Cutting Off Rogue Nukes

by Phil Leggiere

Senator Bayh urges Obama administration to champion nuclear fuel bank concept.

Over the past few years significant progress has been made in addressing the threat of nuclear terror through technological improvements in detecting potentially smuggled nuclear materials, and better operational intelligence and forensics to identify and disrupt black market distribution networks of ‘loose” nuclear materials.

Despite this progress, however, relatively little progress has been made in cutting off the potential supply chain of rogue nukes at its most likely origin, rogue nations using the legal cover of legitimate civilian nuclear energy programs as a pretext to acquire nuclear bomb making capability.

In a Memo to the President”, published by the Progressive Policy Institute, Senator Evan Bayh (D-IND), makes the case that preventing that kind of duplicitous access needs to become a top strategic counter-terror priority for the incoming Obama administration.

“The 21st century has ushered in unprecedented demand for energy around the world,” Bayh writes in his memo. “Given the rapid rates of growth in such developing countries as China and India, prices for traditional sources of energy are likely to remain high. Supplies of oil, gas, and coal are finite, so countries increasingly are looking elsewhere for affordable and clean sources of energy. Nuclear energy, which generates tremendous power with no greenhouse-gas emissions, is an obvious place to look.”

The problem with this, the memo points out, is that, “As nuclear generating plants sprout up around the world over the coming decades, many new states will get their hands on nuclear technology and materials. This will exponentially raise the risk of fissile or bomb-making material being acquired by rogue nations or terrorist groups.”

Current global regulation and oversight of this process, which is based on the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (often referred to as the Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT), negotiated back in mid-1970s is currently woefully inaccurate, Bayh argues.

In particular, Bayh explains, the NPT recognizes the “inalienable right of all Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” This provision, which was exploited by North Korea in its drive to develop nuclear weapons capacity, is also being abused by Iran.

“Once this genie gets out of the bottle, there is no putting it back,” Bayh says. ‘At a minimum, allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear warhead would be a regionally destabilizing event certain to spark a Middle East arms race. At worst, it would be a global security catastrophe in which Tehran obtains the means to blackmail its European neighbors and threaten Israel’s destruction."

The threshold question, according to the memo is: How do we respond to valid and growing demands for civilian nuclear energy worldwide without permitting more countries to acquire nuclear weapons?

The answer, in Bayh’s view, is to set up an international nuclear-fuel bank that would supply fuel to any country that agrees not to develop its own enriching and reprocessing facilities.

The proposed fuel bank would allow developing nations seeking civilian nuclear power for peaceful purposes to gain access to a reliable and affordable supply of nuclear fuel. In return they would need to agree to forgo enriching uranium themselves and also submit to rigorous inspections of their civilian reactors to guard against North Korean and Iranian-style cheating. It would allow countries to draw fuel for use in their own civilian nuclear reactors and then return the spent fuel for safe reprocessing under the oversight of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Countries, on the other hand, that refuse fuel-bank services would come under immediate suspicion about their weapons intentions.

The economic advantages of this approach over indigenous fuel cycle development would be significant to developing nations, according to Bayh.

“Due to bigger economies of scale,” he writes,“it is now much cheaper for countries lacking enrichment capacity to purchase fuel. Even a small enrichment facility would cost at least $1 billion to build and more than $100 million to operate each year. But an international nuclear-fuel bank could supply the same amount of fuel at market prices for roughly $15 million a year.”

Bayh’s newest push for the formation of a global, multi-nationally administered nuclear fuel bank, revives an effort he and Senate collegues initiated two years ago.

In 2007 Bayh along with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) introduced legislation that would facilitate create the multinational supply regime outlined in the memo. The bill, titled The Lugar-Bayh Nuclear Safeguards and Supply Act, S. 1138 and strongly supported by then Senator and now Vice-President Joe Biden, would make it US policy to discourage the development of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities in additional countries, to encourage the creation of bilateral and multilateral assurances of nuclear fuel supply, and ensure that all supply mechanisms operate in strict accordance with the IAEA safeguards system and do not result in any additional unmet verification burdens for the system.

In August 2008 the US Department of Energy has announced a $50 million donation to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the purpose of establishing an International Nuclear Fuel Bank.