ESD's
Prof. Moniz,
MIT
profs, colleagues propose nuclear-energy plan
By
Nancy Stauffer, MIT Laboratory
for Energy and the Environment
 ESD
Professor Ernest J. Moniz,
other MIT faculty members and colleagues, all former senior energy or
security advisors in Democratic and Republican administrations from
Carter to Clinton, have proposed a pragmatic plan that would allow the
world to develop nuclear power without increased risk of weapons proliferation.
Under
their plan, which appears in the winter 2004-2005 issue of Survival,
countries that now have the technology to prepare and dispose of nuclear
fuel would provide those services to countries that do not. The latter
countries would be well situated to operate and expand their nuclear
power capacity-with no need to acquire technology potentially useful
in weapons production.
"Global
energy demand is going to grow significantly in the coming decades,
and nuclear power is one option for generating large amounts of electricity
without greenhouse gas emissions," said MIT Institute Professor
John Deutch, who was Director of Central Intelligence in the Clinton
Administration and Undersecretary of Energy in the Carter Administration.
"But one nuclear-weapons incident associated with nuclear power
anywhere would devastate the future of nuclear power."
Deutch's
co-authors of the Survival article are Ernest Moniz, Arnold Kanter and
Daniel Poneman. Moniz is an MIT Professor of Physics and Engineering
Systems, Director of MIT Energy Studies in the Laboratory for Energy
and the Environment, and former Undersecretary of Energy in the Clinton
Administration.
Kanter
and Poneman are both senior fellows at the Forum for International Policy.
Kanter was Special Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the George
H.W. Bush Administration. Poneman served on the National Security Council
staff under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton.
The
discovery of secret nuclear-weapons programs in Libya, Iran, and North
Korea has led to much discussion of amending the Non-Proliferation Treaty
and other approaches to curtailing weapons proliferation. But Deutch
and colleagues believe those approaches are politically difficult or
impractical to implement. They therefore came up with a more pragmatic
plan.
"The
first thing to understand is that nuclear power plants are not themselves
the principal proliferation threat," said Moniz. "The threat
comes from technologies used to prepare the enriched uranium fuel and
to reprocess the irradiated fuel."
The
plan, called the Assured Nuclear Fuel Services Initiative (ANSFI), would
deem countries that now provide uranium-enrichment or plutonium-reprocessing
services on the international market as "fuel-cycle states"
and other countries as "user states." The fuel-cycle states
would promise to provide user states with fresh fuel for their nuclear
power plants and to take back spent fuel for reprocessing and disposal.
In return, the user states would agree not to obtain the enrichment
or reprocessing technologies.
Two
features make the initiative pragmatic. First, the split between fuel-cycle
and user states already exists, so the initiative would simply call
for a "stay put" approach. And second, the initiative would
last only 10 or perhaps 15 years and then be subject to review.
"Because
of the built-in review, the initiative has the potential for a relatively
quick start, without tortuous negotiations," said Moniz. "No
one has to promise to give up fuel-cycle activities forever. And by
10 or 15 years we'll have a clearer picture of how nuclear energy is
evolving and whether additional fuel-cycle facilities are needed."
The
ANSFI "offers something for everyone," Moniz added. User states
would not have to incur the technical and political headaches of trying
to deal with their spent fuel, and they would receive fresh fuel under
economically attractive commercial contracts, backed by government-to-government
assurances.
Fuel-cycle
states would obtain revenues and increased confidence that demand for
their services would not dissolve due to a proliferation incident. There
would be no shortage of fuel-supply capacity, and spent fuel returned
by the user states would add relatively little to the fuel-cycle states'
disposal task. Activities of all ANSFI states would be subject to safeguards
under the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Perhaps
most important, within the period covered by the ANSFI, the individual
user states cannot practically develop large enough nuclear power programs
to make their own enrichment or reprocessing facilities economic. As
a result, a decision by a user state to deploy those technologies rather
than join ANFSI would arouse suspicion.
"The
goal is to make the political and economic incentives so clearly compelling
that refusal by a potential user state would cast a spotlight on its
intentions," said Deutch. "The prospects for coordinated international
response to avert possible weapons-related activities would be greatly
improved."
In
arriving at the ANSFI proposal, the authors drew on The
Future of Nuclear Power-An Interdisciplinary MIT Study. That study,
co-chaired by Deutch and Moniz, involved analysis of a 2050 scenario
assuming dramatically increased worldwide nuclear capacity.
May
11, 2005
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