Strengthening Nuclear Nonproliferation and Expanding
Nuclear Energy: Incompatible or Complementary
Goals?
Leveraging US Strength in an Uncertain World
Stanley Foundation Conference on National and Global Security
Washington, DC,
Thursday, December 7, 2006
North Korea‘s nuclear weapons, suspicions surrounding Iran‘s intentions, and the uncovering of the A.Q. Khan network have seriously compromised an already strained nuclear nonproliferation regime. Simultaneously, the dual issues of global warming and rapid economic growth in developing nations have spurred on calls for increasing reliance on nonfossil fuel energy sources, including nuclear energy. How will the global community meet these two, potentially conflictual, challenges?
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Post–Panel Summary
The following summary of the panel "Strengthening Nuclear Nonproliferation and Expanding Nuclear Energy: Incompatible or Complementary Goals?" was drafted by Michael Roston. It has not been approved or reviewed by the panelists.
George Perkovich, vice president for studies, Global Security and Economic Development, and director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace began the session by saying that if there was a need for expanded nuclear energy, new rules and better enforcement to prevent more nuclear weapons proliferation were needed. He added that the problems with the current nonproliferation regime were well known, but the champions of new nuclear power plants seemed to have embraced an historical amnesia, and once again the technology was moving faster than the rules for managing it. He worried that if the current phase of nuclear power expansion carried on without any nonproliferation advances, the Stanley Foundation‘s heirs would be holding another conference in 30 years asking what went wrong.
Steven E. Miller, the director of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said he did not think the sky was falling. But there had been a series of shocks to the nonproliferation regime that had to be juxtaposed against the wide interest around the world to expand or establish ambitious nuclear power programs in countries from Egypt to China. He added that we were entering a world with many more power reactors and, therefore, more nuclear commerce and more fissile material production.
Unfortunately, there had been a slow–motion erosion of confidence in the nuclear nonproliferation safeguards system as a result of problems ranging from the covert programs in Iraq and North Korea, the latent capability Iran was developing, the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology trafficking network, and the US–India nuclear agreement. He proposed a number of steps to improve the safeguards framework, including building up the International Atomic Energy Agency‘s institutional capacities, limiting the spread of fissile material production, and internationalizing the nuclear fuel cycle.
Lawrence Scheinman, distinguished professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said the "what have you done for us lately?" factor played a powerful role in the current state of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Many nonnuclear weapons states believed that the failure of the nuclear weapon states to pursue any serious negotiations working toward disarmament undermined the regime‘s credibility. Furthermore, the nonnuclear weapon states considered their right to access peaceful nuclear technology to be a right powerfully enshrined by the Nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty.
He feared that President George W. Bush‘s proposal outlined in 2004 at the National Defense University to freeze the development of new fissile material production capabilities was the wrong approach because by establishing a "keep–out zone" it added a new layer of discrimination seen by many as undercutting the "nuclear bargain" inscribed in Article IV of the NPT, against which many friendly nonnuclear weapons states bristled. As an alternative, states in compliance with the NPT and under comprehensive and Additional Protocol safeguards might be offered an opportunity to invest in or become co–owners of large–scale facilities where economies of scale would exist. In cases where a state felt compelled to proceed and was in compliance with its NPT undertakings, some forms of multilateral/multinational approaches might be feasible, although it is not an absolute guarantee against the risk of clandestine fissile material development.
Panel Transcript
This text has been professionally transcribed; however, for timely distribution, it has not been edited or proofread against the tape.
George Percovich: My name‘s George Percovich. I‘m your moderator with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It‘s my pleasure to be in this role with three colleagues whom I admire enormously.
The topic, which you can all read, is Strengthening Nuclear Non–Proliferation and Expanding Nuclear Energy, In Compatible or Complimentary Goals. I think it‘s actually as it aspires to be, a fundamentally important question or topic and I commend the Stanley Foundation for picking it.
I was asked to just say a couple of introductory things and I think what Steve and Larry will say will expand on all that and then Dafna can kind of interrogate them and comment as well.
But it seems clear based on logic and historical experience that if we‘re going to have a major expansion of nuclear energy, as lots of people are claiming or advocating, and if that‘s going to serve non–proliferation as I think everyone who advocates that insists that it will, then we‘re going to need certain rules beyond rules that we have today and we‘re going to need enforcement of those rules that‘s as least as good as it is today.
There are ideas out there that are fairly clear, at least among experts, about the kind of rules or improvement of rules that will be needed. I think we‘ll be hearing from Steve and Larry on them. These have to do with kind of greater clarity and precision, for example, in the spread of fuel cycle technology, to some material production technology. That has to be improved and I think there‘s a wide range of people who see that.
Obviously, too, I think greater clarity and transparency in the commerce activities – commercial activities – declarations of exports and imports, especially in light of the A.Q. Kahn affair where given that there‘s dual use technology, certain technologies may not be prescribed, but you at least have to have transparency – greater transparency and rules for that transparency as commerce in these activities increases.
There‘s UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which I‘m not going to summarize here, but that is a normatively valuable thing. It is a principle. It‘s the basis of a rule, but there‘s a lot of question about implementation and interpretation that has to be elaborated if you‘re going to have a massive expansion of nuclear energy.
Then there‘s the additional protocol which goes to kind of greater intensity and effectiveness of IAEA inspections. There are many other things and these guys will talk about them. What I would say in addition though to this issue about the rules themselves is we obviously need clearer and stronger enforcement of them and that this is one of the things that‘s so alarming about the Iran case right now and that maybe we can talk about in the Q&A where you have clear violation of IAEA rules. You have clear statutory remedies that have been sought in going to the Security Council and then nothing‘s happening. So, what do we feel about enforcement going forward.
Now, all of this is well known and all of this is well known especially by advocates of the expansion of nuclear energy. It strikes me that we‘re having this historically amnesiacal, if that‘s a word, moment here where you‘ve got people champion – we‘re going to build 400 new nuclear plants. We‘ve got to double, install capacity to deal with climate change, etc., etc. Then of course it‘ll be proliferation resistant.
And yet in all of our history, but especially our nuclear history beginning with the Manhattan Project, we always had a sense that gee, there need to be some rules or guidance in terms of the social management of technology. But the technology always ends up going forward much faster than the rules and then the social management does.
So we‘re in this moment where again people are stipulating for this to be proliferation resistant you‘re going to have to have all these better rules and it‘s going to have to be enforcement and everybody nods and goes, yes, that‘s absolutely right. Then nothing‘s happening or very little‘s happening on the rules. And meanwhile, money‘s getting spent and people are moving forward or intending to move forward on the technology and there‘s no conditionality between the actual movement forward on the technology and the establishment and enforcement of the non–proliferation rules.
So, if the technology actually bears its promise and moves forward and can be capitalized – big if, also historical big if – but if that were to happen, I mean I‘ll bet whatever‘s in my wallet here right now we can come back in 30 years and we won‘t have instituted the rules and then people will be having a conference – the Stanley Foundation heirs will be having a conference saying, Jesus, where did we go wrong, why are we so stupid, why didn‘t we know this was going to happen. That‘s what I mean by this kind of moment of amnesia.
Let me stop there and hope that we can come back in a discussion about actually taking this problem seriously enough to think about what are we really going to do to deal with it. Let me start with Steve Miller.
Steve Miller: Thanks, George. He‘s sketched out the problem so economically that I‘m tempted to say we should proceed straight to discussion, but since I have to sing for my supper let me proceed.
It seems to me that we‘re in the early stages of confronting an awkward juxtaposition, which is a protracted phase in which the NPT system has been tested in a variety of serious ways. I‘m not one of these henny–penny the sky is falling types, but never the less it seems to me obvious there have been a number of shocks and problems and blows to the regime that cause some concern about its health and some concern about its longevity. As George says, juxtapose against that is a wide interest and instinct around the globe to expand, revivify or where it doesn‘t exist, establish ambitious nuclear power programs.
So, troubled regime on the one hand and anticipated great expansion of nuclear power on the other, whether you‘re talking about Russia and China, both of whom have ambitious reactor manufacture programs, all the way down to say Egypt, which is very much still in the gleam in the eye phase. But they have very big ambitions if you look out 20 or 30 years about where they hope to be with respect to nuclear power.
There‘s every reason to believe that we‘re entering a world in which there will be many more power reactors than there were in the past. Hence, much more international nuclear commerce; hence, much higher demand for nuclear fuel; hence potential additional demand for fissile material production capability.
This brings us face to face then with all the proliferation implications of a world in which there‘s much more nuclear power. Now, this is in a sense not a new problem, but an ever present problem in the sense that there‘s always been a tension embedded in the NPT system between the imperative to restrain nuclear proliferation on the one hand and the injunction to facilitate the spread of civilian uses of nuclear technology, particularly nuclear power on the other.
