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FALLING BEHIND: INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY OF THE PEACEFUL ATOM Henry D. Sokolski Editor Visit our website for other free publication downloads http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/ To rate this publication click here. February 2008 This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the public domain, and under the provisions of Title 17, United States Code, Section 105, it may not be copyrighted. ***** The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. 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ISBN 1-58487-339-6 ii CONTENTS Foreword .......................................................................v Part I: Introduction and Overview ...........................1 1. Assessing the IAEA’s Ability to Verify the NPT Henry D. Sokolski...................................................3 Part II: New IAEA Inspections Possibilities ........63 2. Can We Track Source Materials Better─Do We Need To? Jack Edlow............................................................65 3. Novel Technologies for the Detection of Undeclared Nuclear Activities Nikolai Khlebnikov, Davide Parise, and Julian Whichello.............................................71 4. Wide Area Environmental Sampling in Iran Garry Dillon.........................................................85 Part III: Safeguards Limits and Premises..............99 5. Can Nuclear Fuel Production in Iran and Elsewhere Be Safeguarded against Diversion? Edwin S. Lyman ................................................101 6. Adequacy of IAEA’s Safeguards for Achieving Timely Detection Thomas B. Cochran ............................................121 iii 7. Managing Spent Fuel in the United States: The Illogic of Reprocessing Frank von Hippel ...............................................159 8. The NPT, IAEA Safeguards and Peaceful Nuclear Energy: An “Inalienable Right,” but Precisely To What? Robert Zarate......................................................221 Part IV: The Agency’s Authority ..........................291 9. The Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime: Avoiding the Void Pierre Goldschmidt.............................................293 10. The U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative: The Question of Safeguards Quentin Michel..................................................311 11. Financing IAEA Verification of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Thomas E. Shea ..................................................323 About the Contributors ...........................................337 iv FOREWORD The following volume consists of research that The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) commissioned in 2005 and 2006. This work was critiqued at a set of international conferences held in London, England, at King’s College; Washington, DC; and in Paris, France, in cooperation with the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS) and the French Foreign Ministry. Dr. Wyn Bowen at King’s College, Bruno Gruselle at FRS, and Martin Briens of the French Foreign Ministry were critical to the success of these meetings. Funding for the project came from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Both of the corporation’s key project managers, Stephen Del Rosso and Patricia Moore Nicholas, were generous with their time and always supportive. NPEC’s project coordinator, Tamara Mitchell, and the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) staff helped prepare the book manuscript. Without Ms. Mitchell’s help and that of Ms. Marianne Cowling and Ms. Rita Rummel of SSI, the book would not have been possible. Finally, to the project’s authors and participants who contributed their time, ideas, and hard work, a special thanks is due. HENRY D. SOKOLSKI Executive Director The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center v PART I: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 1 CHAPTER 1 ASSESSING THE IAEA’S ABILITY TO VERIFY THE NPT A Report of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Nuclear Safeguards System Henry D. Sokolski OVERVIEW Ask how effective International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear safeguards are in blocking proliferation, and you are sure to get a set of predictable reactions. Those skeptical of the system will complain that IAEA inspections are too sketchy to ferret out nuclear misbehavior (e.g., North Korea, Iraq, and Iran) and that in the rare cases when such violators are found out (almost always by national intelligence agencies), the IAEA’s board of governors is loath to act. IAEA supporters have a rather opposite view. The IAEA, they point out, actually found Pyongyang, Baghdad, and Tehran in non-compliance with their IAEA safeguards agreements and reported this to the United Nations (UN) Security Council. International inspectors, moreover, were the only ones correctly to assess the status of Saddam’s strategic weapons programs. The problem is not to be found in Vienna or in the IAEA’s inspections system but in Washington’s unwillingness to listen. In the future, the United States, they argue, should rely more, not less, on the IAEA to sort out Iran’s nuclear activities and to disable North Korea’s nuclear weapons complex. These two views could hardly be more opposed. There is at least one point, though, upon which both 3 sides agree: If possible, it would be useful to enhance the IAEA’s ability to detect and prevent nuclear diversions. This would not only reduce the current risk of nuclear proliferation, it would make the further expansion of nuclear power much less risky. The question is what is possible? To date, little has been attempted to answer this basic question. Periodic reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the IAEA have highlighted budgetary, personnel, and and administrative challenges that are immediately facing the agency.1 There also has been a 2-year internal IAEA review of how existing IAEA safeguards procedures might be improved.2 None of these assessments, however, has tackled the more fundamental question of how well the IAEA is actually doing in achieving its nuclear material accountancy mission. Precisely what nuclear activities and materials can the IAEA monitor to detect a diversion early enough to prevent it? What inherent limits does the IAEA nuclear inspections system face? In light of these limits, what new initiatives should the IAEA Department of Safeguards attempt and, even more important, stay clear of? What additional authority and technical capabilities might the IAEA secure to help achieve its nuclear material accountancy goals? In the end, what is or should be protected as being “peaceful” under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) or the IAEA charter? What is the proper balance between expanding the use of nuclear energy and making sure it is not diverted to make bombs? None of these questions admits to quick or easy answers. All, however, are increasingly timely. Will IAEA safeguards be able keep Iran from using their nuclear programs to make bombs? What of IAEA’s inspectors’ abilities to ferret out all of North Korea’s nuclear activities? Will the safeguards being proposed 4