Is a nuclear weapon-free world compatible with nuclear power?

Received from Gordon Edwards ( President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility)

To Friends and colleagues:                   October 16, 2017

I am just back from a 2-day conference in Winnipeg entitled “Human Dimensions and Perspective in a Nuclear World: Legal Issues of Non-Proliferation, Disarmament and the Right to Nuclear Energy”.  The conference was hosted by Dr. Jonathan Black-Branch, Dean of the Law School of the University of Manitoba, and sponsored by David Newman, who at one time was the Minister of Energy for Manitoba, using a legacy left by his father.

Below is a link to the extended PowerPoint that I prepared for the event.

My presentation was entitled “Can We Have a Nuclear Weapons Free World and Still Have Nuclear Power?” My answer is, “probably not”.  The argument is based on the fact that commercial nuclear power requires the use of nuclear fuel. That means either uranium or plutonium. Most reactors require enriched uranium, and that means the existence of enrichment plants. Plutonium fuel requires the use of a reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel.  

But any country possessing a stock of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) could build an atomic bomb very quickly, so possessing HEU is a deal-breaker in a world without nuclear weapons — as no neighbouring country could have sufficient confidence that A-Bombs are not being built clandestinely.  The same can be said for stockpiles of separated plutonium.  So in a nuclear weapons free world, you probably cannot allow stocks of highly enriched uranium or of plutonium.  That being the case, can you allow all countries to have operating enrichment plants and/or reprocessing plants if they wish?  Under such circumstances, how could there be sufficient trust as there would be no “timely warning” of a country’s efforts to “break out” from the “no nuclear weapons” club? Nuclear explosive materials would be just around the corner.

Contrariwise, if there were no enrichment plants or reprocessing plants in existence, having been all dismantled, AND if existing stocks of HEU were “down-blended” to a low enrichment level that makes the uranium unusable as a nuclear explosive, AND if existing stocks of separated plutonium were blended back in with the highly radioactive fission products from which they were originally extracted, THEN a certain amount of stability could be achieved. 

In such a world, no-one could build an A-Bomb or an H-Bomb without first building and operating either an enrichment plant or a reprocessing plant, and these activities could be detected by neighbouring countries and provide a degree of timely warning that would allow other political or military measures to be taken. 

In the case of HEU, this would be a formidable obstacle to a would-be proliferator because enrichment technology is slow, vast, and highly energy intensive, so HEU simply cannot be acquired quickly. We’re talking at least a year to 18 months.  

In the case of plutonium the obstacle is less formidable, because in principle chemical separation can be achieved in a matter of weeks, despite the extremely high radiation fields from the fission products. But the heat generated by the spent fuel would make the operation detectable by infrared cameras and the entire operation could not be carried out “overnight" — nor could the spent fuel be transported across roads, bridges, or borders, without detection.  The heat and radiation from the fission products provides not only a barrier but also a means of detection, neither of which would apply if the plutonium were already separated ahead of time.  Separated plutonium can be assembled into warheads and transported over roads, bridges and borders without detection. No warning.

See www.ccnr.org/non_prolif.html .

But most knowledgeable observers say that we MUST have nuclear power if we want to limit, reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, because the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) distinguishes between Nuclear Weapons States (NWS = USA, Russia, China, UK, and France) and non-Nuclear Weapons States (NNWS = everybody else), and the NNWS agree not to develop nuclear weapons as long as they are provided access to the benefits of nuclear power.  In fact, the NPT declares that everyone has an “inalienable right” to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.  So what can you do within the existing Treaty legal limitations?

I argue that the NPT has already been reinterpreted voluntarily by those signing the treaty, and that further reinterpretation may be entertained without necessarily rewriting the treaty (which everyone is afraid to do for fear that the entire NPT might all unravel very quickly).

Case in point: Article V of the NPT promises that every country signing the treaty has the right to use “peaceful nuclear explosives”.  But everyone now realizes that this is a crazy idea, because the only fundamental difference between a peaceful nuclear explosive and a non-peaceful nuclear explosive is the intention behind its use. You cannot have a world without nuclear weapons if peaceful nuclear explosives are kept at the ready. Similarly, in a nuclear weapons free world, people can’t keep their own stash of HEU or of plutonium, or they can assemble nuclear weapons very quickly and without warning.  

In a world without nuclear weapons, can everyone have their own enrichment plants or their own reprocessing plants? Probably not, as these facilities can make nuclear explosive materials and they are operating 24/7.  So access to “peaceful” nuclear technology cannot be unlimited if you expect a non-nuclear weapons world to be sustainable.

Now back to the NPT.  Just because countries are entitled to have the benefits of nuclear energy doesn’t mean they have to have nuclear reactors.  So what are the benefits of nuclear energy? There’s nuclear electricity, and nuclear medicine, and radioactive isotopes. That’s about it. Do those benefits need nuclear reactors? and do they require the use of uranium? and must they entail the creation of plutonium?

(1) Electricity. There are many ways of generating electricity! So if a country wants nuclear energy for electricity production, let’s provide the electricity — but not the reactors.  They get the benefit of electricity without the curse of high-level nuclear waste and the catastrophe potential of a nuclear power reactor. As Amory Lovins pointed out in a different context, nobody wants a barrel of petroleum in their living room, what they want is light, heat, mobility — the benefits that oil van provide.  If those benefits can be obtained in other ways, they will not miss the oil.  Similarly, if the benefits of nuclear energy can be provided in other ways, will the beneficiaries miss the fact that they don't have a nuclear reactor in their back yard?

(2) Radioactive isotopes for cancer therapy and other uses. There are ways of producing isotopes that do not require uranium or reactors -- so let’s provide the isotopes and alternative radiotherapy devices that do not depend on uranium or reactors. 

(3) Peaceful nuclear explosives to create harbours etc. Let’s provide the earth-moving capability without nuclear explosions that produce contaminated soil and radioactive fallout.

Indeed, we can keep uranium in the ground and still meet all the legitimate benefits of nuclear energy.  It isn't all easy going, there are many challenges along the way, but it is ultimately do-able. And it is already happening in a big way.  For in reality, the only thing that absolutely needs uranium is . . . the building of nuclear weapons. Without uranium there would be no nuclear weapons of any description.  Is that such a bad thing?

Gordon Edwards.

Here is the link to my Winnipeg PowerPoint (October 2017):

http://ccnr.org/GE_winnipeg_2017.pdf 

RCI Interview on the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (Edwards, 2017)

http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/10/06/nobel-peace-prize-acknowledges-anti-nuclear-movement/

Sobering British TV discussion on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy (1976)

http://ccnr.org/Peaceful_Atom.html

Article written for Project Ploughshares (Edwards, 1985)

http://ccnr.org/non_prolif.html