Of course this is the famous Article IV problem. Article IV–1 is the thing that people usually invoke. Article IV, Paragraph 2 is actually an even more expansive empowerment of the non–nuclear weapon states to the fullest possible exchange of nuclear technology. I think the founders of the NPT system were fully cognizant of this tension and they had a remedy for it.
The remedy was Article III. It was safeguards. It was international inspections to provide assurance to the international community that civilian technologies would not be abused for the purpose of manufacturing nuclear weapons. For much of the history of the NPT regime, which is now nearly four decades old, this remedy was accepted and more or less acceptable. What I think one has seen emerge among at least some policy relevant elites in the United States is skepticism about the durability, the utility and the value of this solution to managing this in–built paradox in the NPT between nuclear power promotion on the one hand and nuclear proliferation prevention on the other.
So it seems to me looking to the future, a crucial question is whether we‘re witnessing a kind of slow motion erosion of confidence in the value of the safeguard system as a remedy to this paradox. It seems to me that there are a few problems that have arisen in recent years that have put a focus on this issue. Let me just tick through them very quickly.
Firstly there‘s a problem of covert programs. The IAEA system was not designed or mandated to address this problem, although it often gets blamed for failing to detect them. But we‘ve now had at least two instances: one in Iraq and one in North Korea where states actively pursued a dedicated covert program, which is a logical route to nuclear proliferation. We don‘t presently have a reliable or adequate mechanism for dealing with that problem.
Secondly, and here I think Iran rears its ugly head, we have the problem of the tensions. If you allow the spread of nuclear power, including the full fuel cycle, then whoever possesses those technologies is essentially a decision away from having nuclear weapons. IAEA inspections are not determinant when it comes to true intentions. We can assess what they have and what we think they might be doing, but there‘s no objective evidence other than the actual possession of nuclear weapons that resolves this question.
But in addition I think what we‘ve seen in both the Iraq and Iran cases is that the conditions of suspicion and high hostility, even technically adequate inspections may be insufficient to provide reassurance about intentions. So this intentions capabilities seems to be more toxic than it used to be.
A third problem that used to be talked about in a hypothetical way and now we have an example, is this so–called Article X problem. Acquire the nuclear infrastructure necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons under guise of the NPT and then withdraw. This is essentially what North Korea did. Many people now think that Article X as written was a mistake because it‘s unconditional right of withdrawal. But never the less, that‘s the way the treaty is written so Article X is always looming out there. George and I have traveled together to Iran. You run into people who say, "Why should we put up with this nonsense. Iran should just exercise its right under Article X to withdraw from the NPT and then we won‘t have to deal with all this garbage."
Fourthly, we‘ve had in recent times and particularly in connection with the Iraq contingency, had serious fundamental questions raised about the value of inspections. This notion that in the contest between the hiders and the finders that the hiders always have the advantage. A palpable example of this was Vice President Cheney‘s famous VFW speech in August of 2002 where he said plainly, in unadoring language, "There‘s no amount of inspection that‘s going to persuade us that Saddam‘s not up to no good." So, more inspections is not going to get us out of this crisis that we‘re in.
So I think that‘s been a kind of fundamental challenge to the whole conceptual approach that we‘ve relied on to satisfy the tension between weapons and civilian power.
There‘s also, and George touched on this in his remarks, the difficulties of enforcement. We actually had a panel this morning on this very question. But I think there‘s a school of thought in the United States that says basically safeguards aren‘t reliable. But even if they were, the enforcement mechanisms don‘t function adequately and therefore you can‘t rely on this system with respect to your protecting, safeguarding your national security.
We have sixth, the rise of sub–state actors, worries about nuclear terrorism, illicit markets, A.Q. Kahn and so on. These are outside the regulatory scheme that we have used to manage these affairs over the years. We have what many people see as the politicization of the rules governing international nuclear commerce. If you‘re on America‘s hit list you don‘t get the rules relaxed or you do get rules sternly enforced, but if you‘re say India then we‘re prepared to relax the rules or exempt you from their application because it‘s convenient for us.
Then there‘s the whole question about whether the existing edifice of export control rules. Some of which are multi–lateral under the nuclear suppliers group, but many of which have to manifest themselves in national legislation, really is adequate and adequately enforced to protect us against the spread of nuclear technologies.
So all of these considerations I think have eaten away at the confidence that at least some in our own debate have about the Article III remedy to the Article IV problem, the safeguards. Remember the spread of civilian technology problem.
I‘m going to tick very quickly through five categories of possible adaption in response to these kinds of worries. Larry Scheinman, who knows way more about most of these matters than I do, I believe is going to talk in more detail about these remedies since my time is almost exhausted.
One has to do with institutional capacity building. If the IAE is barely functioning effectively now in terms of men, resources, inspection capability, how is it going to cope with a world of twice as many nuclear power reactors and more states in need of inspection.
Secondly we need to find ways of gaining universal ascent to improved inspection; the additional protocol and perhaps beyond if that‘s possible.
Thirdly, there‘s great enthusiasm for the idea of limiting the spread of fissile material and production capabilities. President Bush in his end of year speech called for no new national fissile material production. That‘s I think not a bad idea, but then if you believe it you should have behaved maybe differently toward Brazil, for example, which opened its commercial enrichment facility earlier this year.
There are a variety of ideas, fourthly, about fuel assurance. That is to say internationalize the fuel cycle, take it out of national hands, provide some way of reassuring parties that are suspicious of the fairness or reliability of the international marketplace, like Iran. We‘ve got to find some way to reassure those parties that they can buy into the system and actually have a reliable supply of fuel.
Then lastly, as George also mentioned in his opening remarks, trying to enforce and strengthen a variety of global standards with respect to the management of your nuclear asset. Seems to me somewhere in those five categories are some potential for minimizing the worries that now have arisen as a result of our growing doubts about the adequacy of a safeguard system.
George Percovich: Steve, you didn‘t use all your time, which never happens.
Steve Miller: I was told ten minutes so I was being quick.
George Percovich: Well that was great. That wasn‘t an invitation to take some back. I just wanted to –
Steve Miller: I have another talk –
George Percovich: I was just marveling, especially in Washington. I was like I yield back my time. Larry Scheinman. You wouldn‘t want to break that example so go ahead.
Larry Scheinman: I‘ll try not because I think that George and Steve already have said a lot of what needs to be said. I was trying to think how am I going to follow these two acts.
Let me begin though I think that some of the points that were just mentioned by Steve and taking a leap from George‘s book, The Institutional Capacity, the fissile material production question. Fuel assurances, enforcement of global standards, these are all things that we do need to really focus most of our attention on.
In that regard, there is one thing that was not mentioned and I think deserves to be taken into consideration and that is the what have you done for us lately question, which is raised by most of the non–nuclear weapon states particularly those who are not tied to alliance relationships with the United States or elsewhere asking about what‘s been done with Article VI of the NPT. Doesn‘t Article VI count? Isn‘t this the article that says we will strive in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. Didn‘t the international court of justice a decade ago issue an advisoried opinion in which is said unanimously at that point, there were many points made, but this was the unanimous point that was made that when you enter into a commitment to negotiate in good faith toward achieving an objective, you should achieve the objective. You should make progress toward that objective. That was not being seen, although I think unfairly at that point as having been done.
This comes up in a somewhat different context. One of the issues that‘s been addressed increasingly in the last year or two is what to do about the commerce in and control over high enriched uranium, which exists for the purposes of research reactors and critical assemblies and was disbursed willy–nilly I would have to say in the earlier years of the Adams for Peace Program. We would ship out high enriched uranium in relatively small quantities to countries in order to run their research reactors. The higher the flux you wanted to have in that research reactor, the higher the level of enrichment you would be seeking. We were accommodating that for quite some time. But for quite some time still, overlooking back from this point in time, we have retreated from that.
The Schumer amendment was passed, as some of you may recall, in the early 1990‘s saying that the United States would not continue to provide high enriched uranium for research reactors unless countries were working to achieve alternative means of running their reactor programs through the use of low enriched uranium in which we, we the Argonne National Laboratory, would help work with them in order to achieve comparable kinds of fuels that could be used.
Now in the last six months the government of Norway has taken a very intense interest, back over the last year, in this question of eliminating commercialization and use of high enriched uranium ‘cause this is a kind of a material that if it‘s in the hands of a terrorist organization, gives them quite a leg up in terms of the ability to fashion and potentially to detonate an explosive nuclear device. Easier to do that with high enriched uranium than it is with plutonium and they take that seriously.
There was this meeting that was done, carried out in Oslo, where it had two components: a technical component and a political component or policy component, if you will. The technical discussions apparently went very well. People said yes, we can substitute low enriched uranium for high enriched uranium and get this out of harm‘s way. This is you out of harm‘s way. Let‘s move with dispatch to do it and here‘s how it can be done. In fact it has been done with significant number of reactors around the world up to this point.
But then came the political discussion, the policy discussion and it was the South African spokesman, Mr. Minty who I used to battle with in the course of the NPT extension and review conference in 1995 who said, "Well now, we‘re here apparently to disarm the disarmed. What have you done for us lately?" Speaking to the Americans and other weapons states present at the time.
