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1 Anatoli Diakov, Disposition of Excess Russian Weapon HEU and Plutonium 1 (2012)

handle is hein.unl/disporus0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Disposition of Excess Russian Weapon HEU and Plutonium ~~Feb r a y2 01 2 Anatoli Diakov Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies Today, there are hundreds of tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium in the Russian Federation and the United States that are no longer needed for military purposes. Reducing these huge stockpiles of weapons- usable material is important to national and international security. Russia and the United States have made considerable progress in reducing their HEU stockpiles in recent years. In contrast to the progress of HEU disposition, disposition of US and Russian excess weapons plutonium has yet to begin. These large stocks of plutonium and HEU could readily be turned back into nuclear weapons, should political circumstances change in the future. Hence, reducing or eliminating these large excess stocks, rather than simply storing them forever, would be an important contribution to achieving deep and irreversible nuclear arms reductions, which, in turn, could strengthen international political support for measures to strengthen the global non-proliferation regime. In principle, disposition of these large stocks-which means physically transforming them into forms that would be difficult and costly to recover for use in nuclear weapons-could also decrease the risk that some portion of them could be stolen and fall into the hands of terrorists or proliferating states. Certainly, the security benefit of disposition depends on the fraction of the stocks to which disposition is applied. A disposition programme that still left enough plutonium and HEU to rapidly rebuild nuclear arsenals would do little to contribute to irreversible arms reductions, and eliminating only a quarter or a third of the potentially vulnerable stockpiles would do little to reduce the risk of nuclear theft. Fissile material disposition may also serve a good housekeeping purpose, avoiding the costs and hazards of storing this material indefinitely; this, indeed, appears to be the motivation behind the disposition plans for a significant portion of the plutonium that Russia and the United States have declared excess to their military needs. * A I A A

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