go far.Next in the line of importance is China,because of its geopolitical signi½cance.Together, these states most affect thesecurity dynamics in regions of prolif-eration concern: Northeast Asia, SouthAsia, and to a smaller extent, the Mid-dle East. As veto-wielding members of the un Security Council, they also determine whether con½dence will be built in the enforcement of disarma-ment commitments.4 If they cannot stabilize their own strategic relationsand put the nuclear order on a path to disarmament, proliferation may continue and the risk of nuclear weapon use may increase.

Words like zero, elimination, and aboli-tion all have in common the idea of nonuclear weapons. However, zero can beconceived of in a variety of ways, andnot everyone means the same thingwhen referring to it. It may be taken tomean no deployed weapons; no stock-piled weapons; no assembled weapons;no nuclear weapons in the hands of themilitary (but possible under civilian gov-ernmental control as an insurance pre-

mium); or no national nuclear weap-ons (but possibly nuclear weapons con-trolled by an international body).

Beyond the various meanings of zero,the vision of a nwfw also comes in sev-eral other forms, one of which imaginesa world where all ready-made weaponshave been eliminated, but where statesmaintain a mobilization base for rapidreintroduction of them. It might include½ssile materials in stock, able nuclearweapons engineers and manufacturingequipment on hand, and delivery ve-hicles ready for use. For the nws thiswould be a form of deep de-alerting,approaching the status of Japan today.The purpose of such a base would be todeter others from breaking out of theagreement and to be able to confrontviolators if deterrence breaks down.

This is a bad idea,5 ½rst and fore-most because it sustains the mentali-ty that nuclear war is possible at anytime. Many states, suspecting that oth-ers may be cheating, may come to think that hedging is prudent, with the resultof a hedging race: vertically toward ca-pabilities that can be turned faster andfaster from virtual to real; horizontal-ly to involve more states. The trust onwhich abolition was achieved wouldthen evaporate. Second, virtual arse-nals need arsenal keepers, who are never disinterested experts, but socio-political actors legitimizing their activ-ities in terms of threats to be met anddemanding more resources to counterthem. In effect, the arsenal keepers arelikely to push for a hedging race, andwould quite possibly prefer real arse-nals to virtual ones. Such an end statewould therefore contain the seeds of its own destruction. Third, it is a par-ticularly bad idea because in the break-out scenarios, ½rst-strike capabilities are more likely to emerge than in cur-rent nuclear constellations.

SverreLodgaardon the globalnuclearfuture

It would be better to go “below zero”to eliminate the ½ssile materials thathave been dedicated to nuclear explo-sive uses; to institute strict internation-al control of all remaining materials; to dismantle the nuclear weapons infra-structure; and to redirect the workforceto other sectors. Even more, nuclear ma-terials that can be used to build weaponsshould be banned from civilian use aswell. Highly enriched uranium (heu) is not the most important issue here–there is little heu left in the civilian sec-tor and what remains is being phasedout–but plutonium continues to pose a problem. Technical ½xes may or maynot solve the problem; if not, a com-promise would have to be struck toaccommodate the civilian industry.Dual-capability production facilities for civilian use would remain, possi-bly based on proliferation-resistant technologies and subject to interna-tional control. This would be a more stable nwfw than a world where vir-tual arsenals are allowed. However,going below zero is a matter of more or less, so this image of a nwfw

comes in several variations.A third version relies on joint capa-

bilities to intercept a nuclear attack before the weapons reach their tar-gets–the idea that Reagan presented to Gorbachev in Reykjavik. An effectiveshield could be traded against milderrestrictions on nuclear infrastructureand modi½ed requirements of interna-tional control. Twenty-½ve years and$150 billion after the Strategic DefenseInitiative (sdi) was born, ballistic mis-sile defense remains an unproven tech-nology with no certainty of success.Countermeasures seem to be simplerand cheaper. Furthermore, to convertthe program into a global asset for thebene½t of all may be impossible, for ittakes a much more cooperative world

to overcome the formidable politicalproblems involved. Still, in a world thathas come close to elimination, missiledefense is likely to be seen through otherlenses. If the road to a nwfw results in,say, 100 or 200 weapons for each nws,further steps will be considered in an en-vironment much different from wherethe journey started. The path-depen-dence of the disarmament process mustalways be kept in mind, so the optionshould not be ruled out.

Can a shield be developed as an op-tion for a nwfw while nuclear disar-mament is taking place? It is conceiv-able that research and development ofdefensive technologies could continue if deployment limitations are agreedupon. But would this be enough? Chi-na and others not only are concernedabout the speci½c missile defense ap-plications of the U.S. program, but alsoare worried that someday there may be a technological breakthrough in an-other related area that leaves them at asigni½cant disadvantage. The trust-con-suming effect of such an R&D programshould therefore not be underestimated.

Scaling down missile defense is anoth-er way to reduce the overall concerns sur-rounding it. In the years ahead, the Unit-ed States is likely to do so, as missile de-fense was always more of a Republicanprogram than a Democratic one. Addi-tionally, there are strong ½nancial pres-sures for cuts. Yet another option is acooperative venture with Russia. Thismay facilitate negotiations toward deepcuts, but would send a dubious signal to China and others. To enhance U.S.-Russian security at the expense of thesecurity of others is not in the spirit ofglobal public good, and not the way topursue the long-term ambition of anwfw.

This builds up to an argument fordeployment limitations on a slimmer




U.S. missile defense program. Deploy-ment limitations mean reinstating theAnti-Ballistic Missile (abm) Treaty ornegotiating an updated version of it; aslimmer program is the likely outcomeof U.S. politics anyhow. Whether thestability of a nwfw would best be en-hanced by erecting a shield will be amatter for consideration in a worldmuch different than ours now.

Two measures from the classical arms control agenda are uppermost on the priority list of many states: the rati½cation and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Trea-ty (ctbt) and negotiation of a FissileMaterial Cutoff Treaty (fmct). TheUnited States and China have not rati-½ed the ctbt, while the other P5 coun-tries (France, Russia, and the UnitedKingdom) have. The United States hasconducted 1,000 tests and Russia 700;the others, far fewer. There is the con-cern, moreover, that sooner or later, simulation techniques will allow theUnited States to make new types ofweapons without live testing. To stemthese inequalities and avoid qualita-tive improvements in the face of a testban, the nws should be asked to join the ctbt and undertake not to develop and deploy qualitatively new types ofweapons. China is ready to ratify thectbt at any time, provided the UnitedStates goes ½rst.

China is not prepared, though, to de-clare a cut in the production of weap-ons-grade materials. Like the other P5,China seems to have stopped productionof ½ssile materials for weapons; but un-like the others, China has made no state-ment or formal commitment in this re-spect. In view of the uncertainties sur-rounding missile defense and the futureof U.S. forces, China is not con½dentthat it has enough ½ssile materials in

stock. India and Pakistan, which arebuilding up their forces, are not readyfor a cutoff either. Therefore, an fmct

does not seem to be near at hand. A ctbt and an fmct are important

because nuclear infrastructures wouldbe closed down, notably nuclear testsites and ½ssile material production fa-cilities. (France has done so already.)There may be consequences for person-nel as well. The treaty measures wouldsignal that there will be less of a futurefor nuclear weapons work, which maylead experts in other directions, unlessthey are absorbed by stewardship pro-grams for the weapons that remain.

The ongoing U.S.-Russian negotia-tion of an agreement to succeed start I

(the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is a relatively simple task. The anticipat-ed follow-on negotiation of deep cuts–often said to aim at no more than 1,000deployed strategic weapons–faces high-er hurdles. During that negotiation, theissues of missile defense and tactical nu-clear weapons will come into full play.Iran may also complicate the talks. IfIran’s nuclear and missile programs con-tinue unchecked, it will be harder for theUnited States to forgo a missile shield in Eastern Europe, which is a cardinalRussian demand.

Mutual deterrence is far from being an ideal basis for international security.The risks of breakdown are too great,and the policy is counterintuitive, sug-gesting that we are best protected whenwe are naked. But missile defense makesan untenable situation even worse, forby stimulating competitive acquisitionsof offensive and defensive capabilities it stands in the way of nuclear disarma-ment. What may be a problem for Rus-sia in the future is already a problem forChina. Deep cuts may take deploymentlimitations on a slimmer program, asargued above.


Primo 2009, the United States had 500 operational tactical weapons, 200 of them in Europe. On the basis of thenumber of available delivery platforms,it is estimated that Russia has approxi-mately 2,100 weapons in this category.Including these weapons in an overallcount is an increasingly legitimate U.S.demand: the lower the level of strate-gic arms, the higher the stock of un-regulated tactical weapons would loom.Agreed reductions of operationally de-ployed strategic weapons to the level of1,000 or below, leaving aside the 2,000Russian sub-strategic weapons, are hardto imagine. To prepare for the inclusionof sub-strategic weapons, Russia mightdo more of what the United States isplanning for, that is, assigning long-rangeweapons to regional roles. Freedom tomix strategic and tactical weapons undercommon ceilings can also facilitate inclu-sion of them.

