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"Though we have acheived progress, our work is not over. That is why I support the mission of the Arms Control Association. It is, quite simply, the most effective and important organization working in the field today." 

– Larry Weiler
Former U.S.-Russian arms control negotiator
August 7, 2018
January/February 2009
Edition Date: 
Thursday, January 15, 2009
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Russia, India Ink Nuke Cooperation Deal

Peter Crail

During a Dec. 5 visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to New Delhi, Russia agreed to provide India with four new nuclear power plants as part of a nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries. The agreement marks the third such accord India has signed with nuclear suppliers since a Sept. 6 decision by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to lift a long-standing prohibition against providing nuclear technology to India. (See ACT, October 2008.) India signed similar agreements with France and the United States in September and October, respectively.

Russia and India also concluded several additional agreements on a range of issues, including defense and space cooperation.

The nuclear cooperation agreement cements a memorandum of understanding agreed in January 2007 regarding Russia's provision of four additional power reactors to be constructed at Kundankulam, in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu. (See ACT, March 2007.) The four reactors would join two reactors Russia is constructing at that site that are near completion.

Russia and India agreed on the construction of the first two reactors in 2001 over U.S. objections that such cooperation violated Russia's commitment to NSG rules. (See ACT, December 2001.) This time, however, Moscow waited until after the NSG decision to formalize the reactor construction deal. That decision exempted India from the group's 1992 rule not to provide nuclear technology to states that do not have full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

Full-scope safeguards require all nuclear activities in a state to be subject to monitoring and inspections by the agency to ensure that they are not diverted for weapons purposes. India, which has not joined the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) but tested nuclear devices in 1974 and 1998, has an active nuclear weapons program that is off-limits to such inspections.

As part of India's nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, New Delhi has agreed to formulate a plan to ensure that its military facilities and civilian facilities will operate autonomous of each other. It has pledged then to place all of its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards by 2014. India currently has a total of 17 operating nuclear power reactors and has plans to construct an additional 25-30 by 2030 to help meet expected energy shortages.

In addition to the construction of the four new plants at Kundankulam stipulated under the Russian-Indian nuclear cooperation accord, a joint declaration signed by Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh indicated an intention to construct nuclear power reactors in other sites in India and "to expand and pursue further areas for bilateral cooperation in the field of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy."

The Indo-Asian News Service quoted Russian ambassador to New Delhi Vyacheslav Trubnikov Dec. 7 stating that Russia is "ready to build 10 more nuclear plants" should the Indian government decide to do so.

Russia's nuclear cooperation with India also involves supplying nuclear fuel for Indian reactors. Moscow agreed to provide New Delhi with a lifetime supply of fuel for the reactors that it is constructing, as well as to a five-year renewable contract to supply fuel for India's U.S.-origin nuclear reactors at Tarapur. Russia has intermittently provided fuel for the Tarapur reactors contrary to NSG rules and U.S. objections. (See ACT, March 2001.) Washington cut off U.S. fuel supplies for the reactors following India's 1974 nuclear test.

The United States reversed its objection to fueling the Tarapur reactors in a 2005 joint statement between Singh and President George W. Bush on nuclear cooperation between the two countries, which eventually led to the NSG exemption this year.

Russia's nuclear cooperation agreements do not include stipulations regarding conditions under which this fuel supply would be suspended, such as an Indian nuclear weapons test. A Russian diplomat told Arms Control Today Jan 14 that Moscow "would deal with nuclear cooperation with India in accordance with the NSG rules."

During the negotiations regarding the NSG waiver for India, several members argued that the group should stipulate that trade would be terminated in the event of an Indian test. (See ACT, October 2008.) At the U.S. insistence, however, this stipulation was not included in the text of the waiver. In a response to congressional questions regarding the U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement with India, the Department of State indicated in February, however, that "should India detonate a nuclear explosive device, the United States has the right to cease all nuclear cooperation with India immediately."