In other words, there‘s a strong political issue that needs to be addressed here that can you go forward in strengthening the non–proliferation regime in taking the steps that were just mentioned a moment ago in fuel assurances, enforcement, no new fuel cycle facilities outside of some kind of a structured relationship, which I‘ll come to talk about momentarily, building institutional capacity in the IAEA and strengthening further than the additional protocol, the safeguard system that it now applies.
All of these things imply something in exchange. That something in exchange is leveling the playing field when it comes to nuclear weapons reductions. Are you doing something about it? Are you not? As you know as well as anybody I‘m sure in this room there‘s been this debate going on for several years now about what did the nuclear posture review really say. You can read the Nuclear Posture Review in more than one way. One way is new missions for nuclear weapons and the other way is reducing the role of nuclear weapons in the broader scheme of things. Both parties to that debate can point to evidence that yes, it works both ways.
But the outside world is looking at this and saying, well wait a second. If we‘re going to take steps to tighten up the control over civil development of nuclear energy, what are you going to do about reducing the difference between the have states and the have–not states.
Now if I go back to the beginning of time, by which I don‘t mean – there were two beginning of time, but the beginning of the nuclear world in which we live today and I suppose I could be wanting to date this to Hahn and Madame Curie and others. I‘m dating this to post–1945 and the use of the weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The point was made by an Israeli scientist who headed the atomic energy commission for some years, Ernst David Bergman, and I quote him, "It is very important to understand that by developing atomic energy for peaceful purposes, you read the nuclear option there are not two atomic energies." That was said even more succinctly by Hans Alzane, a Swedish physicist, that the military and civil atom are Siamese twins. The only difference between them is the political choice you make about how you use that technology.
That knowledge, of course, and that understanding was at the heart of the Atchison–Lilienthal Report of March, 1946, when they came to the conclusion – many conclusions, but the conclusion that interests me is that no system of safeguards on nationally owned and operated nuclear facilities will prevent the potential for the spread of nuclear weapons. Well, how right they were. We, as you may recall, incorporated that concept in the Baruch plan, which was of course laced with a couple of other provisions guaranteed to ensure that the Soviets would not accept it. We went forward from there to our Adams for Peace Program, which we had spread nuclear cooperation on the basis of national safeguards. Those national safeguards morphed into the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, once the IAEA had a safeguard system in place.
Then we came to the Non–Proliferation Treaty negotiations in 1967 and ‘68. Steve mentioned Article IV, an extremely important article as the sixth in the Non–Proliferation Treaty in the following sense. When the U.S. and Soviets tabled their respective proposals for a non–proliferation treaty, there was no Article IV, no Article V and no Article VI. Those three things came in by dint of the fact that there was a negotiation that was taking place and that you had to persuade others ultimately in the General Assembly that this was a good way to go forward. So those three articles were introduced. Article IV, of course, was the inalienable right provision and the notion that you would serve your neighbors by providing them to the fullest extent possible with nuclear cooperation.
Something is to be said about both of those rights. Inalienable right was introduced by the Germans, the Japanese and other advanced industrial states who wanted to be absolutely certain that by signing away their right to develop nuclear weapons they would retain the right to take full advantage of peaceful nuclear energy.
And Article IV–2, which was fullest possible exchange, was a response to the concerns of the developing world. It was interesting if you think about that just for a minute – fullest possible exchange. Where do you put your emphasis. We put the emphasis on possible. The country that didn‘t have nuclear capability put it on fullest. Indeed the Mexican government introduced a proposal at the time of the negotiations that this should be a legally binding obligation. That was roundly defeated that said basically what‘s possible in the context of the treaty in the same way as the inalienable right in the context of the treaty because it explicitly stated not in a manner consistent with Articles I and II of the treaty and now Article III, which the safeguards article has been incorporated since 2000, NPT review conference does something that needs to be met in order for there to be full cooperation within the framework of what can reasonably be done.
There were a lot of efforts made after the Indian test in 1974 to try to put some further structure on the nuclear fuel cycle. There started to be, for example, a regional fuel cycle center study that was conducted by IAEA in 1974, and was blessed in the General Assembly by none the less, then Secretary Henry Kissinger. He said go with it. Well, they went with it and it died. It died because nuclear energy also lost some of its punch in the mid to late ‘70s. People got to find it was too expensive, there were too many problems so it didn‘t go forward.
The International Nuclear Fuel Cycle evaluation that was promoted by the Carter Administration also tried to address some of the problems that have been put on the table here. How do you get nuclear energy, promote it, use it in a safe and secure manner without running the risk that you‘re increasing the possibility of the propensity to proliferate to nuclear weapons.
Then came things like the International Plutonium Storage concept, Committee on Assurance of Nuclear Supply, International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and every one of these things died dead on delivery essentially.
We went forward with a system based on the safeguards that Steve mentioned up until the time of the first Iraq war when we discovered, ooh, something‘s going on that we didn‘t know anything about.
I would make one qualification to what Steve said about the limitations on safeguards. The safeguards negotiations that took place in 1970 after the NPT came into being and the IAEA had been assigned the responsibility to verify the provisions of the non–proliferation treaty, those were negotiated with a very, very heavy hand and input by the Germans. The Germans were very, very concerned at the time that there not be too much intrusiveness into the fuel cycle activities in Germany. Not because they intended to proliferate, but because they were concerned about assuring that there would be no intellectual property theft by inspectors coming in learning how the Germans could do it better since we knew they built the BMW and the Mercedes, why wouldn‘t they also be building some pretty high quality reactor programs. Siemens indeed was doing exactly that.
So, the idea was to create keep out zones. You only went to certain strategic points that were mutually agreed between the agency and the state. Over the course of 1972, when this really started to become a practice and 1991, a culture grew up inside of the secretary of the IAEA. That culture was one of serving as an auditor would in a bank, rather than serving as a detective would in going around and checking to see whether everything was right and proper with respect to this behavior of states in a particular area.
In 1991, and I have to just make one small aside. I was on the IAEA staff. I was Blix‘s policy advisor for several years in 19 – wrap it up – in 1986–87. At that time I used to go on ski trips and I made the observation that all the inspectors I was skiing with didn‘t know why they were doing what they were doing. They were there to count–counting for non–proliferation. What‘s that? The result was I told Blix, your people know what to do; they don‘t know why they‘re doing it.
But it was 1991, after the Iraq situation that he pulled everybody together into the board room and explained to them, "We‘re here for a reason. Why are you doing what you‘re doing," etc. That went forward and on the way out two non–American inspectors were walking with one American inspector, who will remain nameless. It wasn‘t me. One said to the other, "I didn‘t come here to be a cop." That gave me a nice template from which to operate to write several articles about being a cop or get out of the business.
The conference changed a lot and there‘s a lot more that can be done in terms of the institutional capacity that Steve referred to. But a lot more needs to be done. There is a foundation to do it in the statute of the IAEA.
Let me just take two minutes on the Bush and Baradei approach. The question that comes up now is is there some way that we can promote nuclear energy and still keep the dam up there to prevent further proliferation or by promoting nuclear energy, by going out with a GNEP proposal for example, are we going to stimulate a rapid rise in the use of nuclear energy without being able to account for what‘s going on and ensure against a worse–case situations.
Bush came out in the NDU proposal in 2004 and said no more transfers of nuclear capacity for the enrichment of re–processing to any country that didn‘t already have a fully operational capacity at the commercial level. That was not a smart thing to do. It was done without the concurrence of people in the State Department who knew better about how you would put that one out for consideration. ‘Cause it immediately created a sense of a–ha. It‘s a keep–out zone again. Another level of discrimination.
The Brazilians, the Argentineans, the Canadians, the Japanese and one other country that I can‘t recall, came into Washington very quickly and said, hey, wait a minute; where are we. We assured all five of them that they were inside the fence, even though they were not. Canadians have never done any enrichment, but they‘re inside the fence because they‘ve got a lot of uranium.
That was a problem that we had in going forward with it in that way. Baradei came ahead in 2004, established this study group that put out its multi–lateral nuclear alternatives report in 2005 and basically recommended can we level the playing field. Can we put everybody inside the same tent. Is there some way that this can be done. I happen to think there is a way that this might be done. It will not capture everybody, but it will capture a lot of people. I will just mention it here and then I will stop. That would be to open up the possibility for inward investment in existing or new enrichment and re–processing facilities that may be built so that anyone can join it, become a member of the board of directors, share in the profits, in the decision–making and in exchange get assurance of supply, of something that they are part owner of instead of relying on a third–party approach, number one.
Number two, commit that they would not create a competitive system to do the same thing on national territory or under national control.
And three, but this is going I think a bridge too far, not even engage in any research and developments on alternative methodologies to achieve the same kind of an outcome. I think there‘s a there there that we need to pursue in terms of institutional strategies that might help us to bridge over to the next level of nuclear activity without fundamentally increasing the risk for further proliferation.
