Former Rheinsberg Nuclear Power Plant Is Dismantled

A worker walks through the hall that once contained the nuclear reactor at the former Rheinsberg nuclear power plant on June 6, 2011 in Rheinsberg, Germany. The plant, built in 1966 by the former communist East German government, operated until 1989 and is being dismantled over a 19-year period at a cost of EUR 560 million. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Introduction

Breaking Energy obtained detailed correspondence between members of congress and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that raises important questions about the US nuclear industry, international relations, public health and non-proliferation. The series entitled “Breaking Energy US Nuclear Investigation” will highlight critical questions and findings revealed from our review of the documents. The first article included below details US exports of highly enriched uranium, which is a practice that dates back to the 1950’s and continues today.

Executive Summary

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission report entitled “Report to Congress on the Current Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports Used as Fuel or Targets in Nuclear Research or Test Reactors, January 9, 2014,” reveals some striking findings with regard to US exports of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Records indicate that since 1957 the US has exported a total of about 22,600 kilograms (kg) of HEU to a total of 35 countries either – in the majority of cases – directly or indirectly. These countries are listed in the table below.

Stunningly, given the characteristics of HEU and given the fact that the HEU issue seems to be at the center of every Nuclear Security Summit held to date, NRC staff points out in the report that it was “not able to definitively reconcile records for approximately 1,600 kg of HEU” due to various factors, which include the “lack of historical records from all of the foreign countries, inherent accounting and other uncertainties associated with the overall HEU RTR [Research or Test Reactors] fuel cycle and medical isotope processing operations.”

roman HEU1

Source: NRC, “Report to Congress on the Current Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports Used as Fuel or Targets in Nuclear Research or Test Reactors, January 9, 2014.”

Note the inclusion of countries like Iran and Pakistan in the above table. Most likely, both countries received HEU decades ago – Iran under Mohamed Reza Shah’s rule and Pakistan as critical US ally in South Asia during the Cold War. Obviously, the 1979 Iranian Revolution brought an abrupt end to the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran and thus ended US exports of HEU.

What is evident from the NRC report, and quite surprising, is the fact that the US government does not require foreign recipients of US-supplied HEU “to regularly report on their inventories of these materials beyond acknowledging initial receipt and, if applicable, submitting safeguards declarations to the IAEA.” Consequently, data on foreign government-declared holdings of US-exported HEU is not entered into the US national database while the US government “accepts that foreign nations are responsible for the materials they import within their borders consistent with national law and international obligations.”

Nevertheless, the report stresses that NRC staff has “neither any evidence to suggest nor any reason to believe that any U.S.-exported HEU has been stolen from a foreign facility or diverted to non-peaceful uses.” And importantly, the 1,600 kg of HEU in question is believed to reside somewhere within the European Union. As such, the lack of precise documentation regarding the disposition of this material is more of a “housekeeping issue” than a hard national security concern, Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Matthew Bunn told Breaking Energy. Bunn is a leading expert on nuclear theft and terrorism, nuclear proliferation and measures to control it.

The US government currently has no plans to increase reporting requirement intensity on behalf of countries that maintain stockpiles of US-exported HEU. The NRC report provides the following reasoning for this position: “Adding new inventory reconciliation or other requirements to U.S. 123 agreements or other international instruments would be a major change to the status quo and may not be in the national interests of other countries. Furthermore, any unilateral change in U.S. legal requirements along these lines would need to take into account reciprocity, and requirements for the United States to likewise share facility-specific sensitive information with dozens of other countries.” Sources told Breaking Energy this rationale is due in part to the fact that the NRC does not want to increase costs to industry or decrease the competitiveness of US companies in market.

Yet, it may be a good idea to revert to stricter US verification procedures following the late President Reagan’s adage about “trust, but verify”. Written or verbal assurances alone, even from allies, should never be taken at face value as governments, alliances and geopolitical constellations can change in an instant. These issues also raise the question as to whether the US should cease HEU exports altogether, given that LEU [low enriched uranium] can be used as an adequate substitute in most applications. It may also be time to update the nine criteria that dictate the terms of nuclear cooperation with other states as maintained under the 123 agreements, according to some industry stakeholders.

Clearly, the export of HEU from the US remains controversial and questionable. If the practice continues, at the very least, changes to the legal and regulatory structures that govern US HEU exports could be on the horizon.

The full article which includes detailed background, context and data from the NRC report can be read below.

Breaking Energy US Nuclear Investigation: US Exports of Highly Enriched Uranium not ‘Definitively Reconciled’

Given serious nuclear security implications and from a non-proliferation perspective, the US highly enriched uranium export program bears scrutiny.