In addition to the Russian deal, the French nuclear conglomerate Areva concluded an agreement Dec. 18 to provide India with 300 tons of uranium for reactor fuel.

Neither the Russian nor the French fuel supply arrangements include provisions for the return of spent fuel to the country of origin. The lack of such a provision allows India to recover plutonium from the spent fuel by reprocessing it. Similarly, the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement provides India with advance consent to reprocess U.S.-origin spent fuel, an exception that has only been granted to Japan and the European Atomic Energy Community.

Generally, plutonium recovered from reprocessing may be used as part of the explosive core of nuclear weapons or as a component in the nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors such as "breeder reactors," which produce more plutonium than they consume. All foreign-origin fuel, including spent fuel reprocessed for plutonium, is subject to IAEA safeguards, thereby prohibiting it from being used for weapons.

New Delhi maintains three breeder reactors and has declared that it intends to develop a "three-stage fuel cycle" that will incorporate the use of such plants, thereby producing large amounts of plutonium. Although India has pledged to place its future civilian breeder reactors under IAEA safeguards, two such reactors are not included on its list of civilian nuclear facilities, and New Delhi has left open the possibility that additional breeder reactors may not be classified as civilian. (See ACT, April 2006.)

 

 

 

 

During a Dec. 5 visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to New Delhi, Russia agreed to provide India with four new nuclear power plants as part of a nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries. The agreement marks the third such accord India has signed with nuclear suppliers since a Sept. 6 decision by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to lift a long-standing prohibition against providing nuclear technology to India. (See ACT, October 2008.) India signed similar agreements with France and the United States in September and October, respectively (Continue)

Compliance Report Delays Continue

Peter Crail

One of the stated cornerstones of the Bush administration's approach to arms control and nonproliferation issues has been an increased emphasis on ensuring that other countries comply with their arms control and nonproliferation agreements.

As then-Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told the UN Conference on Disarmament in 2002, "[I]t is one of our priorities to insist on compliance with international obligations that nations have undertaken, and by focusing on the issue of noncompliance, you can more precisely see just exactly where the problem is."

Yet, since 2005 the administration has failed to publish an annual report required by Congress detailing U.S. assessments of other countries' compliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements.

In addition to detailing noncompliance by other states, the congressionally mandated report also assesses U.S. compliance with its major arms control commitments. Broad in scope, the report covers the primary international disarmament agreements, arms control instruments between the United States and countries of the former Soviet Union, and a number of additional nonproliferation commitments. The administration has only prepared two such reports over the past eight years. The first assessed compliance in 2001 and was issued in June 2003. The second covered the years 2002 and 2003 and was issued in August 2005.

A Department of State official told Arms Control Today Jan. 6 that a report was still being prepared for the missing years.

Primary responsibility for preparing the report rests with the State Department's Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI), which was created in 1999 during the department's restructuring. As a presidential report, the report represents the assessments of the entire U.S. government and is therefore subject to an extensive interagency clearance process that includes the National Security Council, the intelligence community, and the Departments of Defense and Energy.

Prior to the bureau's existence, the Verification and Compliance Division of the former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) was responsible for preparing the report and did so regularly. Congress adopted legislation in 1999 to merge the ACDA into the State Department, but, largely at the urging of Senators Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), VCI was established as an independent bureau in order to stress the importance of compliance.

A key factor behind the reporting delays appears to have been a decision by VCI staff to dramatically increase the scope of the report in terms of the subject matter covered and in regard to the information used to inform the judgments in the document.

Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Paula DeSutter explained some of these changes in a 2004 interview with Arms Control Today. (See ACT, April 2004.) In particular, she indicated that she began to incorporate intelligence information at a higher level of classification than previously used. DeSutter said that this made the reporting process more rigorous but also more time-consuming, stating, "[W]hat we've lost in timeliness will be made up for in quality."