The United States holds 2,500 weap-ons in reserve for strategic and tacti-cal use.6 The corresponding Russian½gure is not known, but it may be high-er.7 In the U.S. Congress, the bipartisan McGovern-Lungren resolution bringsreserves into the deep-cut framework, proposing to limit U.S. and Russian arsenals to no more than 1,000 weap-ons deployed and no more than 3,000weapons in all, reserves included, andwith a freedom to mix.

How deep do U.S. and Russian cutshave to be to engage France, China, and the United Kingdom in disarma-ment negotiations? The three coun-tries used to say that the superpowerswould have to match their level in thelow hundreds. Recently, the UnitedKingdom has shown flexibility in thisrespect. Maybe the United States andRussia need not come down to the same level as the smaller P5 powers

before multilateral negotiations canbegin. If the United States and Russiaagree to cut their forces to three-digit½gures while stating their readiness to head toward common P5 ceilings at about the current level of the Unit-ed Kingdom, France, and China, thismay suf½ce. With such an approach,reductions to 1,000 weapons may also be enough. But if the United States and Russia were to approach the other P5 countries with proportional reduc-tions in mind, such that the UnitedStates and Russia would retain largerarsenals than the others, it might gonowhere. Today, France has a some-what larger arsenal than the UnitedKingdom and China: 348 operation-al weapons compared to 185 for the United Kingdom and 179 for China.8

Should the multilateral phase be lim-ited to the P5 at ½rst and widened toinclude others thereafter, or should allnws be included right away? Two of the four outliers–Israel and North Ko-rea–can best be addressed separately.The Israel problem is a regional one thatcan only be solved as part of a peace set-tlement in the Middle East, and NorthKorea may be willing to trade its arsenalfor economic assistance and normaliza-tion with the United States and the restof the world. For the other two–Indiaand Pakistan–the ambition must be todraw them into global negotiations to-gether with the P5. India’s nuclear pos-ture has global rami½cations, like thoseof the P5, and Pakistan’s weapons are a function of India’s. If a criteria-basedapproach is adopted in relation to theoutliers, asking all three to abide by thecommitments that India has undertak-en and raising the bar for de jure recog-nition by demanding accession to thectbt and a moratorium on ½ssile mate-rial production, only India may be ableto live up to these requirements. In that




case, the table would be enlarged fromP5 to P6.

Article VI of the npt was always abouthardware and software, about both theweapons and the roles assigned to them.For half a century, calls have been madeto reduce the role of nuclear weapons in international affairs. nnws are morevulnerable to use and threats of use thannws. Where mutually assured destruc-tion applies, resort to nuclear weapons is an ordained act of suicide; while inrelation to nnws, the aggressor may get away with it. No wonder, then, thatmost of the threats that have been madehave been addressed to nnws. In someinstances they seem to have worked.

Non-aligned states have thereforecalled for an international conven-tion committing the nws not to use or threaten to use nuclear weaponsagainst those nnws that are party to the npt, no quali½cations added. No-½rst-use doctrines, limiting the role ofnuclear weapons to that of deterringothers from using theirs, would meet the same concerns and, in addition,would reduce the role of nuclear weap-ons in inter-nws affairs to deterring the others from using theirs. Such doc-trines have an intriguing disarmamentcorollary: nobody would need them if nobody had them. In pursuit of anwfw, this proposition is more rel-evant than extension of non-use as-surances to nnws.

The Geneva Protocol of 1925 pro-hibited the use of chemical and biolog-ical weapons, which were consideredinhumane. Later, possession of themwas outlawed as well: biological weap-ons by the Biological Weapons Conven-tion (bwc) of 1972; chemical weaponsby the Chemical Weapons Convention(cwc) of 1992. The cwc set a timelinefor destruction of the arsenals, and

agreement was reached on a comprehen-sive veri½cation system. In the 1990s, a veri½cation protocol was negotiatedfor the bwc, too, but the recent Bushadministration turned it down. Stress-ing that any use of nuclear weaponsmust be compatible with internation-al humanitarian law, the InternationalCourt of Justice (icj) Advisory Opinionof 1996 came close to a no-use position.The effects of nuclear weapons are suchthat it is hard to imagine circumstancesin which they could be used in compli-ance with humanitarian law, although a reservation was made for situations in which national survival is at stake (as in the case of Israel).

A protocol banning the use of nuclearweapons, on the model of the GenevaProtocol, would convey the same mes-sage: that the effects of nuclear weap-ons are such that no civilized state orsane leader should or would use them.An international legal instrument de-claring their use to be a crime againsthumanity would send an even strong-er message and be a better deterrentagainst use.

In effect, the Geneva Protocol was ano-½rst-use agreement. An agreementbanning the use of nuclear weaponswould similarly allow for nuclear retal-iation, that is, it would be a no-½rst-useagreement. It may include provisionsbranding the use of nuclear weapons acrime against humanity. Alternatively,the Security Council could be invited to issue such a declaration.

Given its conventional preponder-ance, the United States could more eas-ily convert to no-½rst-use than couldRussia. However, if the United Statesseizes the initiative and Russia is will-ing to generalize the bilateral Russia-China no-½rst-use commitment, the P5 would end up with such a doctrine,for it is hard to imagine that the United


Kingdom and France would not followthe U.S. lead, especially when reinforcedby Russia. (China always had a policy ofno-½rst-use.) The United States wouldhave to stop issuing nuclear weaponsthreats, and its alliance commitmentsand nuclear umbrellas would have to bechanged accordingly. Its allies wouldhave to be reassured in other ways.

One or more nws may ½nd that theycan move to the low hundreds, but nofurther unless their security concernshave been much alleviated and the mili-tary and political role of nuclear weap-ons has been much diminished. Russiamay be a case in point. Others may beready to push for proposals beyond a call for low hundreds: China to followup on its no-½rst-use posture; India topromote its long-standing proposal for a nuclear weapons convention; nnws

to press their case for a nwfw whetherthey are brought into the negotiations ornot. Most important, the United Statesshould remain committed to the courseinitiated by President Obama. All of thisis uncertain, however.

Ceilings in the low hundreds will pre-sumably be set on the basis of some no-tion of minimum deterrence. In terms of hardware, minimum deterrence is afunction of the vulnerability of the weap-ons, their ability to penetrate enemy de-fenses, and the possibility that some ofthem will malfunction and fail to arriveon target for that reason. In terms ofsoftware, it is a function of the ef½cien-cy of the C3I system (Communications,Command, Control, and Intelligence)and the perceived political will to fol-low through on deterrence doctrines.Today, the powers that subscribe to min-imum deterrence keep arsenals rangingfrom 180 weapons (China and the Unit-ed Kingdom) to 350 (France). India andPakistan are probably heading for forces

in about the same range, and Israel mayalready be there.

It may be assumed that multilater-al negotiations will seek ceilings in the lower end of this range, compati-ble with notions of minimum deter-rence but not allowing signi½cant in-creases in any of the forces. Substan-tial additions would run against thedeclared aim of the exercise, which will be framed in disarmament terms.How could one go on from there? What approach would minimize therisks on the way to a nwfw and maxi-mize the advantages that it offers? Theprize is high, but so may be the risks.

From this point on, the continuation is hard to foresee. Indeed, it would bepresumptuous to claim to know muchabout it. However, political-order is-sues aside, some force constellations are known to be more dangerous thanothers. A few parameters, therefore, may be established to steer the processaway from some of the greatest risks inthe ½nal approach to the goal–in partic-ular, the worlds immediately above andimmediately below zero. The dangers of a world immediately below (virtualarsenals) have been spelled out above.Similar dangers would exist in a worldimmediately above. At the level of, say,30 nuclear weapons, the retaliatory ca-pabilities may be in doubt. Some weap-ons may be destroyed by the enemy, others may be intercepted, and yet oth-ers may not function as planned. As aresult, ½rst-strike propensities may betoo great for comfort. It may lead to sur-prise attacks, hitting the enemy when his guard is down, or to inadvertent es-calation when decision-makers begin to believe that war can no longer beavoided. However flexible the notion of minimum deterrence, force levels in the low hundreds may have been chosen for good reason.




It may therefore be wise to skip thosetransitional phases immediately aboveand below zero and go from the low hun-dreds directly to a nwfw signi½cantlybelow zero. That can be done by elimi-nating weapons-grade materials, dis-mantling dedicated nuclear infrastruc-ture, and trimming the nuclear weap-ons workforce to a minimum before elim-inating the remaining weapons. In otherwords, the stability of minimum deter-rence postures would be maintained un-til the stability of a nwfw has been en-sured. Then, and only then, would it betime to move from the one to the other.

It is hard to imagine a nwfw where the ground rules are different for dif-ferent categories of states. Forty years of discontent with the npt’s division of the world into nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapons states, and persistentcomplaints over the slow implementa-tion of Article VI, which was supposedto have ended that division, have ledmany nnws to insist on equal rules for all. Thus new measures must be equitable and capability differencesincreasingly reduced as the processunfolds. Regardless of the exact road-map followed, the principle of equitywill be important throughout the dis-armament process.