And with one last sentence, it‘s not one size fits all and it‘s not going to work for everybody. We have two problems out there today. Korea on one hand; Iran on the other. I don‘t think either of them are going to fit into that particular shoe, but on the other hand it gives us a stronger, normative foundation from which we can work with them, with a lot of other people who might join us in a way that they‘ve not been willing to join us up to now to try to get some grip on the problems that we confront.
George Percovich: Thanks, Larry. Dafna, you want to help us look forward here.
Dafna Linzer: Yeah, sure. I was going to say I thought obviously very thought provoking and concerned and forward leaning presentations. George began by talking about 30 years from now and where will we be and will we be sorry that we hadn‘t taken more strident measures. I would argue that that‘s where we are today. That we are 30 years later from where we were in the 1970‘s for example, when the United States and the Ford Administration in particular was trying very hard to cut a deal with the Iranians that would allow them to buy U.S. re–processing and enrichment equipment. I think that was a deal that for the Iranians fell apart only because of a change in government here with the Carter Administration coming in and then, of course, the revolution.
But that is something that is still very strong in the minds of Iranians that they were oh so close to getting their own nuclear deal and from the United States and really not that long ago. There‘s certainly quite a few Iranians running around with all the pieces of paper and all the negotiating position papers that they put together and all the memos that the Shah brought for his meetings in Washington.
I think this is when we get back into the both the haves and the have–nots, the what have you done for me lately. Of course while it‘s not in the minds of Americans or some of their closest allies, it is ever in the minds of anyone who wants nuclear energy that they are constantly under suspicion. I think the suspicion aspect of the treaty is really what‘s hurt it very much.
I think both Larry and Steve talked a lot about intent. I think looking at the discussion today it‘s very hard not to think about the immediacy of the Iran issue. Intent is the whole game there. Of course this is one of the big problems is, as Larry pointed out with the IAEA inspections and why they can‘t just come up with intent unless they‘re interviewing somebody who says I spent all day trying to make a nuclear weapon and it didn‘t work. So, barring that conversation, we‘re in a bit of a quandary.
Of course, the gaps in the NPT that everybody on the panel pointed out is one of the big reasons why. I‘m wondering if both Larry and Steve could talk a little bit more and, George if you could jump in when you want to about the sort of taking forward a little bit more of the ideas of multi–nationalizing re–processing and enrichment, about the possibilities of the kinds of ideas that the Russians had put forward with the Iranians at one point, about either moving the facilities to Moscow or about bringing foreign assistance into Iran and having other countries be part of that process, both the economics behind it and the inner workings of it and could that be proliferation–proof. And a little bit about the search for this proliferation–proof idea that people are constantly looking for.
Then also, again, on the proliferation–proof, how does that play into intent with either of these countries. Then what would happen if they threw out their partners or inspectors. Would we see a North Korea all over again or would we be in a different place by then.
Larry Scheinman: Could I just start it. I‘ll leave the tough questions to Steve. Alright. On this question of multi–nationalizing, re–processing and enrichment services. I mean, I think this does have some significant potential value, but you have to basically form a matrix of the countries in the world and put each country into a pre–judged box. You‘re going to find North Korea and Iran and possibly several others in a box that‘s not going to be affected by the option of multi–nationalizing nuclear activity.
There‘ll be political restraints or constraints in those countries to go down that road. I think it works fantastically well for the ones who aren‘t the problem in the first place and who say, "Oh, here‘s an opportunity to be a participant on something I could never do on my own and to also provide me with some assurance that the product of this facility is going to work to my advantage as I go forward with a modest nuclear program."
The idea of putting something like this into Iran is something I had to address in a government study that I had done. I didn‘t like the idea and it was confirmed to me that it‘s not a workable idea by somebody who‘s very much in the know from Uranko ‘cause Uranko would have been the organization that would most likely go into Iran. That person said to me, and this is a very, very highly placed person, you can‘t get enough key personnel to go into Iran and live there and work there for an extended period of time.
You would therefore have to train the people who would be doing it from inside Iran. That is tech transfer, big time. What is to stop them from taking the knowledge. In other words, everything was under safeguards and you could account for every isotope that‘s been produced, but what about that knowledge base that goes out into some place that hasn‘t been declared and can‘t be necessarily accessed because you don‘t know about it, where they just replicate what they‘ve learned. So do you really want to do it that way. Which makes that a bad idea.
So you come back to the Russian idea. "We‘ll do it for Russia." But every Iranian I‘ve talked to says thank you but no thank you; we‘ll do it here; this is very important to us to do. So I think these are considerations to bear in mind.
Steve Miller: Just quickly on that point. I mean, these multi–lateralization of the fuel cycle ideas have arisen not only, but especially in the context of trying to undercut the Iranian argument for national enrichment capabilities. They‘re not only unacceptable from the American and Western point of view when push comes to shove, but they‘re also not acceptable to the Iranians who believe that this is a highly politicized market, that they‘ve had regular demonstrations of the American ability to undermine contracts, deform market arrangements and so on to their detriment.
So, one of the basic lessons they‘ve drawn from their experience on the international, commercial nuclear marketplace over the last several decades since the revolution is that the last thing they can afford to do is rely on that market. The Russians are among those who have buckled under to American pressure and altered a deal that had already been signed, sealed but not delivered.
George Percovich: I think it‘s a great question. We‘re going to open discussion up. I think, Dafna, your question‘s great. My sense is on following up on the specific of what Larry and Steve were saying and the general topic is if we‘re looking forward and talking about the growth of nuclear energy world of you need to treat North Korea and Iran as a somewhat separate problem because the ways that we want to set up institutions and norms and policies going forward aren‘t going to be achievable with Iran or North Korea in the time frame in which we have to deal with Iran and North Korea. So it‘s too bad. We screwed up. We‘ve lost five years. Then I could say how the Clinton Administration lost seven years too.
There‘s plenty of blame to go around, but we‘re talking about two, I think, different things. So the way I would think about your question of proliferation resistance, and a lot of what we‘re talking about is how do we deal with Egypt and Turkey and South Korea would be my three ways to make it concrete and real because if Iran goes forward, as it shows all signs of doing, then Egypt‘s right in the queue. But doesn‘t have the momentum and there‘s still a possibility you could try to figure out how to deal with some of these issues, including Article X.
Then Turkey same thing. It‘s not done in Turkey. I mean a lot depends on what happens with the EU in these other factors. So I think I would divide the problem in a way, but also to make it specific because that‘s what is very frustrating about the discussion about the future of nuclear energy and all the cheerleaders. Some of them are here so I apologize. I like cheerleaders, but this is all going to be great and it‘s the wave of the future and nobody wants to talk about anything specific. So when you start getting specific and saying well, what about this country or what about this rule or whatever. It‘s kind of like everybody goes yeah, well that would be important, but nobody‘s doing anything really about it.
Last point on this, I promise it will be, is that everything that we‘ve talked about in terms of rules that need to be adapted, enforcement that needs to happen. In every bit of that almost the entire world is resisting U.S. leadership today. And in every bit of that the change can‘t happen without the U.S. So we‘re in this paradox which no one will follow us; almost no one. Somebody tell me who will, but I mean, almost no one will follow us.
On the other hand, no one‘s going to do it without us except maybe industry, but they‘re not going to make the Saddam proliferation constraints. So I think that‘s part of the challenges. Let me stop there.
Larry Scheinman: Can I just make one –
George Percovich: Yeah.
Larry Scheinman: I think we ought to keep the e–factor in mind; economics. ‘Cause when it comes to something like an enrichment facility you‘re talking about very, very substantial investment. Economies of scale become an important factor, which have been constantly raised in discussions about this. I do remember that when we were having the MNA discussion the Iranians were at the table and the Iranian participant said, "Well, we‘re going to have six reactors; not one." It was pointed out to him that six is not the break point. You‘re still below the e–level for going forward. He said, "Did I say six. I meant 20."
George Percovich: Well, there‘s also one of my favorite Iranians lines about this that you say it‘s basically economically irrational and he says, "What about our economy is rational?" Fair enough. Please. Stand–up and – I guess there‘s a microphone there because people want – but introduce yourself.
Brigham Morale: My name is Brigham Morale and [??]. Well I come here because there is nobody there before. I was reacting a little bit – as you may know, you may not know, I am an American citizen despite my accent.
George Percovich: I was going to say it‘s a great southern accent.
Brigham Morale: I really felt like an un–American in this discussion a little bit on the corner. I know you well and I respect you very much, but when you said the Americans have some difficulty to have people following is not only because they like to take the back seat, because they are uncomfortable. So all this discussion is very kind of legal [unclear audio] something. We understand it‘s an important part of their regime. But you see most of the [unclear audio] which of interest today, we‘re far away from the thresholds at that time. Those who are closer like India, they refused to sign. In fact they don‘t like the treaty and you ought to – when Steve and God knows I like Steve, suggested that Article X is a mistake you want to [unclear audio] that it already is today. So that is definitely – this treaty can go both ways.