President Obama called nuclear terrorism “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security” in a 2009 speech in Prague and followed these remarks by hosting the first Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in Washington, DC in 2010. The President met with 47 other heads of state to discuss tangible actions in order to increase security for nuclear materials and put the international community on a better footing to prevent acts of nuclear terrorism and trafficking.

Significantly, one crucial agenda item addressed in the Joint Communiqué issued by the Washington Nuclear Security Summit was that world leaders “recognize that highly enriched uranium [HEU] and separated plutonium require special precautions and agree to promote measures to secure, account for, and consolidate these materials, as appropriate; and encourage the conversion of reactors from highly enriched to low enriched uranium [LEU] fuel and minimization of use of highly enriched uranium, where technically and economically feasible.”

At the subsequent Seoul NSS in 2012, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the US agreed that “in the longer term, the use of HEU will be completely eliminated for medical isotopes that are produced in Belgium, France, and The Netherlands and used in those countries and in the United States” (‘Belgium-France-Netherlands-United States Joint Statement: Minimization of HEU and the Reliable Supply of Medical Radioisotopes’).

To date, the last NSS took place in The Hague in 2014. The NSS 2014 final joint communiqué built on the results of the prior summits and world leaders affirmed that:

“[o]ver the past four years we have made considerable progress in safe, secure and timely consolidation inside countries and in removal to other countries for disposal. Furthermore, a considerable amount of HEU has been down-blended to low-enriched uranium (LEU) (…). We encourage States to minimise their stocks of HEU and to keep their stockpile of separated plutonium to the minimum level, both as consistent with national requirements. (…) Similarly, we will continue to encourage and support efforts to use non-HEU technologies for the production of radioisotopes, including financial incentives, taking into account the need for an assured and reliable supply of medical isotopes.”

Newly addressed agenda items included cyber security and nuclear forensics. With regard to the latter, the communiqué reads: “Nuclear forensics is developing into an effective tool for determining the origin of nuclear and other radioactive materials and providing evidence for the prosecution of acts of illicit trafficking and other malicious acts.” Finally, the document also designated the US to host the upcoming 2016 NSS.

The main takeaway from these summits is that there is a general recognition among world leaders that the continuous use of HEU poses a serious threat to international security. Even though progress has ostensibly been made, real hard action – i.e. ‘elimination’ instead of ‘minimization’ of civilian HEU use – and thus tangible results are only slow to materialize. Miles A. Pomper, together with Philippe Mauger, sums this up in a policy analysis brief for The Stanley Foundation: “For nearly four decades, the United States has sought to secure and minimize the worldwide use of this material of choice for would-be nuclear terrorists. However, HEU has continued to power some civilian nuclear research facilities, to fuel some Russian icebreakers, and to be used in the production of a key medical isotope for medical diagnosis. (…) Russia is the only country in the world that uses HEU for civilian naval propulsion. A subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom called Atomflot operates four HEU-powered ice-breakers.”

In addition, this policy brief provides important background on why HEU represents such a highly attractive target for terrorists, summarizing:

“HEU can be used to create the simplest nuclear explosive device, a so-called gun-type weapon. Using a gun-type design, such a device would explosively collide one subcritical piece of HEU with another in order to form the supercritical mass required for a nuclear detonation. This process is well publicized, and there is consensus among experts that the creation of an improvised nuclear device based on this design is within the technical reach of a financially and organizationally strong terrorist group. To make matters worse, because HEU is only weakly radioactive, it is relatively safe to handle and hard to detect. Even HEU waste is less radioactive than one might hope from a security-oriented standpoint.” 

This last point in particular makes very clear why HEU should ideally be removed from ‘global circulation’. According to the Arms Control Association, global stockpile of “HEU and separated plutonium is estimated at approximately 2,000 tons” with the vast majority of that nuclear material located in the US and Russia. It may not be readily obvious that South Africa’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons program, which started in 1974 until it was abandoned in 1989, produced several hundred kilograms of HEU. The stockpile is kept in storage and is considered a strategic national asset, according to NTI analysis. Note, South Africa does neither export nor import HEU.

Where are HEU Stockpiles Located and How are they Monitored?

