MNAs in Vienna

I’ve been away for the last week or so—hence the absence of any posting from me. Ironically, a long weekend in Paris precluded me from blogging about Sarkozy’s remarks on disarmament—but more about that (the background specifically) tomorrow or Monday.

Following Paris, I spent an interesting day in Vienna at a workshop organized by SIPRI and the Carnegie Moscow Centre entitled Seminar on Multinational Nuclear Arrangements: Government, Commercial and Public-Private Approaches. MNAs are very much in vogue at the moment; the idea being that states will choose not to develop enrichment or reprocessing capabilities if they are extended a guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel. There are numerous models for MNAs on the table ranging from physical fuel banks to multinationally-owned enrichment plants. For a slightly-dated but still excellent summary see Oliver Meier’s ACT article. There is also a good overview in the March 2008 edition of the IAEA’s Bulletin, which will appear here when put online.

Anyway, here are some of the best nuggets from the day:

It’s the recipients stupid! There is a growing realisation that, if MNAs are to go anywhere, states offering them need to sit down with potential recipients and discuss how the guarantees can be made credible. D’oh.

Fuel fabrication This is an overlooked problem, especially for the physical fuel bank concept (intended as a supply of last resort should a state’s flow of reactor fuel be disrupted for political reasons). Because there is little standardisation in reactor fuel design, a physical fuel bank would actually be a bank of low enriched hex. Before being delivered the hex would have to be fabricated into fuel assemblies. The problem is where. Any given type of fuel is, in general, only manufactured by a small number of facilities. If a state is facing a fuel shortage because its primary supplier has reneged on a contract, it will need to find a fuel fabrication facility located outside the territory of its primary supplier that has the capacity to manufacture fuel at short notice. This may prove tricky, although Pierre Goldschmidt has some ideas.

The Forden-Thomson Plan There was much discussion of this plan, which aims to facilitate a compromise with Iran around the concept of a jointly-owned enrichment facility on Iranian territory. The FT Plan has been mentioned on the Wonk before but I’m not sure their key argument has been discussed here. It is that the main proliferation threat from Iran is an undeclared programme (as opposed to breakout or diversion from a declared facility). Having international technicians in Iran, working closely with their Iranian counterparts, would, according to F and T, be an awfully effective way to sniff out any clandestine activity. I won’t launch into a long analysis of its pros and cons except to say that, if you are interested, you can read more about it here.

Notional Convention on Fuel Supply and Spent Fuel Disposition World Nuclear University’s Tom Shea is currently developing a draft treaty to facilitate the spread of nuclear power (anyone who likes writing treaties in his spare time is the Wonk’s kind of guy—he is doing this for fun, not part of his job). It’s based around the idea that any given state may be able to supply some fuel cycle services but may need to purchase others and so, for each part of the fuel cycle, there’s a need to match suppliers with purchasers. Anyway, I’m delighted to say that he is willing to let me post his paper here (as soon as he gets back from his latest travels and can send me the pdf).

Oh, next time you’re in Vienna, you got to check out this bar. Awesome.