I like very much the aspect that George suggests 30 years down the road how would we look like. I do believe we have to accept the fact it‘s more complex. So you see today what happened with India, after its second test and turning to this nuclear deal with the United States. The both parties went for that. The whole system did something with the most trouble that was harmful for the regime as a whole.
If we don‘t understand the logic of those situations, we‘ll never understand how will we implement something worthwhile in the long–term. So, whatever intellectual construct you have to see how the regime should work, it seems to me we need some creative thinking now. How all this fits in the context and to be complex ‘cause there‘ll be more and more nations going nuclear for civilian reasons for the [unclear audio] of the argument.
Let me say some of those nations [unclear audio] may enjoy the idea of a multilateral enrichment facility by the way. To have access that way consider it a problem, but obviously not a panacea when it comes to other places, in the case of remember Libya. Libya made a practical decision to renounce that. So why don‘t we think about what could we do to make great situations like that in long range for others. I think your examples are very good. Look at Egypt, Turkey, those guys, and try to understand how we should act upon them to create the right environment so they can make this crazy decision and realize the treaty is only an aspect of the problem. It‘s not the end of it all.
George Percovich: Thanks, Brigham. Miles, why don‘t you go ahead and then we‘ll comment on them both.
Miles Pomper: This is primarily directed at Larry. I‘m interested in your comments on the Norway conference and that it was the issue of HEU was more of a political question than a technical question. I guess my one question is, is this kind of grand standing by the South Africans and others in terms of well, we can exploit the Article VI issue to try to get something out of the nuclear weapon states or is there a real concern that they have about giving up HEU? I mean given that they can get a substitute to run something technically to do what they want, is this just a let‘s see what we can get out of people or is this a real concern that they have in giving it up.
The other part is on your proposal on the fuel cycle. It sounds a lot like [??], which Iranians have not had a great experience with. What would you say to convince countries that this will lead to an outcome different from what the Iranians had with [??]?
Larry Scheinman: On the [??] one I would recommend to countries don‘t have a revolution.
George Percovich: But that‘s worth talking about because we actually are seeking if not revolutions, revolutionary change in other countries whether it‘s Saudi Arabia – I mean not right now; not fast, but Democracy or – so even that one. I mean I understand what you said in it and it‘s important, but there is a line of thought. It‘s not just the departed or perhaps soon to be departed to another dimension, elements in the Administration; thinking of people with bad hearts. But it‘s not just they who think that regime change is actually the way to solve a lot of these problems. There are lots of ways to look at the non–proliferation regime and to say well there‘s only a few countries actually that we‘re concerned about and if they change their government, these problems would be much reduced. So, it‘s maybe don‘t have certain kinds of revolutions, but Democratic revolutions are good.
Larry Scheinman: That was tongue–in–cheek, George.
George Percovich: No, but it‘s a totally serious issue. I mean, as an example. I mean I‘ve just been in China doing interviews and I just got a response today from somebody ‘cause I said well, since you don‘t like sanctions and you don‘t like the use of force, what do you think actually are some tools that would be useful to deal with really hard political problems. And they said regime change. This was China. It‘s not just a quirky idea. Anybody else on these two questions and then we‘ll –
Larry Scheinman: Want me to answer the other question?
George Percovich: Yeah.
Larry Scheinman: Miles, the other question I‘d say has two answers. South Africa has spokesperson for the developing countries on the one hand and it was the fact that they do want to protect their investment in HEU on the other. So anything they can do to slow it down of somehow disbursing it or getting rid of it they will do unless they‘re getting something what they consider the good value in exchange. They‘re kind of hard over on just eliminating the HEU.
George Percovich: Steve? You?
Steve Miller: I remember when Bob Galluci was on the stump defending the agreed framework, the 1994 deal with the North Koreans, which was criticized from many directions, nearly every direction you can think of. Friends and foes, proliferation wonks and proliferation wonk haters. Bob would always start off his talks by saying that he wanted to make it very clear that he personally was in favor of a better deal, but that unfortunately the North Koreans had a vote in what kind of deal was acceptable. That‘s the reality we have with the NPT.
I wasn‘t saying that I personally thought that Article X was a mistake. You wouldn‘t have had the treaty without Article X. Likewise, I mean, my boss, Graham Allison, has written quite extensively that Article IV was a mistake. It left open an unfortunate loophole, whereas for much of the developing world, as Larry pointed out, this was regarded as part of the core bargain of the treaty. What we regard as a loophole, they regard as an integral component of the treaty. The point I was really making about Article X Joseph Goblatt, for example, makes this point is that it‘s a completely unconditional life of withdrawal. So, North Korea which was in a state of formal non–compliance gave notification and was outside the treaty, with a little bit of what we might have been able to put in a provision that said provided you‘re in good standing or something along those lines.
Larry Scheinman: Could I – mentioned that George Vunn and Rowland – I think I was Rowland and Byron Vunn did a piece in Arms Control Today which addressed this question. They tried to create – it was Vunn who tried to create the case that withdrawal while you‘re out of compliance could constitute a threat to peace and security and consequently goes to the Security Council and your withdrawal is thereby boxed in, which I think is an interesting and an appropriate way to look at it. I think it gives countries pause to think.
George Percovich: Just on that one ‘cause it‘s important. My understanding under customary international law that it‘s true that you can‘t be party to an international treaty, violate it and then withdraw to avoid the consequences of your violation is generally accepted. I‘ve had this discussion, for example, with Ambassador Shocker from Egypt ‘cause Egypt is absolutely adamant that nothing be done about Article X to clarify it, strengthen it. I mean they will remind you, no, no, no; this is a treaty you can withdraw from.
But then when you push back and you say, not if you‘re not in compliance and he stipulates, "No, no, right, you can‘t be in non–compliance and withdraw," but if you‘re compliant then this should be an unfettered right and this is against the French proposal to try to make it more difficult to withdraw.
Larry Scheinman: One problem there; just one comment. The Vienna convention on the law of treaties does not stipulate it in that precise a way.
Diane Perlman: I‘m Diane Perlman. I‘m a clinical and political psychologist and I‘ve been studying the psychology of nuclear proliferation for about 26 years. I‘m also a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000 and attended a lot of the UN NPT meetings and presented at the 2005 review on the Psychology of Proliferation to the delegates.
So, anyway, within the NPT there are a lot of I guess embedded kind of contradictions and flaws in a way. For one thing the name is non–proliferation and there‘s a tension between non–proliferation and disarmament. Non–proliferation basically means we keep ours; you don‘t get yours. So there‘s a tension in that regarding Article VI.
Also, as you‘re all discussing and what I‘m going to say is outside the box that Article IV in a way is a trap or it presents a double bind, as you‘ve suggested. But there‘s an unquestioning acceptance of a need for nuclear energy and even sort of like language message like going at the peaceful atom or I think we should call it the toxic atom or instead of atoms for peace, atoms for cancer. I mean that there are a lot of problems and there‘s an assumption that nuclear energy is here to stay and that we need it. In the Abolition Global Council that we‘ve proposed an international sustainable energy fund to help develop non–nuclear energy.
Of course the world has changed. There are issues of global warming, but in a way I think we call it the Nuclear Provocation Treaty that within the treaty we‘re provoking actually proliferation and problems. I also quote nuclear narcissism like we can have ours, you can‘t have yours. So that creates asymmetrical power dynamics. I think we‘re also out of the age of deterrents theory and into more spiral dynamics or there may be a lot of mini–arms races that have little deterrents. But the dynamics are very different now and possibilities are different now. So if anyone could address that.
Nancy Gallagher: Yeah, Nancy Gallagher from the University of Maryland. I‘ts become I think politically fashionable in the last year or two to talk about global warming as a reason why we need to have a significant expansion of nuclear power. But if you actually look at the numbers, the magnitude of the problem and see Feder took a very detailed look at this. What it boils down to is in terms of the magnitude of change from carbon generated to carbon free technologies that you would need to have to actually make a significant dent in the global warming problem, it‘s a huge energy transition that you have to accomplish. If you look at all the different technologies that exist, nuclear being one of them, it‘s very difficult to figure out how you could accomplish that transition without having nuclear on the table. At least something you‘re willing to consider.
But if you‘re putting nuclear energy into the package, you‘ve got to do it on a very large scale in order to have it actually make a meaningful contribution. You‘re all talking about a possible two–fold increase, but the numbers that we‘ve come up with have suggested that it would have to be more like five to ten–fold over the next 50 to 100 years.