A former State Department official involved in drafting the 2005 report explained Jan. 11 that including the additional intelligence level was important "because some very important information on certain really big problems was available only at this classification." The official added, however, that including this information "imposed additional delays" as the State Department and intelligence community "spent a lot of time discussing what specifically could and should be said in each of the three levels of classification."

In addition to including higher levels of intelligence information, VCI carried out an even broader overhaul regarding the framework of the report. Rather than only providing updates from a previous year's report, VCI officials sought to provide a comprehensive compliance assessment in each report. The former State Department official said that this decision was made based on the experience some VCI staff had as consumers of the report while working for Congress, stating "In its earlier form, the report was not as useful to the reader as it could have been, because one had to have a collection of them together to understand how new information built upon what came before, and how compliance assessments of particular countries had been developing." The former official noted that, although such information made the report more valuable, it also made the document longer and more difficult to clear.

The report is required by U.S. law, but the reporting delays do not appear to have caused much concern in Congress. A former staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees the State Department reports, told Arms Control Today Jan. 7 that "the department as a whole has a terrible time getting any reports done on deadline, so I don't know if there was any special angst over these reports." The staffer also stated that, "at least early on, it was unclear whether they had the requisite staff resources to produce those reports on a timely basis." DeSutter noted in her 2004 interview that VCI is "a very small bureau" and that "a lot of our attention has been focused on Libya rather than getting the report done."

In December 2003, Libya admitted to pursuing unconventional weapons and declared its intent to dismantle its programs for that purpose. VCI was one of the lead agencies responsible for verifying Libya's disarmament following that announcement.

The reporting delays have apparently become a contentious issue within the administration. A former State Department official said in communication with Arms Control Today that the delay has become politicized, with some segments of the bureaucracy seeking to use the lack of the report "to rein in VCI and reduce both its influence and the role of verification and compliance considerations within the policy process."

Although former U.S. government officials familiar with the reporting process indicated to Arms Control Today in January that disputes over what to include in the report often arose within the State Department itself, they admitted that the intelligence community in particular was resistant to the role of VCI in putting together some of the information in the report. A former National Security Council (NSC) official noted Jan. 12 that the intelligence agencies "did whatever possible to make life difficult for VCI to produce the report." The former official added, "[W]hile I wouldn't take the pen away from VCI, I could certainly see how a greater NSC coordinating role, for example, could help move the process along."

 

Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Formed

Manasi Kakatkar and Miles A. Pomper

Kazakhstan ratified a treaty establishing the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (CANWFZ) Dec. 11, allowing it to enter into force in early 2009. Breaking from typical practice, the treaty lacks the endorsement of three of the five official nuclear-weapon states. France, the United Kingdom, and the United States have refused to lend their support, citing concerns that Russia might be able to deploy nuclear weapons in the zone.

Kazakhstan's ratification followed that of Tajikistan on Nov. 12 and earlier ratifications by Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The treaty was signed by the five states at the former Soviet nuclear weapons test site in Semipalantinsk, Kazakhstan, on Sept. 8, 2006. (See ACT, October 2006.) It is supposed to enter into force "30 days after the date of deposit of the fifth instrument of ratification."

The treaty reiterates the five countries' nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) commitment not to manufacture, acquire, test, or possess nuclear weapons and to use nuclear materials only for peaceful purposes.

It adds additional and unique requirements. All five countries must conclude an additional protocol to their safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) within 18 months of the treaty entering into force. This provision would make them the first countries in the world legally bound by a nuclear-weapon-free-zone treaty to adhere to versions of the 1997 Model Additional Protocol, which gives the IAEA greater authority to ensure that the countries are not diverting nuclear materials to weapons uses. The CANWFZ also requires its members to comply with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty additionally recognizes the environmental damage caused by the Soviet nuclear program and commits to environmental rehabilitation.

Likewise, the treaty requires the states to meet international standards for the protection of physical material, which is particularly important given concerns that terrorists could steal nuclear materials from or smuggle them through the region. None of the members can export fissionable material to other non-nuclear-weapon states that have not concluded an additional protocol. None of the other nuclear-weapon-free-zone treaties requires such compliance from its members.