In this context, let’s examine closer the US track record and regulations with regard to civilian nuclear trade in HEU, which is an ongoing practice. Breaking Energy obtained important records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filing. Allison M. Macfarlane, chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), in a letter dated January 9, 2014 and addressed to the Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce, Congressman Fred Upton, submitted a report entitled “Report to Congress on the Current Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports Used as Fuel or Targets in Nuclear Research or Test Reactors”. This report, which builds on the January 1993 report that the NRC submitted to Congress on the disposition of HEU exports, and a non-public annex to the report – containing additional country-specific information designated “Confidential/Foreign Government Information” and thus not part of the FOIA release – provide information based on records dating back to 1950.

Note, information on HEU exported for purposes other than “used as fuel or targets in nuclear research or test reactors” is not included, based on the direction in Section 3175 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA, Public Law 112-239, Jan. 2, 2013). HEU is defined here as “uranium enriched to 20 percent or more in the isotope U–235”.  

The report provides information about US HEU exports for use as fuel or targets in research and test reactors (RTRs) and re-imports, as it is recorded in the NRC’s Nuclear Materials Management & Safeguards System (NMMSS) database through December 31, 2012. The records show that the US still exported 196.12 kg of HEU for civilian use in 2012 after only 7.46 kg in 2011. Remember, the first NSS, at which HEU was identified as a serious global issue, took place in 2010. The compiled information is based on NRC staff analyzing data from a plethora of sources such as export license records, reports by and technical discussions with staff from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Global Threat Reduction Initiative (NNSA/GTRI) et alia.

Most importantly, the report reveals some striking findings with regard to US exports of HEU: Records indicate that since 1957 the US has exported a total of about 22,600 kilograms (kg) of HEU for use as fuel or targets in RTRs to a total of 35 countries either – in the majority of cases – directly or indirectly (i.e. re-transfers between those countries). As of the issuance of the report, about 6,100 kg of that US-supplied HEU remains in 20 countries, with 95 per cent of that material located in five of those countries, while the remaining 15 of the initial 35 countries no longer possess any HEU – having shut down respective facilities or having converted facilities to low enriched uranium (LEU).

roman HEU1

Source: NRC, “Report to Congress on the Current Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports Used as Fuel or Targets in Nuclear Research or Test Reactors, January 9, 2014.”

 

Since 1957, approximately 7,700 kg of HEU has been imported back to the US primarily as irradiated fuel. Available information also indicate that more than 4,300 kg of the US-supplied HEU has been eliminated by down-blending to LEU; about 500 kg of HEU has been eliminated in highly-dilute processing waste; and at least 2,400 kg of HEU has been burned up through irradiation in RTRs.

Stunningly, given the characteristics of HEU (see above) and given the fact that the HEU issue seems to be at the center of every NSS, NRC staff also points out in the report that it was “not able to definitively reconcile records for approximately 1,600 kg of HEU” due to various factors, which include the “lack of historical records from all of the foreign countries, inherent accounting and other uncertainties associated with the overall HEU RTR fuel cycle and medical isotope processing operations.”

Nevertheless, the report stresses that NRC staff has “neither any evidence to suggest nor any reason to believe that any U.S.-exported HEU has been stolen from a foreign facility or diverted to non-peaceful uses.” And importantly, the 1,600 kg of HEU in question is believed to reside somewhere within the EU in accordance with various intergovernmental agreements. As such, the lack of precise documentation regarding the disposition of this material is more of a “housekeeping issue” than a hard national security concern, Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Matthew Bunn told Breaking Energy. Bunn is a leading expert on nuclear theft and terrorism, nuclear proliferation and measures to control it.

Suffice it to say the table above includes countries like Iran and Pakistan. Both countries received HEU decades ago – Iran under Mohamed Reza Shah’s rule and Pakistan as critical US ally in South Asia during the Cold War. As for Iran, it is of note that – as Ariana Rowberry, Scoville Fellow at Brookings, recounts one instance in her article on the “Atoms of Peace”– in “1967, the United States supplied Iran with a 5 megawatt nuclear research reactor along with highly enriched uranium [allegedly 5.58kg] to fuel the reactor, housed at the [Tehran Nuclear Research Center] TRNC.”

Obviously, the 1979 Iranian Revolution brought an abrupt end to the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran and HEU exports ceased at that point. According to David Albright and Andrea Stricker writing on Iran’s nuclear program for the United States Institute of Peace, the US provided HEU fuel “for the first several years of the reactor’s operation” and concluded a nuclear agreement in 1978 securing “the right to the return and storage of spent reactor fuel from any reactors it built in Iran.”