The kinds of solutions that you‘ve been talking about or the steps that you‘ve been talking about are all essentially little tweaks on the margins or case specific changes. I‘m just curious to know if you‘re thinking not in terms of a doubling of capacity and in the particular countries that you mentioned, but an eight to ten–fold increase with a lot of that increase occurring in places like Indonesia for example, places where there‘s a huge population and economic growth going on where some of these other technologies aren‘t particularly attractive. Don‘t you think we have to think about something much, much more fundamental in terms of looking at institutional arrangements that are much more similar to the original Atchison–Lilienthal plan, not tinkering at the margins in terms of moving towards a system that is fundamentally much more equitable; not less equitable and seeing an absolutely unbreakable connection between what we do in non–proliferation and what we do with the existing nuclear arsenals?
George Percovich: Would you like to respond to that first?
Steve Miller: That was kind of a big one. Why don‘t we – they both were big –
George Percovich: I think I might sit down for that one –
Steve Miller: And then we‘ll come back to you.
Larry Scheinman: Nancy, on your last point, a five–fold increase in nuclear power takes us from 350 to 1,850 gigs in 50 years. That‘s not impossible. Not likely, but it‘s not impossible. That‘s like a gig a year. That‘s pretty heavy going, but not impossible.
But the notion about thinking at the margins instead of thinking at the core. I guess for me it‘s a question of what is attainable. I mean a sea change in thinking in a world of 191 sovereign states, many of whom are still trying to find their legitimacy as a sovereign state and consolidate it I think makes it very, very difficult to think about radical changes along those dimensions in one fell swoop. I‘m a rank incrementalist anyhow so I would take this incrementally and say that any change made on the margins is not the end of the story, but it‘s the first step on a ladder to other things that only can be accomplished or achieved when the time is right. It also would require extraordinary leadership. I don‘t mean leadership by command. I mean leadership by example.
George Percovich: I agree with the logic of your point. I‘ve seen the Feder work and see no reason to dispute it. I tend to think we‘ve got to get through the next 20–25 years and the one saving grace, small number of saving graces in this picture, nuclear power is expensive. It‘s often, when you strip all the illusions and optimistic cost estimates away, uneconomic, which for example has kept both the Japanese re–processing and breeder reactor programs in check for three or four decades. It‘s also very slow moving in the sense that installed capacity doesn‘t come on line quickly and the reality next year is not going to deviate enormously from the reality this year.
I just got back from Cairo. The Egyptians are very enthusiastic now about their decision to pursue nuclear power. I spoke with Ambassador Shocker, among others, and the Egyptians now say, you know 20 years ago largely in the penumbra of Chernobyl we made a bad decision, we Egyptians, and decided to forsake nuclear power. We‘ve now lost 20 years, but we‘ve come to our senses partly under the pressure of 70 or 80 dollar a barrel oil. Now we have a big, long–term plan to install large amounts of nuclear electricity in our country.
Right at the moment this is a gleam in the eye, right. If they appropriate some money next year, it will be X years where X is some number like seven before a first reactor comes on line. So, I think if we can find ways of getting through the next 20 or 25 years, if at that point we‘re at the cusp of a tremendous acceleration in the installation of nuclear power on a global basis, there may be actually more political will to think fundamentally about big changes in the whole global management system for nuclear power.
The other point I was going to pick up on was your last comment about the connection between the existing arsenals and non–proliferation.
One of the things that seems to me is internally contradictory about our own behavior is that we established proliferation as one of the gravest threats – nuclear proliferation in particular – WMD proliferation more broadly – is one of the gravest threats to our national security and in fact one of the few things that can disturb American security in any large way. And yet it is our own behavior and doctrine which is the foremost champion of the legitimacy and utility of nuclear weapons.
When the international court of justice in the mid–90s was addressing the question about the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, it was the United States that led the charge in claiming that this was a legal, legitimate and moral option for states. Now we can understand why we did that and most of us believed in deterrents, at least during the Cold War and all the rest.
But I often say when I give talks on the subject that if you want to find the really powerful case for acquiring nuclear weapons read the documents that issue out of the American Department of Defense. The Nuclear Posture Review, which claims that nuclear weapons make a unique and indispensable contribution to American security. What does that tell you. If they‘re necessary for us, why aren‘t they necessary for anybody else.
But it‘s not just Donald Rumsfeld. Go back and read the 1999 new strategic concept that came out of the Clinton Pentagon for NATO, which said almost exactly the same thing in almost exactly the same words, but on behalf of the most powerful and unthreatened alliance in the history of the world. That we needed nuclear weapons and that they would make a unique contribution to our security for as far into the future as the eye could see.
So it seems to me that we ourselves do a very substantial job of legitimizing these weapons and keeping them at the center of international political life rather than at the margins and in making the case that they have high utility, even for a state that has unquestioned conventional primacy.
It seems to be very hard to them to go around the world and persuade others that these are useless artifacts that they‘re wise to forsake when we ourselves believe that they‘re indispensable for our own security. That seems to me a paradox that‘s in–built in our defense posture. I think we missed a huge opportunity at the end of the Cold War when we didn‘t say well, maybe for global management reasons we need a small residual force to protect against the day when some truly evil bad guy gets his hands on nuclear weapons. But these things are not usable. They‘re not necessary for us and we‘re going to push them to the margins of international political life. But we did not do that. We did just the opposite.
Of course the Russians have re–embraced nuclear weapons as well. So that you have the two leading powers leaving nuclear weapons at the core of their own self–generated defense postures. That, it seems to me, makes it very hard for the non–proliferation community to make a persuasive case that these are not useful instruments for advancing international security.
Nancy Gallagher: I would just add that I‘m not convinced that the current administration‘s policy or strategy is to go around and convince people not to have nuclear weapons or that nuclear weapons are bad. I think they‘re concerned about proliferation is, as the President has said many times, this threat he imagines of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. The most dangerous weapons in the hands of the most dangerous people. I think that is what is driving the Administration‘s non–proliferation policies and strategies. I don‘t see us going around the world to convince other people not to have nuclear weapons. I see us going around the world trying to create pressures against countries that are of the most concern when it comes to nuclear weapons.
Larry had talked about Bush‘s MDU speech in February, 2004 and the Canadians rushing in and being told they‘re in the fence ‘cause they have uranium. I think they‘re in the fence for other reasons, too. They‘re in the fence because their trusted allies who are not considered a threat. Who knows where they‘re going to go with their own industry; and the Australians as well.
So I think that is something to keep in mind. It reminds me of a comment George made a few moments ago that seemed to suggest that the Administration‘s non–proliferation policy or strategy is indeed regime change; that they are the same thing, which is something to keep in mind. So, when you‘re talking about this, an Administration that has these views but also is stacked brim to brow with people who really believe in nuclear energy, maybe that makes it a little bit easier to understand the differences in the two strategies here on weapons and energy.
George Percovich: I just would add to that too is that Nancy I think in your scenario and I mean I‘ve seen Steve‘s paper and it makes sense at one level. But there are a couple thoughts. One is there‘s a sighting problem where all this is going to happen and how it‘s going to happen, especially in democratic states and especially since there‘s no country that has a permanent waste repository and all of that. So there‘s like that set of questions.
But then it strikes me that you get led, and I think this would happen with any leadership in the United States, that if you do see that scenario – so if you really did take climate change seriously, which we haven‘t. That‘s Bobby Byrd, too; a good democrat. And you started looking at that and you would recognize what Steve said at some point that the way to square this with non–proliferation; really you have to do something to really de–legitimate these weapons and have a more equitable system and stuff.
Then the U.S. government and other governments will look at that and they‘ll go, nah, we‘re not going to do that; that‘s too hard. Where you get driven back to is regime change. So you might be worried about an Indonesia with nuclear power, but it depends on the government in Indonesia. When you start looking at the numbers and you say well, what‘s a bigger challenge, the U.S., Israel, France, Russia, Pakistan, us getting rid of our nuclear weapons and really devaluing our nuclear weapons and taking on our labs and doing all that or you try to change a couple governments that you‘re worried about so it‘s just us friends who have this stuff. I think the answer gets pretty simple ‘cause it‘s a lot easier to attack and invade another country politically than it is to start disarming yourself, I mean, historically. We go to war a hell of a lot more than we do big changes and kind of reductions in nuclear forces. So I think that‘s where you get led in that world that you‘re talking about is to make the world safe for nuclear power. If we‘re going to go there.
Larry Scheinman: I think in a way it‘s the admonition that states have only permanent interest, no permanent friends and therefore there‘s a risk all the way down the line. This regime of today may become a very adversarial regime later on. That‘s the down side of this kind of thinking.
George Percovich: There are tremendous down sides to this kind of thinking, but it‘s a lot easier to do that than to start talking about getting rid of your nuclear arsenal.
Craig Butrum: No, that‘s fine. Thanks for the response. My name is Craig Butrum. I‘m with the Nuclear Threat Initiative here in Washington. I just would like to get the panel‘s impressions and comments on a proposal that we presented in September for the creation of an international fuel bank working with IAEA.
We stepped forward with a $50 million challenge to try to get something that‘s been talked about for 30 years to actually happen. We set a deadline – a two–year deadline for other member countries to contribute toward this international fuel bank, either by product or by pledge of commitments. I just would like to get your thoughts on that concept of something that is concrete and actually might be doable.
