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INFORMATION MEMORANDUM

2/23/17
TO: NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL

FROM: DAVID HIDINGER

SUBJECT: Proposal Regarding U.S. Policy on Uranium Enrichment and Plutonium

Reprocessing

Issue:

Current nuclear technologies can be utilized to meet the growing demand for energy in cleaner
more reliable ways but this requires facilities and materials that could alternatively be used to
produce weapons grade nuclear material. This raises nuclear proliferation concerns when the
United States agrees to help other countries, by providing the technical expertise and materials
required to build these energy producing nuclear reactors, because these facilities are capable of
producing enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium.

Discussion:

The current system in which these concerns are handled is through 123 Agreements – the name
coming from section 123 of the Atomic energy Act of 1954. This section is tilted “Cooperation
with other Nations” and lays out “the terms, conditions, duration, nature, and scope of the
cooperation”. This section also specifies that certain guaranties such as:
 appropriate security safeguards and standards
 the material will not be used for the research or development of nuclear weapons
 and that the cooperative state will not transfer any material or restricted data to
unauthorized persons
must be met in order for a cooperative agreement to occur between the United States and the
country or entity with which the agreement is being signed.

According to the National Nuclear Security Administration the United States has 123
Agreements with Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, European
Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), India,
Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, Norway, Russia, South Africa,
Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates.

The 123 Agreements are complex legal documents that all share the same initial framework for
an agreement between the United States and other parties. However, since each agreement is
done on a case by case basis each final agreement that is reached between the United States and
these parties is unique. The majority of the variations are expected – such as a focus on research
and the sharing of this data for parties like Euratom or Canada with whom we are close allies
compared to the more guarded and far less binding agreement with Russia.

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These agreements have many stakeholders – chiefly those being nations that seek to develop or
maintain their civil nuclear engineering projects, countries that are concerned about their
neighbors nuclear capabilities, militaries across the globe, and agencies or organization that are
concerned about non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The national security implications for the United States are pretty clear due to the nature of the
technologies and materials required for nuclear energy production. Naturally occurring uranium
has about 0.7% U235 and most reactors require anywhere from 3% to 20% U235. In order to
concentrate the amount of U235, it must be enriched. There are multiple technologies that can be
employed to enrich the uranium and once the facility is built, there is very little stopping the
operator of that facility from making 3% U235 or greater than 90% U235. U235 above 90% rapidly
approaches weapons grade. Furthermore, when operating nuclear reactors with enriched uranium
a byproduct of these reactors is plutonium. Reactor bred plutonium will contain a fair amount of
both P239 and P240. This is of lesser risk as P240 is unstable enough to fissile spontaneously in low
quantities. As a result weapons grade plutonium needs to be P239 at 93% or greater. Changing the
fuel rods of a nuclear reactor can be a multiweek process providing ample opportunity for
oversight and material control. However, U238 can be placed around reactors in individual slugs
that will then convert to P239 and can be easily reprocessed to reduce the P240 content to well
below 7%.The speed at which these U238 slugs can be converted and switched out makes
ensuring that material is not being inappropriately used quite difficult.

The oversight of these reactors and ensuring compliance with the 123 Agreements is the most
difficult part of these agreements. On the one hand nuclear energy is reliable and far more
environmentally friendly than the fossil fuel alternatives. On the other the technology and
materials for nuclear energy provide countries and perhaps malicious non-state actors operating
within those countries significantly more opportunity to acquire weapons grade material, the
technology to create weapons grade materials, or access to facilities that can create weapons
grade materials.

A push is being made to make new agreements that disallow countries from making their own
enrichment and reprocessing facilities. These ENR (enrichment and reprocessing) facilities are
currently underutilized around the globe. There is a global surplus of ENR facilities and thus
some want to make agreements and foster market forces that favor countries being supplied pre-
enriched or refined plutonium for their reactors to reduce proliferation concerns. Some pushback
against the idea is raised from countries who want to have their own facilities as a status symbol,
from organizations that are concerned with the increased amount of nuclear materials shipments
that would be required and lastly countries that want to be self-reliant in producing their nuclear
fuel so that it cannot later be withheld from them in the form of an economic sanction.

Overall nuclear energy is a double edged sword in that it allows for cheap, clean energy
production but in the process increases the risks associated with proliferation of nuclear
weapons, materials and technologies. The costs and benefits of these options will be evaluated
and provided in a follow up report.

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