The treaty is particularly significant because neighboring countries China, India, Pakistan, and Russia have nuclear weapons.

The Central Asian states have been seeking to construct the nuclear-weapon-free zone, the first situated entirely in the Northern Hemisphere, for nearly 10 years. Talks began soon after Kazakhstan renounced nuclear weapons. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, newly independent Kazakhstan inherited more than 1,400 nuclear warheads, a larger arsenal than any of the NPT nuclear-weapon states except for Russia and the United States. In 1992, Kazakhstan voluntarily agreed to transfer these warheads to Russia and acceded to the NPT two years later. Another impetus for the CANWFZ was the health and environmental damage caused by nuclear test explosions in Kazakhstan during the Soviet era. None of the other Central Asian states has possessed nuclear weapons.

The Central Asian states agreed on a draft text of the treaty in September 2002 and a revised version in February 2005. They held off on signing the pact in an attempt to gain support for relevant protocols from all NPT nuclear-weapon states. The most important of these are so-called negative security assurances. In an effort to buttress the nuclear-weapon-free zones, the nuclear-weapon states have often agreed that they will not use or threaten to use nuclear arms against states in the zones.

The five nuclear-weapon states have been inconsistent in their support for the Central Asian zone. China supported the zone from the beginning of negotiations. France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have wavered in their support as they tussled for influence in the five Central Asian states, all of which formerly belonged to the Soviet Union.

One sticking point was the transit of nuclear weapons within the zone. These concerns were allayed after the 2002 draft text included language allowing CANWFZ states to decide whether they would allow such transit.

The Central Asian states have not been able to meet one final concern of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These three countries objected to a provision in the zone treaty that would grant precedence to existing international treaties. In particular, they were concerned that if the Tashkent Collective Security Treaty signed with Russia took precedence, then Russia would retain the right to deploy nuclear weapons in the zone.

A 2006 statement from the U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan expressed Washington's concern that "provisions of other international treaties could take precedence over the provisions of this treaty, and thus obviate the central objective of creating a zone free of nuclear weapons."

The CANWFZ will be the fourth nuclear-weapon-free zone to enter into force. The other three are the Treaties of Tlatelolco (Latin America and the Caribbean), Rarotonga (South Pacific), and Bangkok (Southeast Asia). The Treaty of Pelindaba (Africa) has yet to enter into force but only requires two more ratifications for it to do so.

 

 

 

EU Pledges Funds for IAEA Fuel Bank

Miles A. Pomper

The European Union Dec. 8 pledged 25 million euros (about $33 million) toward the establishment of a nuclear fuel bank under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The EU contribution means that supporters have come close to meeting the initial financial requirements set down by a nongovernmental organization and IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei for establishing the fuel reserve.

Interest in such a fuel bank has grown in recent years amid increasing concerns that global tensions over Iran's uranium-enrichment program may be the first in a series of future crises, spurring governments and private organizations from nuclear supplier countries to step forward with new efforts to limit the spread of nuclear fuel-cycle technology. It is not clear if the steps will be enough to dissuade additional countries from undertaking activities that can provide either fuel for nuclear reactors or critical materials for nuclear weapons.

The EU pledge follows on a September 2006 offer from billionaire Warren Buffett in conjunction with the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Buffett pledged to provide $50 million to the IAEA to fund "a last-resort fuel reserve for nations that have made the sovereign choice to develop their nuclear energy based on foreign sources of fuel supply services and therefore have no indigenous enrichment facilities." The money would be used to create a stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to be manufactured into nuclear fuel, available for countries whose supplies of nuclear fuel were cut off for purely political reasons.

Buffett's offer was initially contingent on one or more IAEA member states contributing an additional $100 million in funds or an equivalent amount of LEU within two years and on agency member states agreeing on a political framework to manage such a stockpile. At ElBaradei's request, Buffett and the NTI extended the deadline for meeting the conditions until September 2009 after states pledged some but not all of the required $100 million. Other states that have pledged funds include the United States ($50 million), the United Arab Emirates ($10 million), and Norway ($5 million). After the EU pledge, only about $2-3 million is needed to meet Buffett's requirements.

