Abstract
Russia is poised to transform its decades-old nuclear infrastructure into an economic engine, Can it succeed while protecting nonproliferation norms?
The concept of international control of enriched uranium–a global fuel bank–is almost as old as the atomic age. In his famous 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech, President Dwight D. Eisenhower suggested that a “bank of fissionable material” be put under U.N. control and “allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind.” The idea fell flat and faded away, but it didn't disappear. More than 50 years later, proposals for global fuel banks have made a comeback, and Russia is taking the lead.
Russia hopes to establish an international uranium enrichment center (IUEC) that will operate as a transparent, reliable source of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for nuclear power production. Moscow sees this not only as a chance to inject some needed business into its nuclear industry, but also as a workable nonproliferation measure to discourage nuclear-power-seeking nations from building their own enrichment facilities (which could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons). Although the IUEC is still very much in the planning stages, Russia is moving forward with agreements that could lay the foundation for a future center. In May 2007, Kazakhstan signed a bilateral agreement making it Russia's first partner, and Russia is clearing the way to make existing enrichment facilities in Angarsk, East Siberia, the first site in what it envisages as an international constellation of IUEC facilities.
International and multinational approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle were resurrected in Russia after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei advocated an IAEA fuel bank in 2004 and 2005. As early as July 2005–the same month that Moscow hosted an international conference on multinational approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle–the Russian Federal Agency for Atomic Energy (Rosatom) publicly supported ElBaradei's ideas and offered Russia's services in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. And proposals made by President George W. Bush in February 2004, focusing on limiting access of additional countries to proliferation-sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle and providing fuel assurances, were well received in Russia.
Why, after so many years, has the notion of shared control of the nuclear fuel cycle gained momentum again? The timing–with the world on edge about nuclear proliferation and terrorism–is right. In November 2005, Russia first broached the idea of a multinational enrichment center in a proposal to Iran, offering it as a solution to the crisis with the Iranian nuclear program. Russia suggested that the two countries create a joint venture to enrich uranium on Russian territory in exchange for Iran forgoing its own enrichment program. Iran declined to participate, but Moscow's vision did not disappear. Instead, it was absorbed into an evolving plan for the rejuvenation of Russia's nuclear industry.
Sergei Kiriyenko, a former prime minister with experience in economic reform–not the nuclear sphere–was named head of Rosatom in November 2005 and given a mandate to reform the nuclear sector and expand nuclear business. The commercially viable aspects, nuclear fuel and energy production, are to be separated from the military branch of the nuclear complex and vertically integrated into Atom-energoprom, a government-owned corporation similar to the natural gas and oil corporation Gazprom.
For the past two decades, Russia has struggled to promote its nuclear products abroad and has taken flak for the proliferation implications of some of its projects, such as the nuclear power reactor it's building for Iran in Bushehr. Kiriyenko wants to promote commercial ventures that are “proliferation-resistant,” like the IUEC. The IUEC idea had a more formal outing in January 2006, when President Vladimir Putin officially proposed an initiative, later dubbed Global Nuclear Power Infrastructure, to establish a network of international nuclear fuel cycle centers operating under IAEA safeguards. Although the proposal was again targeted at Iran (which again rejected the idea), other countries were invited to join.
As soon as it became tied to plans to jump-start Russia's nuclear sector, the IUEC concept quickly grew wings and has become a key component of reforming Russia's entire nuclear industry. Moscow has two main goals for the reform of its nuclear sector: boost the nuclear share of electricity production in Russia and reestablish Russia as a major exporter of nuclear products. Russia wants to capture at least 20 percent of the world nuclear market–a portion it calls the Soviet Union's “historic share.” But winning this back means, in the words of Anna Belova, first deputy director of Techsnabexport, Russia's major nuclear export and uranium enrichment services holding company, that Russia “must be prepared to accept [the international] rules of the game,” including putting all export-related IUEC sites and technologies under IAEA safeguards, a task that could prove politically challenging.
In late March 2006, the Angarsk Electrolysis Chemical Combine was proposed as the first IUEC site. The Angarsk facility is one of four uranium enrichment plants in Russia, but it is the only one that was never part of the nuclear weapons complex. Located in Siberia, 100 kilometers west of Lake Baikal and 30 kilometers northwest of Irkutsk, Angarsk is not a “closed city,” so foreigners' access to it is unrestricted. The facility at Angarsk produces and enriches uranium hexa-fluoride for nuclear fuel using gas centrifuges and since the 1980s has produced only LEU.
Angarsk has an annual capacity of 2 million separative work units–about 8 percent of Russia's total enrichment capacity (which is 40 percent of global enrichment capacity)–but reportedly operates far below that, at about 10 percent of its capacity. Underutilization of Russia's enrichment capabilities will likely increase when the U.S.-Russian highly enriched uranium (HEU) agreement, which converts HEU from Russian warheads into LEU for U.S. nuclear power, comes to an end in 2013. The program now accounts for approximately 30 percent of the enrichment work done in Russia. Because of this impending drop-off, Rosatom needs new customers, and it's hoping that the KJEC will attract them.
