Unmaking the bomb: a fissile material approach to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation

292 Pages·2016·31.738 MB·English

by  Feiveson, Harold A.;Glaser, Alexander;Mian, Zia;Von Hippel, Frank

Unmaking the Bomb

Unmaking the Bomb
A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear
Disarmament and Nonproliferation
Harold A. Feiveson, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, and
Frank N. von Hippel
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic
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This book was set in Sabon LT Std 10/13pt by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited, Hong
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
Feiveson, Harold A.
Unmaking the bomb : a fissile material approach to nuclear disarmament and nonprolifera-
tion / Harold Feiveson, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, and Frank N. von Hippel.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-02774-8 (hardcover: alk. paper), 1. Nuclear nonproliferation.
2. Nuclear disarmament. 3. Nuclear fuels— Management. 4. Nuclear fuels— Security
measures. I. Glaser, Alexander, 1969– II. Mian, Zia. III. Von Hippel,
Frank. IV. Title.
JZ5675.F45 2014
327.1 ' 747— dc23
2014003654

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Si vis pacem para pacem— if you want peace prepare for peace.
— Joseph Rotblat (1908– 2005), Manhattan Project physicist and 1995 Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate for his “ efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms
in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms ”
The day that the last nuclear weapon on earth was destroyed would be a great
day. It would be a day for celebrations. We would have given substance to our
choice to create the human future.
— Jonathan Schell (1943– 2014), author

Contents
Preface ix
Map of Enrichment and Reprocessing Facilities Worldwide xii
1 Introduction 1
I How the Nuclear World Emerged 19
2 Production, Uses, and Stocks of Fissile Materials 21
3 The History of Fissile Material Production for Weapons 43
4 The Global Stockpile of Fissile Material 69
II Breaking the Nuclear Energy-Weapons Link 85
5 Fissile Materials, Nuclear Power, and Nuclear Proliferation 87
6 Ending the Separation of Plutonium 107
7 Ending the Use of HEU as a Reactor Fuel 125
III Eliminating Fissile Materials 141
8 Ending Production of Fissile Materials for Weapons 143
9 Disposal of Fissile Materials 159
10 Conclusion: Unmaking the Bomb 173
Appendix 1: Enrichment Plants 185
Appendix 2: Reprocessing Plants 187
Notes 189
Glossary 233
Bibliography 243
Index 263

Preface
This book builds on many years of research, writing, teaching, and policy
activism that have aimed to highlight and confront the challenges to our
civilization posed by the existence, continued production, and use of
fissile materials— primarily, plutonium and highly enriched uranium —
the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons.
Fissile materials did not exist before 1940, even in the laboratory. The
creation of the current global stockpiles of these materials over the past
seven decades was a result of decisions by a small number of states to
rely on nuclear weapons and on specific technology choices made for
nuclear power. As of 2013, there was enough fissile material for a total
of over 100,000 nuclear weapons. Almost all of this material was held
by the nine states with nuclear weapons, with a very small fraction held
under international monitoring by a few non-weapon states.
Many people and many policy makers have come to assume that
the world can continue indefinitely with thousands of nuclear weap -
ons and huge quantities of weapon-usable materials being produced,
stored, and used at many locations around the world without disaster
occurring. It defies the odds, however, to believe that, because nuclear
weapons were not used during the Cold War and because there
have been no terrorist nuclear explosions, nothing terrible will ever
happen.
The book describes the history, production, current stockpiles, and
use of fissile materials in nuclear weapons and in nuclear reactor fuel
and proposes a set of policies to drastically reduce the quantities
and the number of locations around the world where these materials
can be found with a view to their total elimination. We hope that
it will serve to make more credible to governments and to citizens
the need for and opportunities that exist for progress on this policy
agenda.