Overview
	Technical Background
	The Threat
	Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
	Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
	Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
	Monitoring Stockpiles
	Ending Further Production
Reducing Stockpiles   HEU Purchase Agreement   U.S. Highly Enriched Uranium Disposition   Russian Plutonium Disposition   U.S. Plutonium Disposition

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

Reducing Excess Stockpiles

U.S. Highly Enriched Uranium Disposition

Status

In 1996, DOE issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision on the U.S. HEU disposition program, outlining the plan to downblend the HEU to LEU and use the majority of that LEU as reactor fuel, disposing of the rest as waste.[4] Current plans call for the following disposition paths for different types of excess HEU material:[5]

• Fourteen metric tons, uranium hexafluoride: transfer to USEC, starting 1994 (completed);

• Fifty metric tons, metal and oxide: transfer to USEC, blending at BWXT (formerly Babcock & Wilcox, Lynchburg, Virginia), 1998-2006;

• Thirty-three metric tons, off-specification material: process at Savannah River and Nuclear Fuel Services for use in Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reactors, 2002-2016;

• Eighteen metric tons unallocated off-specification material, to be blended and used by means still to be determined, 2002-2016;

• Ten metric tons of research reactor fuel, to be blended at Y-12, 2002-2016;

• Twenty-eight metric tons of unallocated off-specification material to be blended and sold 2010-2016, subject by law to a determination by the Secretary of Energy that the sale would have no adverse material impact on domestic uranium industries; and

• Twenty-one metric tons that is unsuited for reactor fuel (much of which is already in the form of spent fuel), which will be blended and disposed of as waste.

To date, the main progress in implementing these HEU disposition approaches has been in three areas:

USEC Downblending at Portsmouth. USEC used its Portsmouth gaseous diffusion enrichment plant to downblend 14.2 metric tons of material with an average enrichment of 75% from 1995-1998. Completed in July 1998, this downblending produced some 387 metric tons of LEU, with an average enrichment of approximately four percent.[6] Blending of the last 3.5 tons of this material was verified by the IAEA.[7]

USEC-Sponsored Downblending at BWXT. In addition to the initial 14.2 tons, in 1998 DOE and USEC reached an agreement giving USEC title to 50 tons of HEU (39 tons of metal and 11 tons of oxide), with an average enrichment of 40%.[8] This material is slowly being physically transferred from DOE to BWXT for downblending on USEC's behalf. As of the end of fiscal year (FY) 2002, 21.8 metric tons of HEU had been shipped to BWXT for downblending, and over 200 metric tons of LEU fuel had been produced from it and shipped to fabricators.[9] (Data is not publicly available on exactly how much of the 21.8 metric tons BWXT had succeeded in blending by the end of FY 2002.) This downblending is being verified by the IAEA. The remainder of the material is to be shipped by mid-2005, and the downblending is to be completed by October 2006.[10]

Off-specification material for TVA. In April 2001, DOE reached agreement with TVA on the use of LEU blended from 33 tons of HEU that does not meet commercial specifications (because it has an excessive content of the neutron absorber Uranium-236) in TVA's reactors. Roughly half of this material will be blended at the Savannah River Site, and half at Nuclear Fuel Services, in Erwin, Tennessee. Modifications to the Savannah River facilities for the downblending are nearing completion, and DOE expects to downblend 3.7 metric tons of HEU there in FY 2003, with downblending of all of this TVA material scheduled to be completed in mid-2006.[11]

Combined with the 21 tons of HEU to be disposed of as waste, the completion of these three efforts will bring the total to 118 tons, leaving 56 tons of material for which the specific disposition approach is still being studied. Most of this is material that does not meet commercial specifications, either because it is contaminated with plutonium or because it has other contaminants (mainly minor isotopes of uranium).[12] Much of this off-specification material is nonetheless expected to be processed for use as commercial fuel, eventually; some will be used as LEU fuel for research reactors; the rest will be disposed of as waste, along with the 21 tons already allocated for disposal as waste.[13] All told, the U.S. HEU disposition program is expected to be completed in 2016.

Budget

See budget table

To date, $251.4 million has been appropriated for the U.S. HEU disposition program. For FY 2004, the administration is requesting an additional $99 million.[14] The program has also generated substantial revenues, however probably substantially larger than its costs. The 14.2 tons of HEU transferred to USEC before USEC's privatization presumably significantly increased the sale price the government received when USEC was sold to investors, as did the 50 tons transferred after privatization (which was already specified in law, and therefore part of the plan investors were aware of when the stock was sold). Unfortunately, good estimates of the total contribution of these materials to USEC's sale price are not publicly available. The total life-cycle cost of the program to use 33 tons of off-specification HEU in TVA reactors is expected to be $350 million, but some of this will be recouped from payments TVA provides for the value of the fuel and the effort will avoid disposal costs for the same material estimated at $900 million.[15]

Key Issues and Recommendations

Modest Fraction of U.S. HEU Stockpile Declared Excess. As noted above, the United States has declared only one-quarter of its HEU stockpile excess to its military needs despite having dismantled more than half of the nuclear weapons that were in the stockpile at its Cold War peak. This is because the U.S. Navy wanted to keep nearly all HEU that met its demanding specifications for possible use as naval fuel in the future. But the amount of HEU being retained is enough to fuel U.S. naval vessels for more than a century, which seems excessive. A decision to declare additional material excess would help build international confidence that U.S. nuclear arms reductions were intended to be permanent, and could be an important part of convincing Russia that it can afford to reduce its HEU stockpile to a low level. Ultimately, the United States and Russia should agree to reduce their nuclear warhead stockpiles to the minimum levels required for their national security, and to reduce their HEU and plutonium stockpiles to the level required to support those low, agreed warhead stockpiles.

• Recommendation: The United States should at least double the total amount of its HEU declared excess to its military needs.

• Recommendation: Over time, the United States and Russia should reduce their HEU stockpiles to the minimum required to support the warhead stockpiles they will retain, along with a few decades' supply for military reactors.

Slow pace of blend-down. In eight years since the first transfers of HEU to USEC for blending, only about 30 tons of U.S. excess HEU has been blended amounting to an average of roughly 4 tons of HEU per year. At that rate, it would take more than a century to blend down 500 tons of HEU (which would still leave an estimated 250 tons for military uses).

• Recommendation: DOE should seek to accelerate the pace at which the U.S. HEU stockpile is blended to LEU. Even where the LEU is not commercially needed in the near term, it would make sense to blend the HEU to LEU and store the LEU pending commercial use.

• Recommendation: DOE should rapidly complete its studies to determine how the remaining excess HEU will be used or disposed of, and begin implementing these plans as rapidly as possible.

Links

Written by Matthew Bunn. Last updated by Matthew Bunn on March 5, 2003.

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The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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