Ending the production of highly enriched uranium for naval reactors

Nonproliferation Review

Volumn 8, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 86-101

  von Hippel, Frank ^b  

^a Development and Arms Control Studies   (United States)

^b PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0042337244     PISSN: 10736700     EISSN: 17461766     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10736700108436841     Document Type: Article

References (73)

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4. Reactors, which derive their energy from a fission chain reaction, are not to be confused with radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs), which derive their heat from the decay of radioisotopes such as plutonium-238.
5. Andrew Koch, “Nuclear-powered submarines; India’s trump card,” Jane's Intelligence Review (June 1998), p. 29, states
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7. Rensselaer Lee, “Recent Trends in Nuclear Smuggling,” in Phil Williams, ed., Russian Organized Crime: The New Threat? (London: Frank Cass, 1996), p. 109, lists six cases of arrests for the theft of fresh HEU naval fuel from the storage facilities of Russia’s Northern Fleet during the period 1993-1996. The United States and Russia have since mounted a joint program to upgrade the security of the storage facilities.
8. South Africa and the affordable bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 52 [July/ August 1994], p. 37).
9. Italy and Holland, in particular, were interested in building nuclear-powered naval ships, David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the First Forty Years (Vienna: IAEA, 1997), pp. 272-273.
10. Marie-France Desjardins and Tariq Rauf, “Opening Pandora’s Box? Nuclear-Powered Submarines and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” Aurora Papers 8 (Ottawa: The Canadian Centre For Arms Control And Disarmament, 1988);
11. Marvin Miller, “Nuclear Submarines and their Implications for Weapons Proliferation,” in Paul Leventhal and Sharon Tanzer, eds., Averting a Latin American Nuclear Arms Race (MacMillan/Nuclear Control Institute, 1992), p. 153.
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14. Desjardins and Rauf, “Opening Pandora’s Box.”
15. David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium And Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities And Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1997), p. 253.
16. White House Press Release, “Nonproliferation and Export Control Policy,” September 27,1993.
17. ndsession, Report 103-701, August 12,1994, p. 745. The House approved an amendment
18. Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion, Report on Use of Low Enriched Uranium in Naval Nuclear Propulsion, 1995, p. 1.
19. Albright, Berkhout, and Walker, Plutonium Ami Highly Enriched Uranium 1996, p. SI.
20. Three out of Russia’s four uranium enrichment facilities are now licensed to enrich uranium only up to five percent. The fourth, at Novouralsk (formerly Sverdlovsk-44), is licensed to produce HEU enriched only up to 30 percent (T.B. Cochran, R.S. Norris, and O.A. Bukharin, Making the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin [Boulder: Westview, 1995], p. 187).
21. Albright, Berkhout, and Walker, Plutonium And Highly Enriched Uranium 1996, pp. 118-119. Albright, Berkhout, and Walker, Plutonium And Highly Enriched Uranium., p. 126.
22. A.D. Baker III, The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World 2000-2001 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000), pp. 918-925.
23. Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion, Report on Use of Low Enriched Uranium in Naval Nuclear Propulsion, p. 3.
24. Department of Energy, FY1999 Congressional Budget Request, Other Defense Activities, Naval Reactors: Reactor Technology and Analysis.
25. Thomas Cochran, William Arkin, Robert Norris, and Milton Hoenig, U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1987), p. 71.
26. Frank von Hippel, David H. Albright, and Barbara G. Levi, Quantities of Fissile Material in U.S. and Soviet Nuclear Weapons Arsenals (Princeton: Princeton University, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies Report #168, 1986);
27. Cochran, Arkin, Norris, and Hoenig, U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production, p. 191;
28. Albright, Berkhout, and Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996, p. 91.
29. Albright, Berkhout and Walker, Plutonium And Highly Enriched Uranium 1996, p. 93.
30. Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion, Report on Use of Low Enriched Uranium in Naval Nuclear Propulsion, p.28.
31. Nilsen, Kudrik and Nikitin, The Russian Northern Fleet, Nuclear-Powered Vessels, Section 2.3.7: “Russian Submarine Fuel,” Bellona Foundation
32. Oleg Bukharin and William Potter, “Potatoes Were Guarded Better,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 51 (May/June, 1995), p. 46.
33. Jane’s Fighting Ships 1999-2000 (London: Jane’s Yearbooks, 2000).
34. Albright, Berkhout and Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996, p. 80.
35. Albright, Berkhout and Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium, p. 119.
36. Viking Olver Eriksen, Sunken Nuclear Submarines, A Threat to the Environment? (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1990), p. 77.
37. Jane's Navy International, April 1997, p. 8.
38. U.K. Ministry of Defense, Strategic Defense Review, July 1998. Enrichment not specified.
39. M.B. Davis,” Nuclear France: materials and sites,”;