Though it had presented the idea before, Russia officially unveiled its IUEC concept at the July 2006 Group of Eight (G-8) summit as part of an initiative led by the United States and Russia to give “non-discriminatory access” to nuclear energy for countries without sensitive fuel cycle technology. Moscow fleshed out its plans even more in September 2006 at the IAEA General Conference. According to this presentation, IUEC membership will be open to every country that has or intends to develop a national nuclear power program, does not have its own enrichment program, and that is also in compliance with nuclear nonproliferation requirements. In addition, Moscow suggested that all members could be required to adopt the IAEA Additional Protocol. The voluntary protocol, adopted in 1997 to give the IAEA increased means to uncover clandestine nuclear weapons programs, requires signatories to issue an expanded nuclear declaration and gives the agency the authority to visit any facility in a country to investigate questions about its nuclear declaration.
For the past two decades, RUSSIA HAS STRUGGLED to promote its nuclear products abroad and has taken flak for the proliferation implications of some of its projects, such as the nuclear power reactor it's building for Iran in Bushehr.
Russia also gave a more complete picture of how the IUEC will work. The center is to be run as a joint stock company, with co-ownership and co-management by member states. There will be two managerial layers. The top level will be a multinational company–whose management includes representatives of each member state–that will set prices and undertake the facility's commercial operation. The second level will consist of a set of joint ventures with individual countries. The management company will be registered and based in Russia and subject to Russian legislation. Moscow has been amending national legislation to make the IUEC project possible. In November 2006, Putin removed the Angarsk facility from the list of Russia's “most important state” enterprises. This made it possible for foreign companies to access the facility even before Atomenergoprom was formally established in April 2007. In February 2007, a new law on the management of nuclear assets was adopted that allows nongovernmental entities to own nuclear materials and facilities (though materials, facilities, and entities will be subject to government approval) and foreign entities to import nuclear materials into Russia for processing and reexport, without altering the ownership of the materials.
While the establishment of the IUEC is still in the early stages, the Kazakh-Russian joint venture in Angarsk is moving forward rapidly. Although Russia and Kazakhstan already refer to the enterprise as an “international center,” to date their arrangements are actually just new financial and management agreements that continue existing commercial operations. Russia has been enriching Kazakh uranium for over a decade (as did the Soviet Union before it) and then sending it back to Kazakhstan for fabrication into fuel pellets, which are then returned to Russia to make fuel rods and assemblies for use in nuclear reactors.
The main aim of the new cooperation is to ensure Angarsk a steady supply of Kazakh uranium. Russia's own uranium reserves are not well developed; Kazakhstan is currently the world's fourth-largest producer of uranium. Kazatomprom, Kazakhstan's uranium consortium, once considered developing its own enrichment capacity and is well aware of the political sensitivity of such a project. Thus, it welcomed the joint venture, which includes joint uranium mining and nuclear power R and D (including the development of small-scale nuclear plants) and ensures Kazakhstan a secure flow of enriched uranium for its fuel-pellet production. In addition, Kazakhstan can sell any excess LEU produced from its uranium on the market.
Ukraine could be Russia's next partner; in June it was widely reported that the Ukrainian prime minister was in talks with Kiriyenko about joining the center and intended to send a delegation to visit Angarsk. Belarus, Armenia, South Africa, and Uzbekistan are just a few of the other states invited to join the KJEC. Russia has also had talks with China, where the KJEC has been envisioned as serving the entire Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an international organization created in 2001 to increase cooperation among its member states (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) in various spheres. Though not a formal alliance, it is often regarded as a counterbalance to NATO.
Although Russia has already notched its first joint venture with Kazakhstan, vital IUEC specifics–such as assurances of supply, the role of the IAEA, funding, membership, and management arrangements–remain undeveloped. There are so many unknowns in Rosatom's still fairly vague IUEC outline that it is not clear that the Angarsk project will ever become a full-fledged multilateral arrangement.
According to a preliminary understanding of the project, representatives from member states would not have access to the enrichment technology. Even IAEA inspectors would not have access to the centrifuges and related sensitive equipment and information. The IAEA will apply safeguards to all uranium materials (feed uranium, enriched uranium, and uranium tails) processed and stored at the site and possibly to some IUEC facilities, though how facilities' safeguards will be applied–and who will pay for them–remains unclear.
IAEA personnel first visited Angarsk in March 2007, resulting in a working group to examine these issues further. Given the IAEA's current limited resources, it is unlikely to expend manpower and funds to safeguard the center unless Russia intends to integrate it into an international system of fuel supply assurances. (Such a system would require the amendment of some Russian export control legislation.) If Moscow were to contribute to an IAEA enriched uranium reserve located outside of Russia, the agency could endorse Angarsk as part of the program and invest in solving safeguards issues. Presumably, nuclear materials protection, control, and accounting measures at the plant will continue to be implemented and maintained according to Russian law.
