Moving Toward a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
By Daniel Poneman
Principal
The Scowcroft Group

Nuclear energy now faces extraordinary opportunities and challenges. The opportunities reflect the inexorable growth of global demand for electricity, increased commitments to meet that demand through carbon-free energy sources, and improvements in the cost, safety and regulatory factors that are critical to the commercial viability of nuclear power.

The challenges are equally clear: managing the spent fuel and wastes arising from nuclear power generation, continuing progress toward improved safety and capital cost structures, and managing the security risks inevitably associated with nuclear fission.

Commendably, President Bush has addressed both the risks and challenges through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). The initiative is impressive in its breadth and scope. It aims to expand use of nuclear energy worldwide, address long-term waste concerns, provide reliable front- and backend fuel services to nations that agree to use nuclear energy only for power generation, and minimize the threat of the spread of nuclear weapons. If successful, GNEP would bring enormous benefits to our security, our environment and our economy.

To succeed, GNEP will require active cooperation between government and industry, with broad-gauged support from the public and nongovernmental organizations. It will also require active participation from the international community, for a nuclear mishap in any country—whether safety-, environmental-or weapon-related—could have a devastating effect on the prospects for nuclear power in every country. These efforts must be sustainable over decades, if not centuries, for nuclear power to play the role in the global energy mix envisioned by GNEP.

How do we move from vision to reality in GNEP? First, we must build upon the fragile consensus now emerging in favor of a revival of nuclear energy. That consensus is reflected in the first plans in over a generation to build new nuclear power plants in the United States. It is reflected in the growing number of environmentalists who recognize the critical role that nuclear energy can play in addressing the dangers of global warming.

At this vulnerable stage, it is critical that we move urgently on the nearest-term objectives of getting the first new plants built and operating, but that we take enough time to make informed and politically sustainable decisions on more controversial aspects of GNEP that do not require early action, such as revisiting longstanding U.S. policies regarding recycling of spent fuel and use of fast-spectrum reactors.

Second, we need to recognize that nonproliferation is everyone’s business. Already the world is confronting significant dangers presented by the nuclear programs of Iran, Libya and North Korea, by the continued vulnerability of fissile stocks in a number of countries to theft or diversion, by terrorists’ quest for nuclear weapons, and by the shadowy network of illicit nuclear commerce revealed through the exposure of A.Q. Khan’s assistance to Iran, Libya, North Korea, and perhaps others. Should any of these dangers result in a nuclear detonation anywhere in the world, all hopes for the future of nuclear energy could be dashed, quite apart from whatever tragic consequences befall humanity.

Moreover, if (as expected) the installed nuclear base expands significantly in coming years, so too will the requirements to enrich uranium fuel and to manage plutonium-laden spent fuel. If these increases are accompanied by the spread of the technology and facilities to enrich uranium and separate plutonium, it will greatly increase the amount of bomb-usable material that could fall into the wrong hands. That is why the president has proposed a fuel assurance initiative that would guarantee cradle-to-grave fuel services to nuclear plant operators in those nations that refrain from engaging in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.

To succeed, the fuel assurance must be deemed to be reliable by those expected to rely upon it. And here, the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency will be crucial. Nations are unlikely to leave their fate entirely in the hands of a single supplier, for a host of commercial and security reasons.

The IAEA can perform two central tasks. First, the IAEA could guarantee—through calls on other fuel-service providers or a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel—full performance by the supplier under any nuclear fuel assurance, unless the recipient is in material breach of its nonproliferation obligations.

The 2004 United Nations High-Level Panel called for a time-bound moratorium on the further construction of enrichment or reprocessing facilities to permit this IAEA guarantee to be negotiated before a country like Iran could build its own capability.

Second, the agency could serve as the international arbiter of whether such a material breach has occurred, thus insulating that decision from the vagaries of domestic politics and shifting bilateral relationships.

Building a consensus across party lines and international borders in favor of a global nuclear energy partnership will be a Herculean task, but the energy and environmental benefits promised by nuclear energy justify the effort, as does the imperative to avoid the consequences of failure.

Source: Nuclear Policy Outlook, Second Quarter 2006