The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy; Research Report 9, International Panel on Fissile Materials

[6], ii, 107, [1] pages. Figures. Tables. References. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Contributors included Matthew Bunn, Anatoli Diakov, Ming Ding, Tadahiro Katsute, Charles McCombie, M.V. Ramana, Tatsujiro Suzuki, Susan Voss and Suyyan Yu. In the 1970s, nuclear energy was expected to quickly become the dominant generator of electrical power. Its fuel costs are remarkably low because a million times more energy is released per unit weight by fission than by combustion. But its capital costs have proven to be high. Safety requires redundant cooling and control systems, massive leak-tight containment structures, very conservative seismic design and extremely stringent quality control. The routine health risks and greenhouse-gas emissions from fission power are small relative to those associated with coal, but there are catastrophic risks: nuclear-weapon proliferation and the possibility of over-heated fuel releasing massive quantities of fission products to the human environment. The 1979 Three Mile Island and 1986 Chernobyl accidents, along with high capital costs, ended the rapid growth of global nuclear-power capacity. Today, there are hopes for a "nuclear renaissance" but nuclear energy in Western Europe and North America, which together account for 63 percent of current global capacity, is being dogged again by high capital costs and it is not yet clear that new construction will offset the retirement of old capacity. The IAEA does not expect nuclear power to significantly increase its current share of about 15 percent of global electric-power generation. The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) was founded in January 2006 and is an independent group of arms-control and nonproliferation experts from both nuclear weapon and non-nuclear weapon states. The mission of the IPFM is to analyze the technical basis for practical and achievable policy initiatives to secure, consolidate, and reduce stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. These fissile materials are the key ingredients in nuclear weapons, and their control is critical to nuclear weapons disarmament, to halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to ensuring that terrorists do not acquire nuclear weapons. Both military and civilian stocks of fissile materials have to be addressed. The nuclear-weapon states still have enough fissile materials in their weapon stockpiles for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. On the civilian side, enough plutonium has been separated to make a similarly large number of weapons. Highly enriched uranium is used in civilian reactor fuel in more than one hundred locations. The total amount used for this purpose is sufficient to make about one thousand Hiroshima-type bombs, a design well within the potential capabilities of terrorist groups. The Panel is co-chaired by Professor Frank N. von Hippel of Princeton University and Professor R. Rajaraman of Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Other members include: James M. Acton, Li Bin, José Goldemberg, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Patricia Lewis, Abdul Hameed Nayyar, M.V. Ramana, and Mycle Schneider. The Panel produces an annual Global Fissile Material Report which summarizes new information on fissile material stocks and production worldwide, as well as periodic research reports. Its members include nuclear experts from seventeen countries: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, South Korea, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This group of countries includes seven nuclear-weapon states and ten non-weapon states. IPFM research and reports are shared with international organizations, national governments and nongovernmental groups. It has full panel meetings twice a year at capitals around the world in addition to specialist workshops.…