ElBaradei told IAEA board members in March 2008 that he did not plan to approach them to establish the fuel bank or the rules to govern it until sufficient funding had been pledged. Javier Solana, the EU's top foreign policy official, told a Brussels conference Dec. 9 that the EU contribution "will allow the IAEA to finalize the modalities for the bank, so the IAEA board can approve it."

Solana added that "[w]e want the bank to be established very soon. In any case, before the next NPT [nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] review conference in spring 2010" and said he was "convinced that the creation of a fuel bank will have a positive impact on the general climate" of that once-every-five-years gathering. The next opportunity the IAEA board would likely have to consider the matter would be at its March 2009 session.

NTI Vice President Laura Holgate said she hoped that the March meeting might direct the IAEA Secretariat and board to finalize the terms and conditions for the fuel bank in time for the board to vote on the matter this June or September. Of particular importance, she said, will be for potential consuming nations to become involved in negotiations, something from which they have shied away until now.

"Consuming nations need to be constructively a part of the conversation," Holgate said.

Solana also noted that the "fuel bank is not exclusive in its character. There are parallel initiatives and ideas that may prove useful to different situations."

Several other fuel cycle initiatives have been floated, with the most advanced being a Russian plan to establish a multinational enrichment center and fuel bank at Angarsk in Siberia. In 2007 the Russian Duma approved enabling legislation that would grant countries the right to participate financially in the facility. In addition, Russia began exploring a means through which a separate LEU stockpile could be set aside under IAEA safeguards for the use of IAEA member states.

Since then, Armenia and Kazakhstan have joined the facility, and Ukraine is on the verge of doing so. Russia's ownership share is slated to drop to 51 percent as other partners are admitted. In order to address concerns regarding the spread of technology, the International Uranium Enrichment Center will be structured in such a way that no enrichment technology or classified knowledge will be accessible to the foreign participants.

In a recent interview with Arms Control Today, Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the United States, likened the Angarsk plan to "offering a Mercedes if you know how to shift gears and drive the car, but there will be somebody else, specialists, who will take care of your engine." (See ACT, December 2008.)

In December 2007, the Russian government took the decision to include the Angarsk enrichment center in the list of facilities it is willing to submit to IAEA safeguards. Safeguards are to be applied, in particular, to a 120-ton LEU stockpile that is to be set aside as a fuel bank in the event of a supply disruption for political reasons unrelated to nonproliferation.

Russia wants the IAEA to apply safeguards to the uranium materials at the facility, including feed uranium, enriched uranium, and uranium tails. Russia's atomic energy chief, Sergey Kiriyenko, told the IAEA General Conference in September that he was confident that the facility would "receive before the end of the year all necessary licenses to go into operation." No such agreement has been finalized.

Some analysts say that a final agreement has been held up in part because Moscow wants to ensure that its enrichment technology remains a secret. It is also unclear who will cover the cost of IAEA inspections.

Yet, Russian officials say a final agreement has been held up because of a dispute between the Russian government and the IAEA over which countries should be eligible to receive fuel from the facility. IAEA officials say that all IAEA members should be eligible to draw from the fuel bank.

Russian law, however, requires Moscow to follow Nuclear Suppliers Group criteria that limits such trade to states that have signed the NPT and have full-scope IAEA safeguards, aside from India, which won an exemption from such rules in September.

Similar issues could hinder the NTI effort as well, Russian officials caution, particularly as U.S. law contains similar requirements.

 

The European Union Dec. 8 pledged 25 million euros (about $33 million) toward the establishment of a nuclear fuel bank under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The EU contribution means that supporters have come close to meeting the initial financial requirements set down by a nongovernmental organization and IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei for establishing the fuel reserve. (Continue)

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