If Russia's partnership with Kazakhstan progresses and Angarsk attracts enough new business without a safeguards deal, the incentive for Russia to conclude such an arrangement may diminish. On the other hand, IAEA safeguards could offer some countries assured access to enriched uranium, so IAEA involvement in the center could be very important. After all, how will countries be confident that they will be able to obtain LEU from the center if the international geopolitical situation changes? Unconfirmed reports in March that Russia might not supply nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr power plant unless it gives up its enrichment program demonstrate how difficult it will be to establish a convincing system of fuel assurances.
Russia must also develop the process and procedures for verifying IUEC members' eligibility–meeting the requirement of compliance with nonproliferation obligations. These matters can get tricky. For example, if a country has a domestic enrichment research program and an experimental-scale enrichment facility, will it be allowed to join, or must it first give up its capabilities? The most recent Russian statements on Angarsk appear to open the door still wider, allowing some ambiguity about uranium enrichment capability, possibly with South Africa in mind.
In order to manage their investment, members might insist on greater transparency with regards to the facility and equipment involved. How these requests might be met without allowing access to sensitive technologies is not clear. Although many questions remain unanswered, Russia's IUEC concept has received strong support from the IAEA, the United States, and France, Germany, and Britain (the “EU-3”).
Within Russia, the response to the IUEC concept has been muted. Russian citizens are clearly less anti-nuclear today than when memories of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster were fresh. Nevertheless, in December 2006, Russian environmental groups began protesting, arguing that the KJEC would increase Angarsk's radioactive waste production and could facilitate the import of spent nuclear fuel to Russia–even though Angarsk will not be involved in reprocessing or storage. In response, Kiriyenko requested that the Green Cross, an environmental organization founded by former President Mikhail Gorbachev, set up a public outreach office in Angarsk to provide the public with information on Rosatom's plans and to provide Moscow with the public's questions and feedback.
Moscow has supported fuel bank proposals made by other nations, in part to hedge its bets and in part to bolster its nonproliferation bona fides. In September 2005, the United States announced plans to convert up to 17.4 tons of HEU into LEU to be held nationally as a fuel reserve (a “virtual nuclear fuel bank”) in support of international fuel assurances. Since Washington's nuclear fuel bank is aimed at servicing different countries from those Russia is likely to attract, Moscow is not worried by the U.S. initiative. (As part of the U.S. initiative, the nuclear fuel would remain in U.S. custody, and thus provide assurances only to states that have good relations with Washington.) Russia also joined with France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States in May 2006 to propose the establishment of a “multilateral mechanism” to ensure reliable access to fuel–evidently assuming this would include Russian-produced fuel. The plan envisions enriched uranium to be held as a fuel reserve that the IAEA could access if a country's fuel supply were interrupted.
Russia does not want to be seen standing in the way of other nonproliferation plans, but it also does not want other proposals siphoning off its economic opportunities. It should not be forgotten that Moscow long viewed opposition to the Bushehr nuclear power plant as a ploy to “steal” Iranian nuclear business. While Russia was quick to jump on the U.S. fuel bank proposal, Moscow's response to the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI)'s support of an IAEA fuel bank was initially cautious: Moscow cited fears that the project would have a detrimental effect on the nuclear fuel market. Russia eventually supported it at the September 2006 IAEA conference. In spring 2007, Rosatom even suggested that the KJEC might somehow be involved in the NTI-sponsored initiative and proposed that Angarsk could serve as both physical and virtual reserves for the bank, although no details on what this involvement might entail were given.
However Moscow uses Angarsk, it will be to the country's benefit. The facility has been underutilized for years, and the IUEC will increase business. Because it is in Russia's political and economic interest to persuade the maximum number of states to join the KJEC, it will continue to reformulate its proposals to satisfy potential partners. For the Russian nuclear sector, Angarsk is only the beginning of an industry overhaul. Moscow also hopes to make inroads to the Western nuclear market, if not selling power plants then at least providing fuel enrichment, reprocessing, and storage services. Improving its prospects in this regard, Moscow concluded a deal with Italy's National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and the Environment and obtained observer status at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency earlier this year.
The establishment of a truly international enrichment network requires resolving questions about management, access, supply assurances, and IAEA safeguards, among other issues. If supply assurance cannot be guaranteed, worries about access to nuclear fuel will remain, and states will be unwilling to forego their own enrichment programs. And though Moscow announced its intention to put the IUEC under IAEA safeguards, securing new business opportunities in the nuclear sphere appears to be a higher priority. If it is serious about solving global nonproliferation challenges, the Kremlin should come to an agreement on safeguards and match the NTI pledge for an IAEA fuel bank with an in-kind donation of enriched uranium from Angarsk.
Supplementary Material
Highly Enriched Uranium Transparency Program