Strengthening the Nonproliferation Regime

In the US State Department’s 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal Report, the first official proposal for a nuclear-weapon-free world, three activities were identified as “dangerous”: uranium mining, plutonium separation and uranium enrichment. They are dual-use; they could be used to produce fuel for either nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. The report therefore recommended that these activities be placed under ownership of an international Atomic Development Authority (ADA). The US and Soviet Union could not agree, however, on which would come first: US nuclear disarmament or verification that the Soviet Union did not have a nuclear-weapon program. Seven decades later, many countries mine uranium but only one non-nuclear-weapon state separates plutonium (Japan) and three (Brazil, Iran and Japan) have national enrichment plants while, as an alternative model, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK co-own a multinational enrichment company, URENCO, which owns the only enrichment plant in the United States. It may be too late for the ADA but perhaps it is not too late to phase out plutonium separation and national enrichment plants.