The npt was meant to be the regula-tory mechanism for nonproliferation,disarmament, and peaceful uses on thepath toward zero. The parties may wishto reinterpret some of its provisions, but may see ½t to keep the Treaty until it has been implemented–that is, untilall weapons have been eliminated. Atthat point, however, the equity that itprescribes stops. The npt goes to zero,but never pretended to guide moves be-low zero. Therefore, a new conventionoutlining the ground rules of a nwfw

has to be written before reaching that

point. A convention well ahead of zeromay also be desirable because the npt

is no more than a skeleton agreement;new rules guiding the ½nal approachesto zero will be needed in any case. To be agreeable, those rules must be in-formed by the principle of equity andlead to a nwfw where the rules are the same for all.

Measures to enhance the proliferationresistance of nuclear power must also bethe same for all. For instance, proposalsto internationalize the fuel cycle mustapply to all existing and future facilities,including those in the nws. If not, thecritical cases are unlikely to be covered.Deep cuts and measures blocking quali-tative developments of nuclear arsenalsmay improve the prospects for interna-tionalization by making the implemen-tation of the npt more balanced. Evenso, studies have shown that the prob-lems are formidable. Will proliferationresistance be more urgent as disarma-ment progresses, or will it be less im-portant? To what extent will civilianuses of nuclear energy have to be cir-cumscribed by technological and or-ganizational constraints in a nwfw?

The main driver–the concerns aboutweapons proliferation in a world wherenuclear power is spreading–would seemstronger today than in a world that is seton the course of nuclear disarmament.Reductions to 1,000 U.S. and Russianweapons with no promise of going fur-ther would hardly impress would-be pro-liferators; but if disarmament becomesan established trend pointing toward a nwfw, it will be more costly to defythat trend. In that setting, proliferationresistance will still be desirable, but ar-guably less urgent.

Today, the incentives to acquire nucle-ar capabilities and nuclear weapons arestrong, while the mechanisms to enforcethe commitments undertaken by npt


members are weak. In a nwfw, on theother hand, the further below zero onegoes, the stronger the inhibitions againstremilitarization will be and the lesser the concerns about the shape of the ci-vilian sector. In a world of virtual arse-nals this will be different: civilian facili-ties may become part of a hedging race,so proliferation resistance and interna-tional safeguards will be of the essence.The nuclear industry would therefore bewell served by a sustained disarmamentprocess and by a nwfw below zero.

On the way to a nwfw, the differ-ences between the nws will dimin-ish. Still, their capabilities will remaindifferent in many respects, especiallyqualitative ones. The principle of equi-ty should inform the process, but howagreeable is it and how will it be prac-ticed? Would China use the opportu-nity to go for equal status with the United States and Russia in as manyrespects as possible and as soon as pos-sible? Would India reach out for thesame? So far, China has refrained fromarms racing, saying enough is enough.But will it continue to do so in the face of a real chance to obtain equal status?Why should the United States and Rus-sia give up their nuclear superiority andaccept equal status with the much small-er nuclear powers any sooner than is ab-solutely necessary? Would they ask forproportional reductions when they cometo the multilateral table? Even if the Unit-ed States maintains its commitment to anwfw, why should it yield to the othersany more or any sooner than is required?

If the commitments to a nwfw are½rm and the expectations that it will beachieved are strong, equal or unequalterms some steps earlier will not neces-sarily matter very much. The end resultwould be the same for everybody. In aprocess perspective, there would be more

leeway in the negotiation of transitionalsteps than in a static perspective, whereeach stage stands on its own and thefuture is open-ended. For instance, if a multilateral deal is struck in a staticperspective–this far, but no promise of going further–the nws are likely tobe more sensitive to competitive edgesand seek unilateral advantages. The lead-ing powers cannot then be expected torelinquish their lead generously. Morethan in a process perspective that is pur-sued in the name of global public good,old-fashioned power politics would bethe name of the game.

A static perspective, which regards disarmament not as a process but as astate of affairs, presents a problem simi-lar to a well-known question in integra-tion theory. Integration is also seen vari-ously as a process or a state of affairs. Inthe European Union, which has inspiredintegration theory more than any otherempirical setting, there is the recurrentquestion whether integration can stopand remain at some point without un-ravelling. Is there such a point of stabil-ity, or will stagnation be the beginning of reversal? The same question is per-tinent to the ½eld of disarmament. If the United States and Russia stay con-tent after having reduced their forces to 1,000 weapons all in all, losing sightof the objective of a nwfw, what willothers do? Will emerging powers go for equal numbers? Maybe not. Willmore states take an active interest in the nuclear weapon option? Maybe yes. Proliferation is more likely in a static context, where the nws contin-ue to demonstrate the signi½cance thatthey attach to nuclear arms, than in aprocess perspective, where prolifera-tors would confront an overwhelmingmajority of states set on the course ofcontinued disarmament. It is alwaysmore costly to act against an existing




trend. Stagnation may therefore lead toproliferation, which in turn may leadmore states to rearm.

The ½rst stage of the disarmamentprocess–U.S.-Russian cuts and missiledefense limitations in advance of mul-tilateral talks–does not presuppose any change of world order, but it im-plies a distinct shift from antagonistic to cooperative behavior. Subsequentstages require more of the same, grad-ually transforming the current securi-ty system based on nuclear deterrenceinto a system based on cooperation and mutual restraint. Arms control and disarmament can assume the role of catalyst and ampli½er of such a change.It has had that role before: starting in1986 with the Stockholm agreement oncon½dence and security-building mea-sures, it helped to move the world out of the Cold War.9 If it is widely recog-nized as a high-priority global publicgood, it may even become a driver of systemic change.

When multilateral reductions to thelow hundreds have been agreed, furthersteps will depend on fundamental world-order changes, for it is from that pointon that the question of how to live with-out nuclear deterrence becomes press-ing. Some are likely to stick to the viewthat it is safer to keep the weapons thanto take the risk of disarming, so a bettersystem must be developed to substitutefor it. Disarmament and world orderbecome twins–two sides of the samecoin. Would all nws be ready to engagein that endeavor? Would they proceedto discuss what version of a nwfw theyshould go for and how best to reach it?How conditional or categorical wouldthey be about it?

In thinking about how to sustain nu-clear disarmament and enhance interna-tional security, parallels have been drawn

to the so-called European concert afterthe Napoleonic Wars, when the Euro-pean powers undertook to respect eachother’s vital interests and exercise re-straint in a system characterized by bal-ance of power. Henry Kissinger, an au-thority on concert diplomacy, describesit as a system in which “the great powerswork together to enforce internationalnorms. . . . Common action grows out ofshared convictions. Power emerges froma sense of community and is exercisedby an allocation of responsibilities relat-ed to a country’s resources. It is a kind of world order either without a domi-nating power or in which the potential-ly dominating power leads through self-restraint.” Believing that the Obamaadministration favors some kind of con-cert diplomacy, he argues that Americanleadership will “result from the willing-ness to listen and to provide inspiration-al af½rmations (of norms).”10

A great-power concert may be predi-cated on equilibrium between the par-ticipating states or it may be based onconsensus. Generally, the former hasbeen considered less demanding thanthe latter, although there are few exam-ples of sustained operation of any ver-sion of power concerts. Today, how-ever, when power is shifting so rapidly, a lasting equilibrium is dead on arrival.Better then to focus on norms–normsof mutual respect and self-restraint em-bedded in a growing body of interna-tional law, with a view to building a plat-form for effective enforcement action.

The organizing framework in the nu-clear ½eld, the npt, suffers very muchfrom the lack of well-functioning en-forcement mechanisms. Not only is itdif½cult to forge consensus between the P5, but the un Security Council haslong been out of tune with the distribu-tion of power in the international sys-tem. Progress toward a nwfw requires


cooperative security between the big pow-ers with a view to more effective collectivesecurity mechanisms in the hands of theworld organization.

Globalization encourages develop-ment along these lines. Interdependenceis growing by the day and necessitatesbroad-based international cooperationon regulatory measures. The current eco-nomic crisis does the same. It absorbsthe energies of all the major powers, sothey need respite from international con-frontation. This is a period of opportuni-ty for international security cooperation.

In East Asia, rapidly growing econom-ic interdependence is a brake on securi-ty dynamics in the region. Use of forcewill come at tremendous costs to allinvolved. However, economic coopera-tion and security policies are conduct-ed along different trajectories. Econom-ic cooperation means interdependence,but it is pursued by sovereign states anddoes not translate into political integra-tion.

Europe is different in this respect.Starting from the interdependence ofthe Coal and Steel Union, integrationhas been going on for more than 50years. When the Cold War ended, theEuropean Union and Russia becamestrategic partners. Still, Russia and the Western nuclear powers threaten to be the ½rst to use nuclear weaponsagainst each other, and U.S. tacticalnuclear weapons remain deployed inEurope. There is no reasonable con-nection between the political sphere and existing nuclear doctrines. Many

elements of the nuclear postures havebecome anachronistic.