Historically, as the following chart and two tables from the NRC report illustrate, the bulk of the HEU exports occurred in the 1960s and 1970s with “nearly 95 percent of HEU exports occurring before 1990,” and with “[m]uch of the HEU returns also [taking] place from 1964 to 1988 under the ‘Off-Site Fuels Policy’”.

roman HEU2

Source: NRC, “Report to Congress on the Current Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports Used as Fuel or Targets in Nuclear Research or Test Reactors, January 9, 2014.”

 

 

roman HEU3

Source: NRC, “Report to Congress on the Current Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports Used as Fuel or Targets in Nuclear Research or Test Reactors, January 9, 2014.”

 

roman HEU4

Source: NRC, “Report to Congress on the Current Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports Used as Fuel or Targets in Nuclear Research or Test Reactors, January 9, 2014.”

Unsurprisingly, given the serious security implications associated with the uranium trade, the export of nuclear materials is governed by a regulatory framework with domestic US regulations complemented by international ones in the form of multilateral treaties, as well as International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA safeguards. In the US, the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) specifies requirements and procedures for licensing exports of nuclear material, equipment, or technology to states with which the US has peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements.

According to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on “Nuclear Cooperation with Other Countries”, such so-called “Section 123” agreements, “which are ‘congressional-executive agreements’ requiring congressional approval, (…) set the terms of reference and authorize cooperation.” Thus, the “Section 123” agreements are a precondition for the export of any US nuclear material requiring, in particular, “that any agreement for nuclear cooperation meet nine nonproliferation criteria and that the President submit any such agreement to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.” The NRC is required to meet criteria outlined in Sections 127 and 128 for authorizing export licenses.

The NRC report obtained by Breaking Energy through a FOIA request filing writes about the US having “bilateral 123 agreements with 20 individual countries, with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM), the IAEA, and Taiwan.” Over time and with the emergence as well as strengthening of an international nuclear nonproliferation regime, the scope and content of such nuclear cooperation agreements has evolved significantly. Currently, non-public checklists “contain highly detailed information about application HEU inventories, production requirements and schedules, and waste and scrap streams and other information,” which makes for a much more transparent export licensing process.

In this respect, the NRC report details how nuclear material export licensing reviews are to be conducted:

“…the NRC must seek the judgment of relevant US Government executive branch agencies as to whether approving a proposed export would be consistent with US statutory and foreign policy requirements. The NRC cannot issue an export license if the Executive Branch recommends denying the license; however, if the Executive Branch recommends approval and the NRC disagrees, the license application must be referred to the President of the United States for action, which is subject to Congressional review.”

What is evident from the NRC report and quite surprising is the fact that the US government does not require foreign recipients of US-supplied HEU “to regularly report on their inventories of these materials beyond acknowledging initial receipt and, if applicable, submitting safeguards declarations to the IAEA.” Consequently, data on foreign government-declared holdings of US-exported HEU is not entered into the US national database while the US government “accepts that foreign nations are responsible for the materials they import within their borders consistent with national law and international obligations.”

This also means that assurances/guarantees seem to replace strict US verification with respect to implementation and maintenance of the controls necessary to ensure that nuclear materials are used as intended, controlled and safeguarded properly. The NRC report provides the following reasoning for this seemingly counterintuitive modus operandi: “Adding new inventory reconciliation or other requirements to U.S. 123 agreements or other international instruments would be a major change to the status quo and may not be in the national interests of other countries. Furthermore, any unilateral change in U.S. legal requirements along these lines would need to take into account reciprocity, and requirements for the United States to likewise share facility-specific sensitive information with dozens of other countries.” Sources told Breaking Energy this rationale is due in part to the fact that the NRC does not want to increase costs to industry or decrease the competitiveness of US companies in market.

The report also appears to downplay the above verification concern: “No country has ever notified the U.S. Government that they lost or did not receive U.S.-supplied HEU or that they relinquished control over the material once they were finished with it. International safeguards containment, surveillance, and verification measures, and IAEA inspections provide additional confidence that no U.S. HEU has been stolen or diverted.”

Yet, it may be a good idea to revert to stricter US verification procedures following the late President Reagan’s adage about “trust, but verify”. Written or verbal assurances alone, even from allies, should never be taken at face value as governments, alliances and geopolitical constellations can change in an instant. These issues also raise the question as to whether the US should cease HEU exports altogether, given that LEU can be used as an adequate substitute in most applications. It may also be time to update the nine criteria that dictate the terms of nuclear cooperation with other states as maintained under the 123 agreements, according to some industry stakeholders.

Clearly, the export of HEU from the US remains controversial and questionable. If the practice continues, at the very least, changes to the legal and regulatory structures that govern US HEU exports could be on the horizon.