Quantities of Fissile Materials in US and Soviet ~uclear Weapons Arsenals Frank von Hippel David ...

135 Pages·2007·1.63 MB·English

of
Quantities Fissile Materials
in
U-S -and Soviet ~uclearW eapons Arsenals
*
Frank von Hippel
David H. ~lbri~ht+
Barbara G. Levi
PU/CEES Report No. 168
July 1986
*
Also Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton
.
University
+
Also Federation of American Scientists, 307 Massachusetts Ave. N.E.,
Washington, DC 20002.
Center for Energy and Environmental Studies
The Engineering Quadrangle
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544

TABLE OF CONTENTS
a
I. INTRODUCTION
11. US STOCKPILE OF WEAPON-GRADE URANIUM
111. US STOCKPILE OF WEAPON-GRADE PLUTONIUM
a
IV. DISPOSITION OF THE US GOVERNMENT'S
STOCKPILE OF NATURAL URANIUM
V. SOVIET STOCKPILE OF PLUTONIUM

I. INTRODUCTION
-TAB-LE OF CONTENTS
History of the Proposal to Cut Off the Production of
Fissile Material for Nuclear Weapons
a The Verifiability of a Fissile Cutoff
The Importance of Knowing the Amounts of Fissile Materials Already
in the Nuclear Arsenals 2
REFERENCES
Table 1-1. The Amounts of Fissile Material in the US Weapons
Stockpile and An Upper-Bound Estimate of the
Amount of Separated Plutonium in the USSR

I. INTRODUCTION
for
History of the Proposal to Cut Off the Production -of Fissile Material
Nuclear Weapons
Although the original nuclear weapons control proposals such as the
-
1946 Baruch Plan focused on the control of nuclear weapons materials,
recent arms control negotiations have focused principally on the control of
long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems. This has been in part due to
the shift in the focus of the nuclear arms race from the quantitative to
the qualitative. In part also it resulted from the Soviet Union's
reluctance to allow intrusive verification arrangements. It is relatively
easy with "national technical means," such as cameras mounted on
satellites, to locate, identify and count large exposed objects such as
intercontinental bombers, submarines under construction and missile silos.
Recently, however, there has been renewed interest in the direct
control of nuclear warheads. In part, this has been due to the
demonstrated widespread public support for the idea of a "freeze on all
further testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons and of
missiles and new a 1r-5 r aft designed primarily to deliver nuclear weapons
[emphasis added]." In part also, it has been due to a trend toward
smaller, mobile, and more ambiguous (multiple-purpose) long-range missiles.
Such developments, if they are not quickly blocked by new arms control
initiatives, will tend to put into doubt the verification capabilities of
national technical systems.
-The Verifiability of a Fissile Cutoff
For all these and other reasons, we have been investigating the
verifiability of a possible agreement between the superpowers to cut off
the prod Yc-5 ion of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium for nuclear
weapons. All nuclear weapons contain at least a few kilograms of such
chain-reacting "fissile~.material.A cutoff in the production of such
materials for weapons would therefore limit the number of nuclear warheads
which could be produced. Perhaps more importantly, it would lay a basis
for verifiable reductions in the superpower fissile material stockpiles.
The US repeatedly proposed a fissile cutoff to the Soviet4Union as a
separate arms control agreement during the period 1956-1969. The Soviet
-
-. . Union rejected the idea apparently in large part because-the US stockpile
was-much larger at the time. More recently, however, in 1982, Soviet
Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, announced that the Soviet Union now
believed that the "cessation of production of fissionable materials for
manufacturing of nuclear weapons" could be usefully made one of the
-
"initial stages" of a "nuclear disarmament program."
Introduction, 23 July 1986, Page 1
-The Importance of Knowing & Amounts Fissile Materials in the Nuclear
Arsenals
The verifiability of a fissile cutoff agreement would depend on the
size of the violation that would have to be detectable. One obvious way to
judge the significance of an hypothetical clandestine program for the
production of fissile materials would be to compare the amounts of material
-- --
being produced over a given period say ten years with the amounts
already in the superpower weapons stockpiles. This has led us to attempt .
to estimate these stockpiles sizes from publicly available information. We
present our analysis and conclusions in this report.
Enough public information about the US nuclear weapons material
production complex is available to allow reasonably accurate estimates of
the the amounts of fissile materials in the US weapons stockpile. Similar
estimat s to ours have been made independently by Cochran, Arkin and
.- 7
Hoenig Insufficient public information is available to make as good
estimates for the Soviet Union. We show below, however, that it is
possible on the basis of public information to make a rough upper-bound
estimate of the amount of plutonium in the Soviet stockpile. We have been
. - unable to make a similar-of estimate the amount of highly-enriched uranium
*
in the Soviet nuclear weapons arsenal. Our estimates for the US stockpiles
of weapons fissile materials and for the Soviet plutonium stockpile are
summarized in Table 1-1.
Introduction, 23 July 1986, Page 2
SECTION I. REFERENCES
on
1-1. US Department of State, Documents Disarmament, 1945-1959,p . 7.
See also, First Report of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission
to the Security Council, December 31, 1946, ibid, p. 50.
1-2. Randall Forsberg, "Call to Halt the Arms Race," American Friends
Service Committee, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies.
.
Available from Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, National Clearing
House, St. Louis (1980).
1-3. Frank von Hippel, David H. Albright and Barbara G. Levi, "Stopping the
Production of Fissile Material for Nuclear Weapons," Scientific
American, September 1985, pp. 40-47.
n 1-4. US State Department [starting in 1961 taken over by the US Arms
on
Control and Disarmament Agency], Documents Disarmament: 1945-1959,
m,
pp. 593-595, 953-967; pp. 222-223; 1961, 469; 1962, pp. 146-147,
285-286, 567; 1963, p. 333; 1964, p. 4, 35-36, 162, 165-166, 335-338,
399-403; 1965, p. 117; 1966, p. 7, 222-226, 538-546, 554-560; 1967,
pp. 452-454; 1969, pp. 109-110; 158-161.
m,
ibid, 1961, pp. 432-433; pp. 423-446; 1964, 339-340; 1965, p.
191; p. 604; M , p p. 171-172.
"Statement by Andrei A. Gromyko, Member of the Politbureau of the
Central Committee of the CPSU, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
USSR, at Plenary Meeting of the Second Special Session of the United
Nations General Assembly Devoted to Disarmament, June 15, 1982,"
(unofficial translation distributed June 15, 1982 by the Soviet
mission to the UN).
1-7. Cochran, Thomas B., Arkin, William M. and Hoenig, Milton M., Nuclear
r> Weapons Databook, Volume 11: The Production Complex (Cambridge, Mass:
Ballinger, to be published).
Â
Introduction, 23 July 1986, Page 3
Table 1-1: Amounts Fissile Material in the US Weapons Stockpile -and- An
of the of
Upper-Bound Amount Separated Plutonium -in -the- US SR
Stockpile Amount
(tonnes)
US Weapon-Grade Uranium
US Weapon-Grade Plutonium
Soviet Plutonium
Introduction, 23 July 1986, Page 4