The danger of nuclear weapons use is probably highest in South Asia and the Middle East. These are volatile areas that call for combinations of re-gional measures and global initiatives.The political requirements of nucleardisarmament are therefore different for different parts of the world. Thenuclear arsenals evolved under differ-ent historical circumstances and havedifferent political meanings and utili-ties for their owners. Because the start-ing points are so different and becauselong-term disarmament is path-depen-dent, attempts to envisage how the pro-cess might unfold are easily overblown.

Thinking beyond multilateral talksabout arsenals in the low hundreds, the path-dependence of nuclear deter-rence blurs the picture. This paper nev-ertheless advances one speci½c propo-sition about disarmament below thatstage. Since stability concerns and bick-ering over numbers are likely to becomemore of a problem at very low levels,and since virtual arsenals are likely to be unstable, it may be wise to stay atminimum deterrence levels until nucle-ar weapons infrastructure and weapons-grade materials have been eliminated,and then go straight to a world belowzero.

For political leaders to act on complexrealities, the realities have to be simpli-½ed. Heuristic assumptions to that effectmay be flawed, but they are necessary tokeep the debate about the feasibility anddesirability of a nwfw alive.

ENDNOTES

1 http://www.huf½ngtonpost.com/2009/04/05/obama-prague-speech-on-nu_n_183219.html.

2 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-06-04-Obama-text_N.htm.




3 See also the second Shultz et al. op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008. A number of high-level statements have been made in support of this initiative, includingthe statement by German leaders (Bahr, Schmidt, Genscher, von Weizsacker); the state-ment by British leaders (Rifkind, Hurd, Owen, Robertson); the statement by Norwegianleaders (Bondevik, Brundtland, Nordli, Stoltenberg, Willoch); the statement by Austra-lian leaders (Fraser, Gration, Sanderson); the statement by Polish leaders (Kwasnievski,Walesa, Mazowiecki); the statement by Italian leaders (D’Alema, Fini, La Malfa, Parisi);the joint statement by Presidents Obama and Medvedev; the joint statement by Carter,Gorbachev, Beckett, Rocard, et al. (Global Zero); and the joint statement by NorwegianForeign Minister Støre and German Foreign Minister Steinmeier. These and other state-ments by a great many individual leaders show that the interest in reviving the objectiveof a nwfw has spread to the political mainstream also in countries that had not beenvery vocal on this matter in the past.

Of the many academic contributions to the debate, this paper draws, in particular, onGeorge Perkovich and James Acton, eds., Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Washing-ton, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2009). Perkovich andActon’s own contribution to that volume was ½rst published as an Adelphi Paper in Sep-tember 2008.

4 George Perkovich, “Principles for Reforming the Nuclear Order,” Proliferation Papers,ifri Security Studies Center, Fall 2008.

5 Harald Muller, “The Importance of Framework Conditions,” in Abolishing Nuclear Weap-ons, ed. Perkovich and Acton.

6 Weapons loaded on heavy bombers or stored in weapons storage areas at heavy bomberbases are counted as operational strategic weapons.

7 It is estimated that about 8,800 weapons are held in reserve or have been slated for dis-mantlement.

8 As of 2008; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (sipri), sipri Yearbook2008 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

9 Harald Muller, “The Future of Nuclear Weapons in an Interdependent World,” The Wash-ington Quarterly (Spring 2008).

10 Henry Kissinger, “Obama’s Foreign Policy Challenge,” The Washington Post, April 22, 2009.


Secretary of State Dean Acheson wasonce asked to de½ne foreign policy.1 Hethought a moment and replied, “Foreignpolicy is one damn thing after another.”I realized at a relatively young age thatnuclear weapons were not just anotherthing, but that indeed they held hostagethe future of mankind. I was a 24-year-old lawyer for the House Armed ServicesCommittee on a three-week air force tripto Europe when the Cuban Missile Crisisbroke out. During that period, while theworld held its breath, our delegation met at Ramstein Air Base in Germanywith the head of the U.S. Air Forces inEurope. The general explained that inthe event of war, he had only a couple of minutes to launch all of what wereknown as quick-reaction aircraft, or they would be destroyed. These planesand forward bases were the ½rst targetsfor the Soviets because they would de-liver the ½rst nuclear weapons to strikethe Soviet Union, or at least that is whatthe Soviet Union anticipated. The factthat the fate of mankind rested on theshoulders of only a few people on eachside who had only a few moments to de-cide whether to launch nuclear weap-ons made a lasting impression on me.

I pledged to myself then that if I ever had a chance to work on the problem, I was going to tackle it.

Today the Cold War is over, but weface new nuclear dangers. I believe thatthe greatest danger we face is the pos-sibility of a catastrophic nuclear attackby a terrorist group that does not have areturn address and therefore is unlikelyto be deterred. The accelerating spreadof nuclear weapons, nuclear materials,and nuclear know-how has brought us to a nuclear tipping point. Indeed, we are in a race between cooperation andcatastrophe. If we are to continue toavoid a catastrophe, all nuclear powerswill have to be highly capable, careful,competent, rational–and if things gowrong, lucky–every single time. Indiaand Pakistan have already had more than one close call, and their nuclear age has just begun.

I frequently ask myself two questions:the day after a nuclear attack on one ofthe cities of the world, what would wewish we had done to prevent it? Andwhy aren’t we doing it now?

We do have important efforts underway as well as some important successes,including the Nunn-Lugar CooperativeThreat Reduction program, the GlobalThreat Reduction Initiative, the Prolifer-ation Security Initiative, and the Global


Sam Nunn

Taking steps toward a world free of nuclear weapons



Sam Nunnon the globalnuclearfuture

Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism.These programs mark progress and po-tential, but the risk of a nuclear weaponbeing used today is growing, not reced-ing. The storm clouds are gathering:

• Terrorists are seeking nuclear weapons,and there can be little doubt that if they acquire a weapon they will use it.

• There are nuclear weapons materials, some secured by nothing more than a chain-link fence, in more than 40 countries; at the current pace, it will be decades before this material is ade-quately secured or eliminated globally.

• The expertise to build nuclear weaponsis far more available today because of an explosion of information and com-merce throughout the world.

• The number of nuclear-weapons states is increasing. A world with 12 or 20 nuclear-weapons states will be immea-surably more dangerous than today’s world and will make it more likely that weapons or materials to make them will fall into the hands of terrorists with no return address. Developments in cyberterrorism pose new threats thatcould have disastrous consequences if the command-and-control systems of any nuclear-weapons state are compro-mised.

• With the growing interest in nuclear energy, a number of countries are con-sidering developing the capacity to en-rich uranium to use as fuel for nuclear energy; but this would also give them the capacity to move quickly to a nu-clear weapons program if they chose to do so.

• Meanwhile, the United States and Rus-sia continue to deploy thousands of nu-clear weapons on ballistic missiles that can hit their targets in less than 30 min-

utes, encouraging both sides to con-tinue a prompt-launch capability that carries with it an increasingly unac-ceptable risk of an accidental, mistak-en, or unauthorized launch.

The bottom line: the world is heading ina very dangerous direction.

With these growing dangers in mind,former U.S. Secretaries of State GeorgeShultz and Henry Kissinger, former U.S.Secretary of Defense William Perry, andI published an op-ed in The Wall StreetJournal in January 20072 and a follow-uppiece in January 20083 that called for adifferent direction in our global nuclearpolicy. We proposed steps that would lay the groundwork for a world free ofnuclear threat. We called for building asolid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally.

We are all keenly aware that the questfor a world free of nuclear weapons isfraught with many practical challenges.We have taken aim at those challengesby laying out a number of steps, which I believe are doable even though they are very dif½cult. We cannot reduce nu-clear dangers without taking these steps.We cannot take these steps without thecooperation of other nations. We can-not get the cooperation of other nationswithout the shared vision of eradicat-ing these weapons and their threat to the world. Indeed, even a quick glance at the steps we proposed in our two WallStreet Journal essays reveals that none ofthe steps can be accomplished by theUnited States and our close allies alone:

• Changing nuclear force postures in the United States and Russia to great-ly increase warning time and ease our ½ngers away from the nuclear trigger;

• Reducing substantially the nuclear forces in all states that possess them;

• Moving toward developing cooperativemultilateral ballistic-missile defense and early warning systems, which will reduce tensions over defensive systems and enhance the possibility of progress in other areas;

• Eliminating short-range “tactical” nuclear weapons, beginning with ac-countability and transparency among the United States, nato, and Russia;

• Working to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force, in the Unit-ed States and in other key states;

• Securing nuclear weapons and mate-rials around the world to the highest standards;

• Developing a multinational approach to civil nuclear fuel production, phas-ing out the use of highly enriched ura-nium in civil commerce, and halting the production of ½ssile material for weapons;

• Enhancing veri½cation and enforce-ment capabilities–and our political will to do both;

• Building an international consensus behind ways to deter and, when neces-sary, strongly and effectively respond to countries that breach their commit-ments.

