Abstract
Negotiations on a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, and other nuclear explosive devices, has been on the international agenda for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament for decades. A fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT), later known as a fissile material treaty (FMT), was originally conceived as a measure to prevent additional States developing nuclear weapons and to limit the stocks of fissile material for States already possessing nuclear weapons. Over time, nuclear-weapon States pushed for a treaty that would only prohibit future production, while several non-nuclear-weapon States favoured two parallel objectives—nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament—and the inclusion of existing stocks and also their elimination. In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Resolution calling for the negotiation of a FMCT in the Conference on Disarmament (CD). The CD took up the matter in 1994 and by March 1995, a compromise-negotiating mandate was cobbled together by Ambassador Gerald Shannon that envisaged negotiations on a treaty with the proviso that any delegation could raise any relevant matter during the negotiations. Until now States have not been able to coalesce around a common negotiating mandate. This chapter reviews the ups and downs of the efforts to discuss treaty related issues and provides a technical yet accessible discussion on issues of definitions of fissile and nuclear material; the scope of coverage of a treaty; verification models; institutional aspects; and negotiating approaches, and suggests a practical way for making progress on this overdue important non-proliferation and disarmament measure.
Tariq Rauf
is Director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), formerly Head of Verification and Security Policy Coordination at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Usman Iqbal Jadoon
is Counsellor with the Permanent Mission of Pakistan to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) and Pakistan’s Sous-Sherpa for the Nuclear Security Summits (NSS), and has been working on arms control issues since 2006 during his postings in Vienna, Islamabad and Geneva.
Only the personal views of the two co-authors are presented here solely for discussion purposes.
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Notes
- 1.
According to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first to propose a cut-off, ‘we have always said it is not technically feasible to ban the bomb now but we have actively urged the cut-off as a first step’. The concept of controlling fissile material production had been discussed since the Baruch Plan, but a key moment in the history of the cut-off took place on 11 September 1956 when President Eisenhower considered a proposal by disarmament advisor Harold Stassen for international inspection of fissile material production with future production to be ‘used or stockpiled exclusively for non-weapons purposes under international supervision’. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Arthur Radford objected on the grounds that ‘we would have to revise all our war plans if we stopped atomic stockpiling’, but Eisenhower disagreed: ‘[Some] other way must be found.’ U.S. State Department (1956), Memorandum of a Conversation, White House, 11 September 1956, Foreign Relations of the United States 1955–1957 Volume XX (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990), http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb321/, 423–427.
- 2.
Franck Report 1945, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 1, No. 10, 1 May 1946.
- 3.
Agreed Declaration by the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister of Canada, Washington (15 November 1945), https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000003-1304.pdf.
- 4.
Acheson-Lilienthal Report 1946.
- 5.
Eisenhower 1953.
- 6.
Cortright and Mattoo 1996.
- 7.
Fetter and von Hippel 1995.
- 8.
Burns and Coyle 2015.
- 9.
Thompson 2009.
- 10.
Fetter and von Hippel 1995.
- 11.
United Nations, S-10/2, Final Document of the Tenth Special Session of the General Assembly, para 50(b), http://www.un.org/disarmament/HomePage/SSOD/A-S-10-4.pdf; and A-S/12-32, UNSSOD-II, http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/S-12/32&referer=http://www.un.org/disarmament/HomePage/SSOD/ssod4-documents.shtml&Lang=E.
- 12.
UNGA Res 48/75L.
- 13.
McGoldrick 1995.
- 14.
- 15.
CD/1299, Report of Ambassador Gerald E. Shannon on ‘Consultations on the most appropriate arrangement to negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices’ (24 March 1995).
- 16.
CD/1777(2006), Working Paper by the United States of America, ‘Draft Treaty on the Cessation of Production of Fissile Material for Use in Nuclear Weapons or Other Nuclear Explosive Devices’, (http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/615/55/PDF/G0661555.pdf?OpenElement).
- 17.
President Obama 2009.
- 18.
Akram 2010.
- 19.
Khan 2005.
- 20.
UNGA Res 67/53(2013).
- 21.