George Percovich: Let‘s take Michael‘s too and then we‘ll take two.
Michael Kraig: Michael Kraig from the Stanley Foundation. So far the discussion has been in my mind, amazingly state centric, a lot of looking at problem regimes. Here I just wanted to give some context before answering my question, asking what is admittedly somewhat of a loaded question ‘cause I‘m going to set it up.
But I‘ve done a lot of work on Persian Gulf security and a little bit wider on overall Middle East security for the Stanley Foundation over the last four years. One thing I‘ve become very educated on through basically lots of arduous travel to the region over and over again is that the Iranian threat of nuclear proliferation is not at all the same thing as the trans–national terrorist threat of an Al–Quada type cell getting enough, probably highly enriched uranium to explode say a rough nuclear warhead in Washington or New York or L.A. And yet often in the D.C. debate it all gets put together as sort of monolithic threat and the discussion always seems to be pulled like gravity back to Iran or back to the DPRK.
There was a lot of hopelessness I thought on the table, or pessimism rather, about when you‘re dealing with states proliferation resistant reactors being a cure all solution or an internationalized bank being a solution, but is there perhaps more optimism for a global response to what I view as the true trans–national terrorist threat from fundamentalist Sunni groups. Not Shiite Iran, but fundamentalist wahabi or deobandi, etc., terrorists, some who may come again from Saudi Arabia, just as happened with 9/11, and who are not directed by any given regime, good or bad. Is there a policy option out there for dealing with that threat if not a good one for dealing with the Irans of this world?
Larry Scheinman: On that last one, very simply, there is a position in this Administration that we will hold accountable any state that might have been – in this case it‘ll be North Korea that we‘re thinking of – that might transfer nuclear material to a terrorist organization. Gets to be a little tough if you get a couple of players in that game. What are you going to do knock them all out? So you don‘t really have a good deterrent threat. But it‘s a problem. It‘s a very serious issue and it needs to be addressed.
Steve Miller: I think that it is possible to see how we will have a reasonable prospective for foreclosing most of the paths to a terrorist nuclear weapon and the basic answer is make sure that on a global scale all nuclear materials that are weapons usable and all nuclear weapons are held to adequate conditions of safety and security because if they can‘t get their hands on the access to the material, the terrorists are not going to get their hands on a bomb. Nunn–Lugar was all about that, the global clean out idea which came out of the current DOE, the Bush Administration DOE which is about removing weapons, potentially weapons usable HEU from research reactors is all about that.
The problem is that, in my opinion, we‘ve made slow but steady progress on a good array of solutions, but never with the urgency that seemed to be appropriate given how large the risk is. So I would‘ve liked to have seen it go a hell of a lot faster, but that I think is a more attractable problem. There‘s always the conundrum that the most important bit to secure is the last one or two percent because as long as there‘s any vulnerable material out there, and wherever it is whether it‘s Pakistan or North Korea or Russia, then there‘s still some residual risk of leakage of nuclear material out onto some sort of elicit market.
The Bush Administration however has been particularly concerned about the state sponsorship problem, which is in fact another root for a terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons. I think in both the 2002 and 2006 national security strategy, pretty explicit that potential state sponsors of terror who are also seeking weapons of mass destruction are right at the core of the concern for the Bush doctrine. So, whatever we may think about the Shiite Sunni split and the unlikelihood that the Iranians who have also had their own difficulties with Mr. Bid Laden, he‘s issued a fatwa against them also. Us and the Iranians. The far enemy and the local apostates.
The Bush Administration believes that Iran is the leading state sponsor of terror on a planetary scale, possibly rivaled only by the North Koreans but the North Koreans are broke. They‘re pursuing, in Bush‘s eyes, nuclear weapons. This is, as he said many, many times, an intolerable and unacceptable reality.
Dafna Linzer: I would just add that my sense from interviewing people in the government is that, yeah, it definitely is this nexus that the President has always talked about about a state sponsorship and states that sponsor terror that are looking for nuclear weapons. That is a big fear. I don‘t sense a lot of fear from people in the Administration about – or even all that much concern really about securing nuclear materials. They do point to Nunn–Lugar, they do point to other programs that are out there and active. DOE‘s own program that‘s out there and active. I don‘t see a lot of leadership or concern from the top about that issue, but polonium 210 in this sushi restaurant in London should make everyone a little more concerned.
George Percovich: I would just add on this and I may be a little unorthodox on this, but I think to deal with the terrorism problem you need to do what Steve said primarily focus on materials wherever – not to deal with the terrorist part, to deal with the possibility of terrorists detonating a nuclear weapon ‘cause there‘s a terrorist problem that‘s independent. You‘re talking about the means the terrorists might use; you have to focus on the materials.
But it comes back to the same problem. You have to get the entire world or at least the 45 most important countries that have nuclear materials to agree on standards and practices and then to implement them to secure that material. But in order to do that you have to deal with the equity issues that we talked about. You have to deal with frustration over Article IV.
So you end up having to deal with – so it is a state problem in much the same way in order to get to an outcome that controls materials that could be used in nuclear weapons. So I think they kind of go hand in hand. And to deal with the states to get the rules, you can‘t be treating, in many of their views, you can‘t treat Iran differently than you‘re treating Indian, than you‘re treating Israel, than you‘re treating this one.
So it does come back to the problems about dealing with Iran or dealing with Israel or dealing with India that we‘ve been talking about, at least in my limited brain. I don‘t want to ignore the fuel bank. I mean, everybody I talked to – my own view is a great idea and it ought to be supported and that it won‘t – it doesn‘t aspire to and it won‘t solve the Iranian problem, the immediate problem. But as a bona fide, as a step in the right direction, as an example to deal with kind of the future of nuclear power and looking ahead that it‘s a very important step. Also that you guys, NTI‘s modeled it in a way of saying we‘re not going to interfere. This is going to be up to the IAEA to determine kind of the rules. It‘s not an American proxy. That all of that is positive and welcome.
Larry Scheinman: I was with Laura Holgy on the Hill yesterday briefing on this. I think what‘s most attractive about the bank proposal from NTI is that it is not conditioned on who must give up in order to have access to the bank. Now, how it finally works out is hard to know, but I think coming at it from that point of view saying there is a recourse out here to protect you if the market fails you is a positive thing. But it will net basically the people who you‘re least concerned about and still leave out the [??], those who are of greatest concern who will not be necessarily put off by that.
Steve Miller: I agree with what‘s been said and I would just add that for managing the Egypt‘s and Turkey‘s and South Korea‘s that this is a great idea. Furthermore, you take Egypt as the example. Now is the time to be influencing their debate about what they‘re going to need down the road. Before they‘ve committed to enrichment, before they‘ve decided that they have a national energy security case for enrichment, before they have started encountering market worries about access and price and so on, this is when they‘re going to be the most malleable.
When you‘ve got 368 centrifuges in place and heading for 3,000 and a building already built waiting for 50 plus thousand centrifuges, as the Iranians do, then it gets much harder to turn that off. There‘s constituencies, there‘s stakes, there‘s investments already made, some costs, there‘s programmatic momentum, there‘s organizations internally behind all of this, there‘s political investment in it domestically. Then you go to them and say stop and even say to them stop and we‘ll give you a five year supply of fuel and it‘s tough. It‘s tough to get their attention at that point. So I think right now is exactly when we ought to be talking to the Egyptians about what they‘re not going to need down the road.
Larry Scheinman: Can I just add one last point that the size of the bank that‘s being discussed is probably too small to be as much of an attraction as it might be. It‘s only for one core reload. If you have a failure in more than one place at one time, you‘ve got a problem.
George Percovich: Right, right. Obvious. Moniche.
Moniche Ferr: Moniche Ferr, the Nautilus Institute. Thank you all for your comments. This question is for – preferably all of you. I was in New Delhi the first six months of 2005 doing research on how to mainstream into non–proliferation regime. Not because I had any particular insight or I was particularly prescient, just what I was deciding to do. Got scooped by the July 18th announcement, but I‘m over it.
What was clear at that time and then on July 18th and in the months thereafter was that there was this elephant in the room that was poking out its tail on one side and tussle on the other, like very clearly there in the NPT tent. This analogy I hear all the time; NPT tent. It‘s not strange to me that there‘s a circus analogy with NPT, but anyway. What I felt happened with the deal was this elephant wasn‘t really accommodated. They just ripped a hole in the tent and said, ah, there it fits now. I sort of feel like there needs to be a bigger tent; a bigger and a better tent. Outside of his international fuel bank idea, and not to put that valuable discussion about NPT on the side, but for a moment, do you agree? Does there need to be a bigger tent? Do we need to re–tool it? Is the NPT a first draft? If so what does the next one look like? Thanks.