Many people’s reaction to the vision of a world without nuclear weaponscomes in two parts. On the one hand,most people say, “Boy, that would begreat”; on the other, “We simply can’tget there from here.” But there is hope.In the 1990s, under Bill Perry’s capableleadership as the Secretary of Defense,we made a deal to buy highly enricheduranium from Russian warheads thatwere aimed at the United States, blend it down, make it into nuclear fuel, anduse it in our power plants. Today, after

a number of years working on that pro-gram, we have made tremendous prog-ress. If you think about it, approximately20 percent of the electricity in the Unit-ed States is supplied by nuclear power;50 percent of the nuclear fuel that goesinto that nuclear power is supplied byhighly enriched uranium that has beenblended into low-enriched uranium and made into nuclear fuel that 20 or 25years ago was in warheads aimed at theUnited States. So when you look at thelights in any room in America, theoreti-cally 10 percent of those light bulbs arefueled by material that was in the formof weapons aimed at America in the1970s and the 1980s. Swords to plow-shares: we have hope.

When I think about the goal of a worldfree of nuclear weapons, to me it is like a very tall mountain. It is tempting andeasy to say we can’t get there from here.It is true that today our troubled worldcannot even see the top of the moun-tain. But we can see that we are headingdown, not up; we can see that we mustturn around, that we must take pathsleading to higher ground, and that wemust get others to move with us. It isurgent for the survival of humanity thatwe stop our descent and ½nd paths upthe mountain toward a world free ofnuclear weapons.


Taking stepstoward a world free of nuclear weapons


Sam Nunnon the globalnuclearfuture

ENDNOTES

1 This essay is based on remarks made by Senator Nunn at the American Academy of Artsand Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 12, 2008, and at the AmericanAcademy in Berlin, Germany, on June 12, 2008.

2 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007.

3 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward aNuclear-Free World,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008.

Interest in nuclear disarmament hasgrown rapidly in recent years. Startingwith the 2007 Wall Street Journal article by four former U.S. statesmen–GeorgeShultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry,and Sam Nunn–and followed by en-dorsements from similar sets of formerleaders from the United Kingdom, Ger-many, Poland, Australia, and Italy, thesupport for global nuclear disarmamenthas spread.1 The Japanese and Austra-lian governments announced the cre-ation of the International Commissionon Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Dis-armament in June 2008. Both SenatorsJohn McCain and Barack Obama explic-itly supported the vision of a world freeof nuclear weapons during the 2008election campaign. In April 2009, at the London Summit, President BarackObama and President Dmitri Medved-ev called for pragmatic U.S. and Rus-sian steps toward nuclear disarmament,and President Obama then dramatical-ly reaf½rmed “clearly and with convic-tion America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world with-out nuclear weapons” in his speech inPrague.

There is a simple explanation for thesestatements supporting nuclear disarma-

ment: all states that have joined the Nu-clear Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt) are committed “to pursue negotiationsin good faith on effective measures relat-ing to cessation of the nuclear arms raceat an early date and to nuclear disarma-ment.” In the United States, moreover,under Clause 2 of Article 6 of the Con-stitution, a treaty commitment is “thesupreme Law of the Land.” To af½rm the U.S. commitment to seek a worldwithout nuclear weapons is thereforesimply promising that the U.S. govern-ment will follow U.S. law.

A closer reading of these various dec-larations, however, reveals both thecomplexity of motives and the multiplic-ity of fears behind the current surge insupport of nuclear disarmament. Somedeclarations emphasize concerns thatthe current behavior of nuclear-weap-ons states (nws) signals to non-nuclear-weapons states (nnws) that they, too,will need nuclear weapons in the futureto meet their national security require-ments. Other disarmament advocatesstress the growth of global terrorism and the need to reduce the number ofweapons and the amount of ½ssile mate-rial that could be stolen or sold to terror-ist groups. Some argue that the risk ofnuclear weapons accidents or launch-ing nuclear missiles on false warning


Scott D. Sagan

Shared responsibilities for nuclear disarmament

© 2009 by Scott D. Sagan


Scott D.Saganon the globalnuclearfuture

cannot be entirely eliminated, despitesustained efforts to do so, and thus be-lieve that nuclear deterrence will inev-itably fail over time, especially if largearsenals are maintained and new nu-clear states, with weak command-and-control systems, emerge.

Perhaps the most widespread moti-vation for disarmament is the belief that future progress by the nws to disarm will strongly influence the fu-ture willingness of the nnws to staywithin the npt. If this is true, then the choice we face for the future is notbetween the current nuclear order of eight or nine nws and a nuclear-weap-ons-free world. Rather, the choice weface is between moving toward a nu-clear-weapons-free world or, to bor-row Henry Rowen’s phrase, “movingtoward life in a nuclear armed crowd.”2

There are, of course, many critics ofthe nuclear disarmament vision. Somecritics focus on the problems of how to prevent nuclear weapons “breakout”scenarios in a future world in whichmany more countries are “latent” nws

because of the spread of uranium en-richment and plutonium reprocessingcapabilities to meet the global demandfor fuel for nuclear power reactors. Others have expressed fears that deepnuclear arms reductions will inadver-tently lead to nuclear proliferation byencouraging U.S. allies currently liv-ing under “the U.S. nuclear umbrella” of extended deterrence to pursue theirown nuclear weapons for national se-curity reasons. Other critics worry about the “instability of small num-bers” problem, fearing that conven-tional wars would break out in a nu-clear disarmed world, and that this risks a rapid nuclear rearmament race by former nws that would lead to nu-clear ½rst use and victory by the moreprepared government.

Some critics of disarmament falselycomplain about nonexistent proposalsfor U.S. unilateral disarmament. FrankGaffney, for example, asserts that therehas been “a 17-year-long unilateral U.S.nuclear freeze” and claims that Presi-dent Obama “stands to transform the‘world’s only superpower’ into a nucle-ar impotent.”3 More serious critics fo-cus on those problems–the growth and potential breakout of latent nws,the future of extended deterrence, theenforcement of disarmament, and thepotential instability of small numbers–that concern mutual nuclear disarma-ment. These legitimate concerns mustbe addressed in a credible manner ifsigni½cant progress is to be made to-ward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world.

To address these problems adequate-ly, the current nuclear disarmament ef-fort must be transformed from a debateamong leaders in the nws to a coordi-nated global effort of shared responsi-bilities between nws and nnws. Thisessay outlines a new conceptual frame-work that is needed to encourage nws

and nnws to share responsibilities fordesigning a future nuclear-fuel-cycle re-gime, rethinking extended deterrence,and addressing nuclear breakout dan-gers while simultaneously contributingto the eventual elimination of nuclearweapons.

The npt is often described as a grandbargain between nws and nnws. Thennws, it is said, agreed not to acquirenuclear weapons in exchange for the “inalienable right,” under Article IV ofthe Treaty, to acquire civilian nuclearpower technology under internationalnonproliferation safeguards and thepromise by the nws, under Article VIof the Treaty, to work in good faith toeliminate eventually all of their nuclear

weapons. Wolfgang Panofsky, for exam-ple, argued:

Non-nuclear Weapons States were en-joined from acquiring nuclear weaponsand Nuclear Weapons States were forbid-den to transfer nuclear weapons and thewherewithal to make them to an nnws.To compensate for this obvious discrim-inatory division of the world’s nations,nnws were assured that they had an“inalienable right” to the peaceful appli-cation of nuclear energy, and the nws

obligated themselves in Article VI of the treaty to work in good faith towardnuclear disarmament.4

In his 2009 Prague speech, PresidentObama similarly maintained that “thebasic bargain is sound: Countries withnuclear weapons will move towards dis-armament, countries without nuclearweapons will not acquire them, and allcountries can access peaceful nuclearenergy.”

These statements correctly highlightthe important linkage between nucleardisarmament and nuclear nonprolifera-tion. But framing the linkage in this way–with nws seen as responsible for dis-armament and nnws responsible foraccepting nonproliferation safeguardson their nuclear power programs–is historically inaccurate and politicallyunfortunate. It is historically inaccuratebecause both Article IV and Article VIwere written to apply to both the nws

and the nnws. This common descrip-tion of the Treaty is unfortunate becauseit limits the prospects for crafting a morecomprehensive and more equitable im-plementation of the basic npt bargains,based on shared responsibilities be-tween nws and nnws, in the future.