40. Y. Girard, Technicatome, Saclay, “The Implications of the Acquisition of Nuclear- Powered Submarines by Non-Nuclear Weapons States,” unpublished transcript of a talk at a conference at MIT on March 27-28,1989.
41. Baker, B. The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World 2000-2001, p. 187.
42. Albright, Berkhout, and Walker, Plutonium And Highly Enriched Uranium 1996, p. 129
43. Baker, B The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World 2000-2001.
44. Charles Fribourg, “La propulsion nucléaire navale,” RGNNo. 2 (1999), p. 32.
45. The Rubis fuel is reportedly shuffled and replaced at intervals of five and 10 years respectively (Marvin Miller, MIT, private communication, (November 2000).
46. The length of time required for refueling of the Rubis is reportedly only five months and is to be reduced further to three months (Davis, “Nuclear France: materials and sites,”).
47. “Shipyard Reinvents Itself for Future,” Portsmouth Herald, June 11, 2000,.
48. Eriksen, E. Sunken Nuclear Submarines, A Threat to the Environment?, Table 15.
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50. Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion, Report on Use of Low Enriched Uranium in Naval Nuclear Propulsion, p. 8.
51. Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion, Report on Use of Low Enriched Uranium in Naval Nuclear Propulsion, p. 10.
52. Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion Jane's Fighting Ships 1997-1998, p. 795.
53. M. Bamier and J.P. Beylot, “Osiris, a MTR adapted and well fitted to LEU utilization, qualification and development,” in Proceedings of the International Meeting on Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors, October 24-27, 1983, Tokai, Japan (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute report JAERI-M84-073,1984).
54. Thomas Ippolito Jr., “Effects of Variation of Uranium Enrichment on Nuclear Submarine Reactor Design,” Ph.D. diss., MIT, 1990, p. 67.
55. U.S. Department of the Navy, Final Environmental Impact Statement On The Disposal of Decommissioned, Defueled Cruiser, Ohio Class, and Los Angeles Class Naval Reactor Plants, April 1996, p. 2-7.
56. Nils Bohmer, Murmansk Shipping Company, September 17,2000, Bellona Foundation.
57. Morten Bremer Maerli, Sigurd Borrensen, Knut Gussgard, Steinar Hoibrandten, and Matylda M. Sobieska, Criticality Considerations on Russian Ship Reactors and Spent Nuclear Fuel (Oslo: Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, 1998).
58. Y.K. Panov, V.I. Polunichev, V.I. Vasyukov, A. A. Ardabyevsky, and L.M. Veksler, “How to avert the torment of Tantalus, or how to satisfy humanity’s thirst for fresh water,” Atom Inform, No. 5-6 (1994) (in Russian), pp. 13-16.
59. V.M. Kuznetsov, A.V. Yablokov, V.M. Desyatov, A.K. Nikitin, and I.V. Forofontov, Floating Nuclear Power Plants in Russia: A Threat to the Arctic, World Ocean and Non-Proliferation Treaty (Moscow: Nuclear and Radiation Safety Program, Socio-Ecological Union, Greenpeace, 2000).
60. V. Kovalenko, “Braving the Chill of the Market,” Nuclear Engineering International (January 1993), p. 52-54.
61. K.B. Veshnayakov, A.I. Kiryushin, Yu. K. Panov, and V.I. Polunichev, “Floating nuclear heat and power station ‘Pevec’ with KLT-40S Type reactor plant for remote regions of Russia,” International Workshop on Utilization of Nuclear Power in Oceans, Tokyo, Japan, February 21-24, 2000.
62. One proposal is to use a fuel meat made from a mix of U02 and zirconium. This could give a higher U density than the U/Zr alloy (Armando Travelli, Argonne National Laboratory, private communication, November 6,2000).
63. Information of Safety ofIcebreaker-Transport, Lighter/Containership with Nuclear Propulsion Plant Sevmorput, Table3.6. This corresponds to a bum- up of about 373 MWd/kg-U-235.
64. Hans Kristensen, William Arkin, and Joshua Handler, Aircraft Carriers: The Limits of Nuclear Power, (Greenpeace, Neptune Paper No. 7, June 1994).
65. U.S. Government Accounting Office, Navy’s Aircraft Carrier Program
66. Investment Strategy Options (Letter Report, 01/01/95, GAO/NSIAD-95-17), crq/? Carr/err: Cost- Effectvveness of Conventionally and Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carriers, GAO/NSIAD-98-1, August 1998.
67. U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, Worldwide Submarine Proliferation in the Coming Decade (circa 1994).
68. Daniel Revelle and Lora Lumpe, “Third World Submarines,” Scientific American, August 1994, p. 16-21.
69. Pavel Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Weapons (Boston: MIT Press, forthcoming).
70. Bill Gertz, “U.S. Secrets Aboard Latest Chinese Missile to Be Able to Hit Anywhere in the U.S.,” Washington Times, December 6, 1999, p. Al; and Jane's Fighting Ships, 1997-98.
71. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, MX Missile Basing (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981).
72. “U.S. Secrets Aboard Latest Chinese Missile,” reports that “a special panel headed by Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican, stated that the JL-2’s 7,400-mile range allows it ‘to be launched from the PRC’s territorial waters and to strike targets throughout the United States.’” Other sources expect the range of the JL-2 to be about 8,000 km (5,000 miles) (see e.g., “Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2000,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56, (November/December 2000), p. 78). The distance from Beijing to Seattle is 5,400 miles.
73. Armando Travelli, “Progress of the RERTR Program in 2000,” paper presented at the 2000 International Meeting on Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors, October 1-6,2000, Las Vegas, Nevada.