George Percovich: If you tried to, not if you had to, if you tried to re–invent something like the – let me back up. Clearly to manage nuclear technology in the world we live in you need rules. You can‘t do it without rules, even though some people for a few years have been trying. But that‘s inescapable. So then you say you need a rule. When you start thinking about rules you‘ve got to negotiate them and you want them to encompass as many people and entities as you can and so you negotiate them. Once you start negotiating them, as Steve pointed out, that gets you to Article IV and V and VI ‘cause people want something for something.
So, if you went to re–invent the NPT or some kind of rules, as you‘re suggesting, Moniche, today, you‘d have – the countries with nuclear weapons would have to give so much more equity than we gave the last time because people saw that they got screwed basically the last time and they‘re not going to do it that way again. So, you might try to do something to figure out how to accommodate India, but you would open up something that would be so much more demanding than – not just the United States. I mean what‘s France going to give in that negotiation? How about Russia? You think Russia‘s going to kind of line up for a more equitable set of trade offs on nuclear arm and security guarantees and so forth. What‘s the – just go down the list. How are the Israeli‘s at the moment going to be thinking about this issue.
So I think we‘re kind of stuck with the NPT in one place. Then you have the India, Pakistan and Israel problem and I think a lot of people here would say that wasn‘t the way that the U.S. has proposed to deal with that wasn‘t the right way to do it. In part because it‘s not a rule. It‘s a cut out for one country. They didn‘t even set up criteria that would make it kind of uniform and that Pakistan and Israel and others would qualify. It‘s an exception for India, but I think at this point it‘s almost academic. Dafna said that the thing‘s in trouble in India today. There‘s a problem. But assuming something like it goes through I think we‘re then in the mode of trying to deal with the damage and not how to accommodate India at this point.
Let me just tell one brief story. I was in Brussels on Tuesday in a panel on Iran where there were two panels and basically seven other speakers just pounding on me as the American over the U.S. India deal in part. This is such a double standard and how can you guys be pushing on enforcement on Iran and trying to cut Iran off from technology and giving it away to India, etc., etc.
I had the same discussion in China two weeks prior to that where everybody on the Chinese side was pounding on the U.S. India deal. But in each case you finally stop and you say to them, say to the people from Germany and Chinese, wait a minute, you can stop this. This is contingent on the nuclear suppliers group. So in China two weeks ago I said, "You don‘t like it, stop it. Just stand up and say no in the nuclear suppliers group and it‘s done." "No, no, no. We‘re not going to do that." Okay.
So the same thing on Tuesday. The Germans pounding, "This is terrible, this is terrible." "It is terrible, but your country could block it. So how terrible is it." "No, no, no, we‘re not going to do that." So there‘s a general problem of we have these discussions here about future nuclear power and the rules and what the U.S. can and should do, but there are a lot other actors out there who can play a role who are basically free riding and complaining. We can blame that on ourselves in a sense ‘cause we have a legitimacy problem and we can‘t bring people along, but it isn‘t just that. There‘s a broader systemic problem which is why my answer to Nancy is we‘re not going to end up doing like the rational thing and the equitable construct. We‘re going to end up doing something really sloppy that you can do in one or two, three cases at a time, which tends to be you invade people or topple them rather than try to negotiate rules all over the place. But that‘s my answer.
Larry Scheinman: I look at the non–proliferation treaty as the foundation of a regime that‘s been built upon over time in response to changing conditions and circumstances. The Nuclear Suppliers Group, 1540, the convention on the suppression of nuclear terrorism, etc., etc. Then you‘ve got these things that are out there that help to kind of come to grips with problems that reach a certain level of severity that need to be addressed. I guess I‘m enough of an optimist to believe that we still will build out from this basic foundation to accommodate some of the issues that have been raised. It may look bleak today and it may look a little less bleak in the future. At some point we may have to reconsider fundamentally, but I‘m not prepared to say that the system‘s broken.
Steve Miller: I would just add to remarks, most of which I agree with that seems to me here we encounter another paradox or contradiction in the heart of American behavior, which is we‘re trying to make the case with respect to the bad guys whose behavior we dislike, that the strictest and sternest possible enforcement of the rules is necessary and appropriate.
On the other hand we flip around and show the world that when it comes to ourselves, our friends and when it‘s convenient to our interests we will relax the rules or exempt ourselves from scrutiny or otherwise deviate from rules, even in some cases when we ourselves have been the foremost champion of the rule. It seems to me that we are often so blind to the sort of internally contradictory character of our own behavior on this. I think largely because of the premise of the white hat. We‘re the good guys, therefore we can be a little loosey–goosey with the rules. But when the bad guys violate anything, they should be reliably smacked around.
George Percovich: Ma‘am, we‘re going to give you the last question.
Veronica Canton: Thank you. My name is Veronica Canton. I‘m with Americans for Informed Democracy. My question is – general question for anyone who wants to take it. What are the security implications of nuclear waste management and the effects on the environment?
Larry Scheinman: I have to think about that. I mean, there‘s an obvious concern that if waste management is not appropriately dealt with you‘re going to have an environmental disaster that‘s potential. What‘s happened in the upper mountains seems to be demonstrable of how difficult it is to get your arms around the issue and handle it. But if the implication is since we have a problem at the back end of the fuel cycle, we shouldn‘t have any activity at the front end, I‘m not sure I would agree with that.
I would say that this is a driver that causes us to have to take a harder and harder look at what can be done to constrain the environmental damage as a consequence of nuclear use. It‘s not just our problem now. It‘s the problem in many countries around the world. It‘s going to get to be a bigger problem as we go down the road. With India growing its nuclear program. Pakistan is now intending to grow its nuclear program. Indonesia‘s got these very, very optimistic programs, which have been on the table for quite a while. What is everybody going to do with all of this? I think that when the problem comes, we come to confront it. Now, if we confront it unsuccessfully, we‘ll pay the price, but I‘m not convinced that we have to be so pessimistic about our being able to finally get a grip on this. There are technologies that can be deployed that will help to come to grips with the problem. Not necessarily to remedy it in its entirety.
George Percovich: We‘ve had a defacto waste management system in place from the beginning and it‘s called storage on–site. One issue is how long will that be politically tenable. I would say so far its been remarkably, socially acceptable. Whether that will remain true for indefinite periods and as we proliferate numbers of reactors and numbers of sites and so on is one of the questions.
I would say though that if you look over the long sweep of time that if the long–term disposition issue remains intractable and/or if the cost of managing the waste issue turns out to be enormous, it‘s a potential impediment to the kind of explosive – no pun intended – growth of nuclear power down the road because if you factor those costs in, they‘re real costs. Somebody‘s going to have to pay them.
Then the economic incentives for going down this path seems to me are dampened somewhat. But for the moment it seems to me like the defacto system has been adequate, both technically and politically, for dealing with the accumulating waste that we‘ve seen so far.
Larry Scheinman: Could I just ask Steve a question. If we reach the point where something has got to be done and we do it, then we have in a sense have established a new plateau for going on in the future. There‘ll be a time of which nothing is done until you resolve the issue. The moment you resolve this question in a socially satisfactory and economically viable manner, that‘s going to open the door to further development of nuclear, I think.
Steve Miller: If we find a solution the potential impediment doesn‘t exist. Much of what I‘ve learned about Yucca Mountain I know from Allison McFarland and this leaves me not terribly hopeful about solutions any time in our lifetime or those of our children.
George Percovich: Let me close by saying that if history tells us anything that there‘s not going to be like a neat solution where all of a sudden it happens and everybody goes, oh, this is what works and that‘s it for all time. It‘ll be incremental.
Let me thank all of you for coming. I want to thank Larry and Steve and Dafna. Matt has something that he wants to say before you run off, but thank you all. (Applause)
Matt Martin: Thanks. Yes. I‘m Matt Martin with the Stanley Foundation. I just have three quick announcements. Yes, thank you very much to the panel. I thought it was a very good discussion on the issue.
So the first announcement is that there are evaluation forms at your chairs or nearby on the floor. Please fill them out. We very much value what you have to say about your panel and also about the session today. So we look forward to your comments.
Second of all, and I swear this was not set up prior to the discussion today, but to confront the fear of looking back 30 years and wondering why didn‘t we do something, on Monday we‘re going to try to do something. We have a symposium as a separate event with another organization called the Potomac Institute to look at not just the standard nuclear chem. Biological radiological weapons, but sort of what may be the potential for future types of weapons of mass destruction that are currently in R&D or are being thought of anyways. So, but we don‘t get to that point 30 years from now to say why didn‘t we talk about these things. If you‘re interested there‘s a flier in the back. It‘ll be a morning session. It‘s over in Virginia at the Potomac Institute. Please come and please RSVP. There‘s information on the flier.
And third of all, in about 15 minutes we‘re going to have a reception that you‘re all invited to. Please do stay and come. It‘s in the Rotunda, which is up on the eighth floor. As you leave the room you have to walk back around to where lunch was and that side of things. There are elevators that‘ll take you up to the eighth floor there. So, I hope you can stay us there and we can continue the conversation. Thanks much for coming.
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