United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) Fact Sheet 2016: ‘Fissile materials are those elements that can sustain an explosive fission chain reaction and are essential in all nuclear explosives’. The most common fissile materials in use are highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium. Fissile materials that can be directly used in nuclear weapons do not occur in nature. They must be produced through complex physical and chemical processes’.
- 22.
IAEA Safeguards Glossary, 2002, para 4.6. Fissionable material—in general, an isotope or a mixture of isotopes capable of nuclear fission. Some fissionable materials are capable of fission only by sufficiently fast neutrons (e.g. neutrons of a kinetic energy above 1 meV). Isotopes that undergo fission by neutrons of all energies, including slow (thermal) neutrons, are usually referred to as fissile materials or fissile isotopes. For example, isotopes U233, U235, Pu239 and Pu241 are referred to as both fissionable and fissile, while U238 and Pu240 are fissionable but not fissile.
- 23.
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), 2010, p. 15.
- 24.
International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) 2013, p. 10.
- 25.
Browne et al. 2015, p. 2.
- 26.
Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA Statute), 276 UNTS 4, amended 1963, 1973, 1989, and 1999), https://www.iaea.org/about/about-statute, Article XX (1) and (2).
- 27.
IAEA 2002, para 4.25.
- 28.
CD/1777, 2006.
- 29.
CD/2020 (2015), France, ‘Draft Treaty Banning the Production of Fissile Material for Nuclear Weapons or Other Nuclear Explosive Devices’, Conference on Disarmament.
- 30.
International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), 2009.
- 31.
Conference on Disarmament 2011, Australia–Japan Experts Side Event on FMCT Definitions, Geneva, 14–16 February 2011.
- 32.
CD/1771, 2006, Working Paper by Switzerland, ‘A pragmatic approach to the verification of an FMCT’, Conference on Disarmament, p. 3.
- 33.
Meerburg and von Hippel 2009, pp. 16–23.
- 34.
CD/2036, 2015, Working Paper by Pakistan, ‘Elements of a Fissile Material Treaty’, pp. 2–3.
- 35.
Meerburg and von Hippel 2009, pp. 16–23.
- 36.
Persbo 2009.
- 37.
UNIDIR 2010.
- 38.
CD/1888, 2010, Working Paper by Brazil, ‘Proposal on the structure of a treaty on fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices’.
- 39.
- 40.
IAEA safeguards are a set of technical measures devised to verify that nuclear materials are not diverted from peaceful uses to military uses. There are three types of safeguards agreements: Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements (CSA) for non-nuclear-weapon States party to the NPT and nuclear-weapon-free zones cover the entirety of nuclear materials and activities; Voluntary Offer Agreements (VoA) for the five NPT nuclear-weapon States cover specified nuclear materials and facilities made available by each State for safeguards; and Item-specific Agreements for non-NPT States cover specified nuclear materials and facilities. The same safeguards technical measures are applied by the IAEA in all three cases. See, IAEA 2015.
- 41.
Shea 2001.
- 42.
Uranium-233 is produced in a similar manner by irradiating thorium, and separated through a similar process; however, no uranium-233 reprocessing plants are in operation.
- 43.
More than 80 % of the separative work required to produce uranium-containing concentrations of uranium- 235 of 90 % or more is spent in raising the enrichment from natural levels (0.71 % uranium-235) to approximately 4 % enriched. A much smaller top-end facility would be needed to increase the enrichment from 4 % to high enrichment levels than if the facility were to start with natural uranium.
- 44.
IAEA 2016.
- 45.
Nuclear tests were carried in May 1998, first by India and then by Pakistan; and on 9 October 2006, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea conducted its first nuclear test.
- 46.
Rauf 1999.
- 47.
Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles—INF Treaty—(8 December 1987); Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (Start I Treaty) and Associated Documents (31 July 1991); Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (Start II Treaty) and Associated Documents (3 January 1993); Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions—SORT—(24 May 2002); and Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms—The New START Treaty—and Protocol (8 April 2010).
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Rauf, T., Jadoon, U.I. (2016). Perspectives on a Treaty Prohibiting the Production and Stockpiling of Weapon-Usable Nuclear Material. In: Black-Branch, J., Fleck, D. (eds) Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law - Volume III. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-138-8_4
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