Article IV of the npt simply states,“Nothing in this Treaty shall be inter-preted as affecting the inalienable right

of all the Parties to the Treaty to devel-op research, production and use of nu-clear energy for peaceful purposes with-out discrimination and in conformitywith Articles I and II of this Treaty.” The expected global expansion of nu-clear power, however, will lead to in-creasing demand for enriched uraniumand reprocessed plutonium around theglobe; a crucial question for future se-curity therefore is whether the spread of nuclear power will lead to the spreadof enrichment and plutonium fuel-pro-duction facilities. Mohamed ElBaradeihas been particularly forceful in warn-ing of the security risks inherent in such a world of multiple “virtual nucle-ar weapons states,” arguing for “a newinternational or multinational approachto the fuel cycle so as to avoid ending upwith not just nine nuclear weapon Statesbut another 20 or 30 States which havethe capacity to develop nuclear weaponsin a very short span of time.”5 GeorgePerkovich and James Acton agree, not-ing that the nws are unlikely to take the ½nal steps toward complete disar-mament if there are many states thatcould quickly get nuclear weapons ma-terial from their own national urani-um or plutonium production facilities. “If no acceptable form of regulation can be established for the proliferation-sensitive activities that many stateswhich today promote disarmament are seeking to conduct,” they argue, “the abolition of nuclear weapons may not prove possible.”6

Many proposals exist for differentforms of multinational fuel-cycle facil-ities (plants owned and operated by multiple states) or international facili-ties (plants owned and operated by aninternational organization). Govern-ments of many nnws, however, as wellas some nuclear technology exporters,argue that creating any constraints


Sharedresponsi-bilities for nucleardisarma-ment



on the national production of nuclearfuels would violate the “inalienableright” mentioned in Article IV. As Al-bert Wohlstetter once noted, it is as ifsome diplomats believe that all stateshave “a new natural right to Life, Lib-erty, and the Pursuit of Plutonium.”7

Three important points about Arti-cle IV become clearer if one probes a lit-tle more deeply. First, this “inalienableright” is in reality a conditional right,dependent upon the state in questionbeing “in conformity” with Articles Iand II of the npt. It is too often forgot-ten in the debate over the Iranian nu-clear program, for example, that a statethat is not behaving “in conformity”with its Article II commitment “not to seek or receive any assistance in themanufacture of nuclear weapons” has at least temporarily sacri½ced its rightsto acquire civilian nuclear technologyunder Article IV. The Board of Gover-nors of the International Atomic EnergyAgency (iaea) decides whether or not a state is in compliance with its speci½csafeguards commitments. But the iaea

does not determine the appropriate re-sponse to a safeguards violation that isnot remedied in a timely fashion; in-stead, it reports any such case of non-compliance to the un Security Counciland the General Assembly–as it did in2004 with respect to Libya and in 2006with respect to Iran–and then the Se-curity Council must decide on appro-priate responses.8

Second, Article IV refers to “all the Parties to the Treaty,” not just the nnws.This should lead to increased opportu-nities to share responsibility for nonpro-liferation and disarmament, for it sug-gests that as part of their Article IV com-mitment, the nws should reaf½rm thatinternational safeguards can eventually be placed on all of their nuclear powerplants and enrichment and reprocessing

facilities. Indeed, such an agreement inprinciple, with an exception for facilitieswith “direct national security signi½-cance,” was in fact made by PresidentLyndon Johnson in 1967, as a major com-promise during the npt negotiations.9Reaf½rming this commitment, as a re-sponsibility under Article IV, should beeasy to accept in principle; after all, ifnws are committed to working in goodfaith toward nuclear disarmament, atsome point they would become, to coinan acronym, fnws (former nuclear-weapons states), and the safeguard ex-ceptions they currently maintain wouldno longer apply.

In practice, it would be helpful fornws to go beyond reaf½rmations andexpressions of principle and pick one or more model facilities to place underadvanced safeguards, to demonstratefuture intentions and help create bestpractices. Strict safeguards on existingnuclear-fuel production facilities in the nws are not really necessary todayto ensure that the materials from theplants are not diverted for nuclearweapons, since nws already have suf-½cient ½ssile materials from their mili-tary nuclear production programs. Butplacing new facilities under iaea safe-guards would signal equitable treat-ment and a long-term commitment todisarmament. Similar safeguards willalso be needed if a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (fmct), ending the produc-tion of materials for weapons, is suc-cessfully negotiated, though in this casethe veri½cation and safeguarding func-tions would be best handled (at least ini-tially) by a new organization of inspec-tors from nws, rather than the iaea, soas to limit access into sensitive formerweapons-material production facilities.

Third, responsibilities for sharing the½nancial support of iaea internationalsafeguards can be improved. Today, each



iaea member state pays into a regularbudget of the Agency, from which theSafeguards Division draws funds for itsinspection programs; but the Agency is strapped for funds to deal with thecurrent level of inspections, and will be much more so if nuclear power con-tinues to expand as expected and if themore intrusive regime required by theAgreed Protocol, which calls for ad-vanced inspections, comes into force.One approach that has been advocated is to have states pay more into the iaea

safeguards budget in proportion to thenumber and kinds of facilities they haveon their soil that are subject to inspec-tion. This approach, however, places the½nancial burden only on the state thatbene½ts from the nuclear power plant orfuel facility in question and ignores thatthe nonproliferation bene½ts of the safe-guards are shared by all states. A betterapproach would be to have all govern-ments–both nws and nnws, and bothstates with nuclear power programs andthose without nuclear power–substan-tially increase their funding support for the iaea, to enhance its future safe-guards capabilities. Indeed, it would bepossible to have private industry andeven philanthropic organizations inter-ested in promoting more safe and secureuse of nuclear power also contribute tothe iaea safeguards budget.10

Article VI of the npt states in full,“Each of the Parties to the Treaty un-dertakes to pursue negotiations in goodfaith on effective measures relating tocessation of the nuclear arms race at anearly date and to nuclear disarmament,and on a treaty on general and completedisarmament under strict and effectiveinternational control.” Many diplomatsfrom nnws have complained at virtual-ly every npt review conference that thenws have not done enough to meet

their disarmament commitments, andthe May 2009 npt Preparatory Com-mittee meeting was not unusual in thatregard. The nnws complaints are notwithout some merit, for the recent Bushadministration did not follow throughon some of the disarmament-relatedcommitments (most speci½cally, seek-ing rati½cation of the ComprehensiveTest Ban Treaty) that previous admin-istrations had made at npt review con-ferences.11 In addition, some formerU.S. government of½cials have unhelp-fully claimed that the United Statesnever really intended to keep its ArticleVI commitments. Former cia DirectorJohn Deutch, for example, asserted inForeign Affairs in 2005 that Washingtonwas “unwise” “to commit under Article6 of the Nonproliferation Treaty [npt]‘to pursue good-faith negotiations’ to-ward complete disarmament, a goal ithas no intention of pursuing.”12 TheBush administration’s 2001 U.S. Nu-clear Posture Review was also widelyinterpreted to signal movement awayfrom the npt commitment to nucleardisarmament because the documentdeclared that U.S. nuclear weapons“possess unique capabilities . . . to hold at risk targets [that are] important toachieve strategic and political objec-tives”; it called for the development ofnew nuclear warheads; and it outlined a strategy of “dissuasion,” the policy ofmaintaining such a large advantage inmilitary forces, including nuclear, thatother states would be dissuaded fromeven considering entering into a mili-tary arms competition with the UnitedStates.

Many diplomats and scholars havespoken about the speci½c arms-con-trol and disarmament steps the Unit-ed States and other nws could take to demonstrate that they are pursuingtheir Article VI commitments more se-



riously. Missing from this debate is a discussion of what the nnws can do tohelp in the disarmament process. Look-ing at shared responsibilities points totwo speci½c ways in which the nnws

can better honor their Article VI com-mitments.

First, just as nws and nnws shouldshare responsibilities for funding the in-creasingly advanced international safe-guards necessary for nuclear power facil-ities, the nws and nnws should bothcontribute signi½cantly to funding thenecessary major research and develop-ment effort for improved monitoringand veri½cation technologies that will be needed if nuclear disarmament is toprogress to very low numbers of weap-ons. In October 2008, the British gov-ernment invited the governments of theother npt-recognized nuclear states–the United States, Russia, France, andChina–to participate in a major tech-nical conference examining future veri-½cation challenges and opportunities.Even more importantly, the British gov-ernment recognized that R&D for dis-armament veri½cation must not occur in “splendid isolation,” and so jointlysponsored test programs with the Nor-wegian government laboratories to iden-tify promising technologies that wouldpermit Norway and other nnws to bemore directly involved in implement-ing and monitoring future global nucle-ar disarmament.13

Second, focusing on shared respon-sibilities helps identify a more direct and stronger linkage between Article VIand Article IV of the npt. Because nws

will be less likely to accept deep reduc-tions to zero (or close to zero) if thereare more and more states with latentnuclear-weapons capability because ofthe spread of uranium enrichment andplutonium reprocessing technologies,nnws have both an individual interest

and a collective responsibility to makesure that constraints are placed on sen-sitive fuel-cycle facilities. In short, thennws should recognize that enteringinto negotiations about internationalcontrol of the nuclear fuel cycle is anessential part of their Article VI commit-ment “to pursue negotiations in goodfaith on effective measures relating tocessation of the nuclear arms race.”

A third common criticism of the dis-armament goal is that nuclear force re-ductions might back½re, inadvertentlyencouraging nuclear proliferation, byundercutting U.S. extended deterrentcommitments. In September 2008, forexample, Secretary of Energy SamuelBodman and Secretary of Defense Rob-ert Gates declared that “the UnitedStates will need to maintain a nuclearforce . . . for the foreseeable future,” bas-ing this position in part on the need toprotect U.S. non-nuclear allies:

The role nuclear forces play in the deter-rence of attack against allies remains anessential instrument of U.S. nonprolifera-tion policy by signi½cantly reducing theincentives for a number of allied countriesto acquire nuclear weapons for their own.. . . In the absence of this “nuclear umbrel-la,” some non-nuclear allies might per-ceive a need to develop and deploy theirown nuclear capability.14

The term “nuclear umbrella,” how-ever, should be deleted from the strate-gic lexicon used by government of½cialsand scholars alike. It connotes a defen-sive, passive strategy–as if Japan, SouthKorea, and nato countries were pro-tected by some kind of missile defenseshield–rather than the threat of retal-iation with nuclear weapons against astate that attacks a U.S. ally. Even moreimportantly, the nuclear umbrella termdoes not differentiate between two very

different kinds of extended deterrencepolicies: a U.S. commitment to use nu-clear weapons ½rst, if necessary, to de-fend an ally if it is attacked by an ene-my who uses conventional forces, bio-logical or chemical weapons, or nuclearweapons; and a more tailored U.S. com-mitment to use U.S. nuclear weapons inretaliation against only a nuclear attackon an ally. The ½rst form of extended de-terrence was the U.S. Cold War policy in nato and in East Asia and remainslargely intact today despite the end ofthe Cold War.

Adopting the second form of extend-ed deterrence–maintaining commit-ments to joint defense but limiting thethreat of nuclear weapons use to retal-iation against nuclear attacks on allies–would not necessarily lead to the nucle-ar proliferation cascade that Gates andBodman seem to fear. Indeed, a moretargeted U.S. nuclear guarantee, if im-plemented properly after alliance con-sultation, could have a number of pos-itive strategic effects. First, such achange might be welcomed by thoseallies who continue to value allied con-ventional military commitments, butfeel that ½rst-use nuclear threats en-courage nuclear proliferation elsewherein the world. A more targeted nuclearguarantee would also make U.S. nucle-ar weapons doctrine consistent withNegative Security Assurances (nsas)–commitments not to use nuclear weap-ons against nnws–which all ½ve npt-recognized nws have made at past npt

review conferences and at the un Secu-rity Council in 1995. In addition, aban-doning U.S. threats to use nuclear weap-ons in response to another state usingchemical or biological weapons againstthe United States or our allies could be followed by more credible deterrentthreats to respond with devastating con-ventional military retaliation, and with

a commitment to isolate and overthrowany leader who uses outlawed chemicalor biological weapons. Finally, limitingthe role of U.S. nuclear weapons to de-terrence of other states’ use of nuclearweapons would signal strong support for the eventual elimination of all nu-clear weapons, for if such a no-½rst-usenuclear doctrine became universally ac-cepted, the existing nws could moreeasily coordinate moving in tandem tolower and equal levels of nuclear weap-ons on the road to zero.

Such a change in U.S. and other pow-ers’ nuclear doctrine will not be easilyaccepted by all allies, nor will it be easyto implement within military establish-ments. nato of½cial doctrine, for ex-ample, which has not been revised since1999, continues to assert (though it doesnot prove) that nuclear weapons remaincritical for a variety of threat scenarios:“[T]he Alliance’s conventional forcesalone cannot ensure credible deterrence.Nuclear weapons make a unique contri-bution in rendering the risks of aggres-sion against the Alliance incalculableand unacceptable. Thus, they remainessential to preserve peace.”15 Interest in maintaining an expansive form of extended deterrence remains strong inEast Asia as well. Ambassador YukioSatoh, for example, correctly notes that the Japanese government’s of½cial“Defense Program Outline” states onlythat “to protect its territory and peopleagainst the threat of nuclear weapons,Japan will continue to rely on the U.S.nuclear deterrent”; but Satoh has alsorecommended that the United Statesshould now threaten to retaliate withnuclear weapons if North Korea useschemical or biological weapons in anyfuture conflict.16

The major responsibility for reduc-ing the roles and missions that nuclearweapons play in the doctrines of the



nuclear powers clearly falls on the gov-ernments of those nations. PresidentObama called for precisely such doctri-nal change in his 2009 Prague speech,promising that “to put an end to ColdWar thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national se-curity strategy.” This will require thatU.S. politicians and military of½cers stop leaning on the crutch of nuclearweapons to shore up deterrence, even in situations in which the credibility of such threats is vanishingly thin. Dur-ing the 2008 U.S. election primary cam-paign, for example, Senators HillaryClinton and Christopher Dodd both criticized then Senator Obama for say-ing that he would not consider usingU.S. nuclear weapons to attack al Qae-da targets inside Pakistan (a U.S. ally),arguing, in Clinton’s words, “I don’tbelieve that any president should makeany blanket statements with respect to the use or non use of nuclear weap-ons.”17 In May 2009, General KevinChilton, the commander of the U.S.Strategic Command, took the “all op-tions are on the table” argument to anew level, threatening U.S. nuclear re-taliation in response to cyber attacks: “I think you don’t take any responseoptions off the table from an attack onthe United States of America. . . . And Idon’t see any reason to treat cyber anydifferently. I mean, why would we tie the president’s hands?”18

While the United States and othernws should take the ½rst steps to reducetheir reliance on nuclear weapons, thereis much that nnws can do to encourageand enable new nuclear doctrines to beadopted, in the spirit of shared responsi-bilities for nuclear disarmament. First,nnws that are members of U.S. allian-ces can stop asking to be reassured aboutnoncredible military options. This is nota new problem. Indeed, although the

global strategic context is different,Henry Kissinger alluded to a similardynamic when he admonished the nato alliance back in 1979:

We must face the fact that it is absurd to base the strategy of the West on thecredibility of the threat of mutual sui-cide. . . . Don’t you Europeans keep ask-ing us to multiply assurances that we cannot possibly mean; and that if wemean them, we should not want to ex-ecute; and that if we execute, we’ll de-stroy civilization. That is our strate-gic dilemma, into which we have builtourselves by our own theory and by the encouragement of our allies.19

Second, it would be helpful if thennws that are not members of U.S.alliances would spend as much time condemning states that are caught vio-lating their commitments not to devel-op chemical or biological weapons asthey do complaining that the nsas of-fered at the npt review conferencesshould be legally binding. Finally, thoseU.S. allies that remain concerned aboutconventional or chemical and biologicalthreats to their national security should,as part of their Article VI disarmamentcommitment, help to develop the con-ventional forces and defensive systemsthat could wean themselves away fromexcessive reliance on U.S. nuclear weap-ons for extended deterrence.20

The ½nal argument against nuclear dis-armament concerns breakout scenariosand the challenge of enforcement. Har-old Brown and John Deutch, for exam-ple, have argued that “[p]roliferatingstates, even if they abandoned these de-vices under resolute international pres-sure, would still be able to clandestinelyretain a few of their existing weapons–or maintain a standby, break-out capa-bility to acquire a few weapons quick-



ly, if needed.”21 The breakout problem,however, applies to both new potentialproliferators and former nws that havedisarmed in a nuclear-free world. Thom-as Schelling and Charles Glaser havemade similar arguments about “the in-stability of small numbers,” fearing nu-clear use would be more likely at the ½-nal stages of disarmament or after nucle-ar disarmament occurs, because stateswould engage in arms races to get nucle-ar weapons in any subsequent crisis andthe winner in any such arms race woulduse its nuclear weapons with less fear ofnuclear retaliation.22

These are legitimate concerns, andaddressing the challenges of veri½ca-tion and enforcement of disarmamentshould be a high priority for future dis-armament efforts. How can a vision ofshared responsibility between the nws

and nnws help address these vexingproblems? First, nws and nnws

should work together to punish the vio-lators of currently existing nonprolifer-ation agreements. North Korea violatedits npt commitments by secretly tak-ing nuclear material out of the Yongby-on reactor complex in the 1990s and bycovertly starting a uranium enrichmentprogram with the assistance of Pakistan.Iran similarly was caught in violation ofits npt safeguards agreement in 2002,when the covert Natanz enrichment fa-cility was discovered and evidence ofnuclear weapons-related research waslater released by the U.S. intelligencecommunity. Finally, Syria was caughtviolating its npt commitments in 2007,when Israeli intelligence discovered acovert nuclear reactor under construc-tion. More consistent pressure by all ½ve permanent members of the un Se-curity Council (the P5 are the UnitedStates, Russia, China, France, and theUnited Kingdom) should be matched bymore uniform support by the nnws at

the iaea and in the un Security Councilto create stronger resolutions condemn-ing these violations and imposing sanc-tions on the violators. Such a display ofshared responsibilities would both helpresolve these proliferation crises and setbetter precedents for future challenges.

Second, the nnws and nws need towork together more effectively to reducethe risks of nuclear weapons breakout in the future. To help deter withdrawalfrom the npt, the un Security Councilcould adopt a binding resolution statingthat it would consider any case in whicha state withdraws from the npt, afterbeing found to be in noncompliancewith its safeguards agreements, to con-stitute a threat to international peaceand security under the un charter. TheNuclear Suppliers Group and the iaea

could also discourage future withdraw-als from the npt by making all futuresales of sensitive nuclear facilities sub-ject to safeguards agreements that donot lapse if a state withdraws from thenpt and including a “return to sender”clause in which the recipient state wouldbe required to close down the facilitiesand return the sensitive technology andnuclear materials to the country of ori-gin as soon as possible.23

It is often forgotten, however, thatthere is a logical link between Article VI and Article X of the npt. It will bedif½cult for the existing nws to take the ½nal steps of nuclear disarmamentwithout more con½dence that nnws

will not withdraw from the Treaty in the future. It will also be dif½cult for the nnws to accept constraints on theirArticle X rights without more con½-dence that the existing nuclear powerswill actually implement disarmament in ways that are dif½cult for them to re-verse. At future npt review conferences,the nws and nnws should thereforeaddress how best to promote increased





veri½cation and transparency and to re-duce incentives for npt withdrawal anddisarmament reversal as part of theirjoint responsibilities to work in goodfaith toward a nuclear-free world.

Efforts to prevent cheating on npt

commitments or future disarmamentagreements may fail, of course, andstronger enforcement mechanismstherefore need to be considered. Thereare, fortunately, strong logical reasons to be optimistic about the prospects forenforcement in a nuclear-free world: insuch a world, the major powers, whichwould include both traditional nnws

and new former nws, would take viola-tions more seriously because small-scalecheating would pose an even greater riskto their security than is the case now.Today, the existence of large arsenals inthe United States and Russia, and argu-ably in other nws as well, encouragessome leaders to be complacent about the spread of nuclear weapons to newnations. Faith in the strength of nucleardeterrence leads some policy-makers to believe that North Korea or Iran, forexample, will be deterred from everusing their nuclear weapons if the cur-rent negotiations fail. In a nuclear-freeworld, however, such deterrence opti-mism would be far less likely, and allmajor powers would share deeper fears of the emergence of new nuclearstates.24 The temptation for buck-pass-ing would remain, but the faith that nu-clear deterrence would constrain a vio-lator would not, and new institutionalarrangements for coordinating decision-making on sanctions and conventionalmilitary operations, perhaps through the un Security Council, could help produce more effective enforcement of nonproliferation and disarmament.

Finally, it should be noted that in anuclear-weapons-free world, formernws will retain the option of withdraw-

ing from any disarmament agreement.The possibility of rearmament, however,is both a potential problem for stability,if a conventional war or deep crisis oc-curs between two latent nuclear states,and a potential source of stability, foreach latent nuclear state will know thatif it rushes to rearm, others may do so as well. “Irreversibility” is often cited as a key objective in any nuclear disar-mament agreement (for example, thisgoal was cited in the 13 Practical Stepsagreed to at the 2000 npt Review Con-ference). Yet in a world without nucle-ar weapons, the former nws would be“more latent” than others who did nothave their technological expertise or op-erational experience, and an objective in the ½nal negotiations in the global disarmament process must be to createstronger veri½cation and monitoringcapabilities to provide con½dence thatone state could not start the rearma-ment process without others observ-ing such actions. Nuclear deterrencewould still exist in a nuclear-weapons-free world, but it would be of a muchmore recessed and latent form thanexists today.

Some are pessimistic about the pros-pects for latent nuclear deterrence, be-lieving that it is inherently less stablethan the current form of active nucleardeterrence. Sir Michael Quinlan, forexample, argued that “it is sometimessuggested that the very fact of this re-constitution risk would serve as a deter-rent to war–weaponless deterrence, ithas been called, a sort of deterrence atone remove. But that implies a world-wide and long-sighted wisdom on which it would surely be imprudent to count.”25 Quinlan was certainly cor-rect to remain skeptical about the de-gree we can ensure that “worldwide and long-sighted wisdom” will exist in the future world without nuclear

weapons. But surely the same argu-ment holds true, and in spades, for a future world with many states hold-ing nuclear arsenals. We cannot designan international system in which wis-dom and prudence are guaranteed. A nuclear-free world would, however,reduce the consequences of individu-al failures of wisdom and prudence.

The technical and political challengesthat confront proponents of nuclear dis-armament are complex and serious. It

is therefore by no means clear that thenws will be able to overcome thesechallenges to achieve the goal of com-plete nuclear disarmament. What isclear, though, is that the existing nws

cannot reach the summit of a nuclear-free world without the active partner-ship of the current nnws. The nws

and nnws have a shared responsibil-ity for nuclear disarmament in the fu-ture, and will share a common fate ifthey fail to cooperate more effectively.



ENDNOTES

1 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free ofNuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, and “Toward a Nuclear-FreeWorld,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008; Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, DavidOwen, and George Robinson, “Stop Worrying and Learn to Ditch the Bomb,” The Times(London), June 30, 2008; Alexander Kwasnewski, Tadeusz Mazowieki, and Lech Walesa,“The Vanishing Bomb,” The Moscow Times, April 7, 2009; Helmut Schmidt, Richard vonWeizsacher, Egon Bahr, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World: A German View,” International Herald Tribune, January 9, 2009; Massimo D’Alema, Gian-franco Fini, Giorgio La Malfa, Arturo Parisi, and Francesco Calogero, “A World Free ofNuclear Weapons,” Corriere Della Sera, July 24, 2008; Malcolm Fraser, Gustav Nossal,Barry Jones, Peter Gration, John Sanderson, and Tilman Ruff, “Imagine There’s NoBomb,” The Age, April 8, 2009.

2 See Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas A. Brown, Gregory Jones, David McGarvey, HenryRowen, Vincent Taylor, and Roberta Wohlstetter, “Moving Toward Life in a NuclearArmed Crowd?” Report for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, April 22, 1976;http://www.npec-web.org/Frameset.asp?PageType=Single&PDFFile=19751204-AW-EtAl-MovingTowardsLifeNuclearArmedCrowd&PDFFolder=Essays.

3 Frank Gaffney, Jr., “Peace Through Weakness,” February 16, 2009; http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p17891.xml?cat_id=120.

4 Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, “The Nonproliferation Regime under Siege,” Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists (August 5, 2007); http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/the-nonproliferation-regime-under-siege.

5 Mohamed ElBaradei, “Addressing Veri½cation Challenges,” Statements of the DirectorGeneral: Symposium on International Safeguards, October 16, 2006; http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2006/ebsp2006n018.html.

6 George Perkovich and James M. Acton, “Abolishing Nuclear Weapons,” Adelphi Paper 396 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2008), 93.

7 Albert Wohlstetter, “Spreading the Bomb without Quite Breaking the Rules,” Foreign Policy (Winter 1976/1977).

8 Pierre Goldschmidt, “Exposing Nuclear Non-Compliance,” Survival 51 (1) (2009):143–164.



9 See George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,1992), 101.

10 For creative ideas on increasing the size and diversity of iaea contributions, see ThomasShea, “Financing iaea Veri½cation of the npt,” November 2006; http://www.npec-web.org/Essays/20061113-Shea-FinancingIAEAVeri½cation.pdf.

11 For differing views on this, see Christopher A. Ford, “Debating Disarmament: Interpret-ing Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” The Nonprolif-eration Review 14 (3) (2007): 402–428, and Scott D. Sagan, “Good Faith and Nuclear Disar-mament Negotiations,” in Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, ed. George Perkovich andJames M. Acton (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2009),203–212.

12 John Deutch, “A Nuclear Posture for Today,” Foreign Affairs (January–February 2005): 51.13 Des Brown, “Laying the Foundation for Multilateral Disarmament,” February 5, 2008;

http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/speeches08/1session/Feb5UKDefSecDesBrown.pdf.

14 Samuel W. Bodman and Robert M. Gates, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century,” September 2008; http://www.defenselink.mil/news/nuclearweaponspolicy.pdf.

15 “The Alliance’s Strategic Concept” (nato, April 1999); http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-065e.htm.

16 See “Are the Requirements for Extended Deterrence Changing?” Carnegie Endow-ment for International Peace Conference, April 6, 2009; transcript available at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1299.

17 Reuters, “Obama, Clinton in New Flap over Nuclear Weapons,” August 2, 2007; http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02381100.htm.

18 Elaine M. Grossman, “U.S. General Reserves Right to Use Force, Even Nuclear, inResponse to Cyber Attack,” Global Security Newswire, May 12, 2009; http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20090512_4977.php.

19 “Kissinger on nato,” Time, September 17, 1979; http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920653,00.html.

20 George Perkovich, “Extended Deterrence,” Draft Paper Prepared for the Evans-Kawaguchi Commission, May 2009.

21 Harold Brown and John Deutch, “The Nuclear Disarmament Fantasy,” The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007.

22 See Thomas C. Schelling’s essay in this issue of Dædalus, as well as Schelling, “The Role of Deterrence in Total Disarmament,” Foreign Affairs (April 1962). See also, Charles Glaser,“The Instability of Small Numbers Revisited,” in Rebuilding the npt Consensus, ed. MichaelMay (Stanford, Calif.: Center for International Security and Cooperation, 2008); http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/22218/RebuildNPTConsensus.pdf.

23 See Pierre Goldschmidt, “Concrete Steps to Improve the Nonproliferation Regime,” Non-proliferation Program Paper 100 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for Interna-tional Peace, April 2009).

24 This argument was ½rst made by Charles L. Glaser, “The Flawed Case for Nuclear Disar-mament,” Survival 40 (1) (Spring 1998).

25 Michael Quinlan, “Abolishing Nuclear Armouries: Policy or Pipedream?” Survival 49 (2)(Winter 2007–2008): 12.

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